Home, life on the range

Daily Press Writer

OLATHE — John Murray knows all about where the livestock roam and more importantly how to keep a healthy balance between creature and turf.

Murray, who retired earlier this year from the Natural Resources Conservation Services, continues to use his knowledge daily. He spent 32 years with the NRCS as a rangeland management specialist. His job encompassed many duties ranging from assisting livestock owners to managing their land in the most sustainable fashion to working on a contract basis with the United States Forest Service to map natural vegetation.

Despite his retirement from the NRCS, he continues his teaching efforts with the Rangeland Management School.

"Agriculture has been lived and breathed for over half of my life," Murray said. "And not just the range part but the farm issues too. I couldn't just walk away from it all. In 1995 I was very lucky to become part of a very special program. At that time it became very controversial to allow livestock to graze on public lands. All the controversy led to a group being formed who founded the original range land management school. Federal agencies along with environmentalists and livestock producers sat down to figure out what could be done and the school is still going."

Murray has traveled throughout the state and all over the western portion of the United States teaching healthy range practices.

"We have been all over the west and into Canada," he explained. "Other states have now since started their own schools to help educate people. I am just one of a cadre of instructors. We started off by writing grants but now are federally funded."

Murray was in Steamboat Springs last week at the Cattleman's Association assisting with a special program to educate livestock growers.

"Our main goal is still for local lands and producers," he said. "We provide the best science for range management. We are trying to relate science out to the field and trying to make it mean something."

Murray's parents are from north central Kansas where his mother was a farm girl and his father was a second-generation lumberman. However, a fire in the family lumber yard brought the family to Pueblo where Murray finished high school. He then went to Colorado State University where he earned a degree with a double major in forest and range management.

"While being from the flatlands, I liked the plains and the rolling hills but there was something bigger that drew me to the mountains," Murray said. "I wanted to be a forest ranger."

However, the job market in the early 1970s placed Murray with the NRCS instead — a job that commonly had him working with all kinds of federal agencies.

"My first assignment put me in Eagle for about a year and a half," Murray recalled. "Then I was moved to Montrose and have been here ever since. During my tenure I was under contract with the forest service and the Bureau of Land Management."

Murray said in his position as a range land management specialist, or his former title, a range conservationist, held many duties and can be quite difficult to explain.

"That is a tough question to answer in a short amount of time," he said with a laugh. "I say that because I did everything. Basically I worked with private land owners. Our job was to help these producers enhance or I should say aid, them in making their livestock production better."

Murray's career had him trekking most of the land along with soil scientists on the Western Slope.

"The scientists would map the soil and we would map the vegetation," he said. "We did this for a quite a few years. We did this mostly in the 1970s and 1980s. A lot of this stuff had not been looked at. I would not say it was groundbreaking but it was information that had been studied in great depth or even cataloged before then."

Many of Murray's summers were spent either camping in the wilderness or stationed at ranger stations. Teams of workers would traverse the land, noting all the details.

"Some places we went were pretty remote — especially in the canyon land country," he said. "It was inaccessible so we were flown in by helicopter, we did our jobs and then were flown to other locations."

Murray said one of the most interesting aspects of his career was working with the local sheep industry and learning its ties to the Basque culture. Early Montrose economy was deeply rooted in the sheep industry and many Basque people — a culture from the Pyrenees in North-Central Spain — relocated to the west, including Montrose — to work with the livestock.

"It was a huge cultural experience for me," Murray explained. "There is a tremendous Basque influence in this area. There are several families who are still here. They started coming in the 1920s and herding all over the west. Many of them would take their pay in sheep rather than money. Soon enough they had their own operations and then they would support another Basque in their operation."

Despite his retirement, Murray stays quite busy between his teaching duties, his family and his orchard. Murray and his wife Myrna, an insurance agent and licensed massage therapist, live in Olathe where the couple maintains an orchard specializing in peaches. They grow about a dozen varieties of the fruit, which will peak from late July through Labor Day weekend. The Murray's son Jed and his wife Valerie just welcomed a baby boy — so grandpa duties also rate high in his priorities.

"We also have horses and I like to ride," Murray said. "I take pack trips in the summer time and I use the horses to hunt in the fall. I like to ride every chance we get. I like to see different country — I like to spend time experiencing the land."