Redwing Ranch, Ranch Ecological & Infrastructure Monitoring Internship, Summer 2024
Every summer, The Bill Lane Center for the American West offers many opportunities for Stanford undergraduates (including graduating seniors and co-terms) to work with organizations throughout the West. Through these internships, students can explore careers in natural history, conservation, land use, museum curation, resource management, energy and more.
All internships are full-time (at least 40 hours per week) for nine to ten weeks during the summer. They are fully funded by the Lane Center with stipends ranging from $7,500 to $10,000.
The Lane Center has placed hundreds of interns in positions across the West since 2005. It has developed strong relationships with host organizations and works hard to ensure interns have successful and enriching experiences.
For more information about the internship program, please visit the FAQs page, or email Education Manager Corinne Thomas.
Details about the summer 2023 cohort of student interns and their placements can be found here.
Student reflections about the internship experience can be found by visiting the Out West student blog and the Lane Center Instagram channel.
Stipend Information:
The Bill Lane Center will provide a base stipend of $7,500 with additional funding for student financial aid and location, if applicable, up to $10,000.
Description of the Organization:
Redwing Ranch is a regenerative cattle operation located in Huerfano County, Colorado. As the climate is changing we are changing to regenerative grazing, transitioning historically conventional, set-stock management, practices to those that work with nature by planning and adapting grazing activities in response to weather and growing conditions, and thinking holistically about both the pasture conditions for cattle and the habitat conditions for local wildlife.
This summer internship will contribute to our efforts to regenerate this landscape by helping us map and analyze the ditch irrigation infrastructure we have and identify how we can improve and better use our precious irrigation water, and to map our invasive plant species so we can track their response to our management efforts in future years. This intern will be a part of the Redwing Ranch team and will also have the opportunity to help on many other facets of ranching, including grazing management, infrastructure maintenance, equipment operation, record keeping and land management planning. This will be an immersive ranch experience with expected project deliverables at the end of the 10 weeks.
Mission: Empowering the team, livestock, community, and nature.
Vision: Redwing Ranch is a regenerative operation with a healthy water cycle and ever-improving biological metrics. We are interested in scaling and growing at a sustainable rate through holistic planning and proactive decision-making. We have appropriate ranch systems in place that allow us to operate at our true carrying capacity. Through example, our ranch is creating opportunities to partner and grow our local community. All of this is made possible by a happy and empowered team that runs a profitable operation that supports itself.
Internship Overview:
1. Map and analyze the irrigation infrastructure on Redwing Ranch: Using field based GPS data collection on ESRI platforms the intern will map miles of ditches and record conditions of ditches and of diversion infrastructure within the system. This data will help us identify how we can improve and better use our precious irrigation water within the existing flood irrigation system. Some of this data exists but many gaps exist making planning and prioritizing repairs and investments at a landscape scale difficult. This data collection and the following analysis of needs and priorities will be a huge advance for our irrigated pastures and our ability to utilize our irrigation water responsibly and effectively. This project will also help us defend our water rights in an increasingly contentious water regulation environment.
2. Map our invasive plant species: Again, using field based GPS data collection the intern will explore all parts of the ranch helping us identify locations where priority invasive species threaten diverse plant communities and quality grazing areas. Grazing is our primary tool for land management so having a solid ranch-wide invasive species baseline will help us understand if our timing and intensity are driving the system in positive or negative directions with regards to our metrics of invasive species abundance. This is part of our ranch-wide monitoring of metrics including species richness, productivity, bare ground, water infiltration and soil health.
Both of these projects will be field based and require full days outside in the summer elements.
Internship Work Environment:
This is an in-person internship. It will be approximately 70% outdoors and 30% indoors.
The intern will be a part of the Redwing Ranch Team and expected to attend weekly team meetings. In the early part of the internship the intern will work with staff to get oriented and understand the summer's tasks, but these projects will require mostly solo time out in the field collecting data.
