MSGA Affiliate, MRLA featured in Prairie Star

MSGA Affiliate, MRLA featured in Prairie Star

The 2016 Marias River Livestock Association Board of Directors. Back row l to r: Trina Jo Bradley, Butch Gillespie, Carrie Sue Lerum, Bob Thompson. Front Row l to r: Marvin Kimmet, Jesse Wallewien, Maggie Nutter, Paul Turner.

The Marias River Livestock Association is one such organization. Formed in 2012 inresponse to concerns over bison being placed on the Marias River Wildlife Management Area south of Shelby, the group supports the livestock industry through public education on agriculture issues, promoting agriculture-friendly legislation and informing its members about issues pertinent to their operations.

Industry wide, ranchers are getting hip to posting messages across multiple platforms about who they are and what they do. So, while the Marias River Livestock Association is comprised of workaday ranchers and producers spanning a four-county area up on Montana’s Hi-Line, in keeping with the connected times, communication is a cornerstone of the organization.

“You can sit at a bar and gripe, go to a coffee shop and gripe, but unless you go to the agencies, congressmen, and legislature, the people who make decisions, you’re not going to accomplish anything,” said Sweet Grass Hills rancher Maggie Nutter, founding president of the Marias River Livestock Association. “We can preach to the choir, but we need to educate our producers on the issues coming up and also to educate our community about the issues we face so they understand why we are taking the stance we’re taking.”

To do that, the Marias River Livestock Association informs its members of upcoming events and meetings by a hard copy newsletter published a half-dozen times a year, regular e-mail alerts, a frequently-updated Website and a Facebook page for more of the moment information sharing. “We try to be better speakers for our industry and learn how to get our message out,” said Ethridge rancher Bruce “Butch” Gillespie, vice president of the association. “We do realize we are less than 1 percent of the population and for every one of us there are 99 people who know nothing about our industry. They have their agenda and they can beat up on us pretty bad and if we don’t speak up, who will?”

The Marias River Livestock Association is the newest and one of the most active local affiliates of the Montana Stockgrowers Association. It comprises four Montana counties: Liberty, Toole, Glacier and Pondera. Any one of the 24 local affiliates can bring forward resolutions that guide Stockgrowers policies, which means ranchers from across the state have greater participation in state and national policy issues.

“If there’s an issue we can help with or we can work in combination with a group on, it helps us be a more effective organization at the state level,” said Jay Bodner, natural resource director for Montana Stockgrowers. As important as their connection to the state organization is, the MRLA often advocates independently for issues that affect its members, especially those having to do with bison, wolves, elk and grizzly bears.

Members have held and attended public meetings with officials from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, USDA Wildlife Services, U.S. Cattlemen’s Association, the Bureau of Land Management, as well as the Interagency Bison Management Plan Council and the Interagency Grizzly Bear Council. They also lobby and testify in Helena during the legislative session, then organize letter writing and phone call campaigns to support favored bills.

The group mobilized four years ago against the proposal to let free-roaming bison on the Marias River Wildlife Management Area, arguing the bison would knock down fences, destroy crops, intermingle with cattle and spread disease. They won. They’ve since had quite a bit to say about the wolves and federally protected grizzly bears pushing down out of the mountains into central Montana and allegedly killing sheep and cattle, as well as elk, whose expanding numbers and hearty appetites spell economic loss for farmers and ranchers alike.

“Say you have 400 elk on your pasture, then you’re feeding 400 elk instead of 400 cows,” Nutter said. “They graze off hay bales, mow off regrowth, stand around in barley fields causing the grain to lay down so it can’t get picked up by the combine, break off posts, and destroy fences. They’re beautiful, nobody wants them all gone, but we need a herd size that’s ok for the ranchers to feed.” The MRLA convinced the FWP to widen hunting season to put cows on a general season tag and increase the number of bull tags available. The population is now being maintained but still needs to come down to numbers Sweetgrass Hills area ranchers are comfortable with, Nutter said.

The group has worked on other issues as well. In 2013, Nutter attended an Agro-Emergency Seminar put on by MSU Extension in Great Falls, and then attended the Foot-and-Mouth Disease Symposium in Louisville, Ky. As a result, MRLA encouraged other organizations, such as Montana Stockgrowers and Montana Farm Bureau Federation, to be active in promoting education on foot-and-mouth disease and hosted a Foreign Animal Disease seminar held later that summer in Shelby.

The Marias River Livestock Association also financially supports young producers by sponsoring annual events such as the FFA Extravaganza, The Young Ag Leaders Conference, The Young Ag Couples Conference and a Two Year Breeders Project Award at the Four County Marias Fair. “We’re trying to educate young ranchers so they’ll be good and successful,” Nutter said. “We’re trying to make agriculture in our area good so that kids can come back and continue generation after generation.” Supporting young people and spreading their message through social media as well as old-fashioned shoe leather activism has enabled the MRLA to resolve and to publicize their issues, both goals championed by the industry ever more scrutinized by highly informed consumers.

“Many organizations that have included the younger generation are more apt to do social media,” Bodner said. “All through the industry people are picking up on this useful tool to invite people to meetings, bring more people to the table and widen the conversation.”

Source: Sarah Brown, The Prairie Star http://www.theprairiestar.com/news/regional/mrla-the-epitome-of-a-grassroots-organization/article_15207dee-cb79-11e5-83bd-1b2c764e1e88.html