The intern will also have plenty of opportunity to assist in other ranch projects such as building temporary electric fence, mending permanent fence, repairing infrastructure, erosion prevention and other day to day tasks as needed and as permitted by progress on primary projects.
Each day is likely a little different, we have weekly meetings to sort out up coming tasks and priorities. We use a shared Google calendar to track planned activities and schedules.
The first part of the summer will be full days of field data collection with intermittent computer work to upload and clean data from the field. The middle and latter part of the summer will have more GIS computer based work assembling maps and integrating priorities into the data.
Our work week is generally 40-45 hours a week Monday through Friday, however, there are long days when the cattle get out of their pasture or the irrigation water jumps the ditch, so no day is the same and the intern would be expected to pitch in as needed like any team member.
Housing:
Redwing Ranch will provide housing in the recently remodeled headquarters that has several bedrooms. The intern will have a housemate.
A car is necessary! Redwing Ranch is located in a remote part of southern Colorado and a personal vehicle is required for getting anywhere, especially the grocery store or exploring the area on the weekends. The ranch CANNOT provide a vehicle for an intern's personal use.
- GPS data collection in the field
- Cleanup and editing of data in GIS/shapefiles for map making
- Map creation
- Ranking/prioritizing field data with other data (i.e. water right priority, feasibility, urgency, severity of invasion, zero tolerance weeds)
- A presentation to Redwing Team on data collected and suggested next steps
Bill Lane Center internships are part of Cardinal Quarter opportunities and students from all disciplines are encouraged to apply. The opportunities are full-time (35-40 hours a week) for 9-10 consecutive weeks during the summer.
Specific start and end dates can be coordinated directly with the supervisor.
All undergraduates of any year, including graduating seniors, are eligible. Graduating seniors are eligible only if they are graduating in spring quarter. Students who have already graduated, e.g., fall or winter quarter of this academic year are not eligible.
Coterms are eligible only if they hold undergraduate status.
For more application advice, please visit the BLC’s FAQs page.
Please note:
- Students are not permitted to engage in another full-time internship, job, or volunteer opportunity (whether funded by Stanford or otherwise) during this full-time, summer internship.
- Student athletes should confirm the impact of any awarded stipend on their athletic eligibility by contacting the Compliance Services Office prior to committing to an internship.
- New Stipend Policy per the U.S. Department of Education: A stipend is considered a resource and it may have an impact on a student’s financial aid. To comply with US Department of Education regulations, student payments, awards, prizes, and gifts that are made available to the student because they are a Stanford student, must be reported to the Financial Aid Office. The Financial Aid Office is responsible for the disbursement of stipend funds to undergraduates. For more information, please visit the Financial Aid Office's webpage about the student stipend policy.
Required Skills:
The student intern must be mature, comfortable working alone or with a team and be able to self motivate.
- Must be comfortable in remote locations and capable of hiking in rugged terrain and adverse conditions
- Demonstrable experience of ArcGIS map making is required, more advanced ArcGIS knowledge would be great!
- Previous experience with data management expected
- Must be able to establish and maintain positive collaborative working relationships with others both internally and externally
- Must be able to set priorities, develop a work schedule, monitor progress towards goals, and track details, data, information and activities
Desired Skills:
- Familiarity with field GPS data collection at large scales
- Integrating additional data into GIS for ranking and prioritization presentation in maps
- Comfort around large animals
Selection of applicants:
Complete applications are screened and finalists are contacted for a first-round interview with staff from The Bill Lane Center for the American West.
The top candidates for the position are then forwarded to the organization for second-round interviews with their potential supervisor and other staff.
Host organizations will then notify the Lane Center of their preferred candidate and that applicant will receive an internship offer from the Bill Lane Center by email.
The applicant is expected to respond promptly (within 48 hours) via email to the offer or the offer will be rescinded.
Once an applicant accepts an offer, they are required to promptly notify all other Stanford and non-Stanford programs to which they have applied that they have accepted another offer and withdraw their candidacy from those other opportunities.