The Y Cross Ranch, which was donated to the University of Wyoming and Colorado State University, is an overlooked yet highly valuable resource for students.
When students graduate from the University of Wyoming, they expect to be well prepared in their fields with a mix of theoretical knowledge and practical hands-on experience. Sadly, the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources is about to lose a large part of its hands-on experience component.
Y Cross ranch, located between Laramie and Cheyenne, was donated to UW and Colorado State University to be used as a ranching lab. In the last 14 years, it has been underused and sometimes completely overlooked. Now, in a few months, the ranch will be sold.
The donor has told the Associated Press that she regrets donating the ranch. It has been severely underused as a teaching lab and will now be sold at the earliest possible date. Not using the gifted ranch as it was intended has frustrated donors and contradicts UW’s mission statement as a land grant university.
In Wyoming, we pride ourselves on being the Cowboy State. Our economy and local communities depend on ranching and beef production. By losing Y Cross Ranch, the name “Wyoming Cowboys” becomes hypocritical. Cowboys will sit in offices, no longer branding cattle out on the open range. We will lose a unique recourse to train the next generation of ranchers, and ranching will continue to be outsourced.
In the past, the ranch has had more than 50 interns from a wide variety of fields, including art and geology. Japanese ranchers have visited, and students from Europe have asked to intern at the ranch.
Y Cross is the only large scale and self-supporting teaching cattle ranch in the world. Unfortunately, both Wyoming and CSU have underused this valuable resource to a point where many UW students are unaware the ranch took university interns.
By losing Y Cross, the entire ranching community suffers. The average age for a Wyoming rancher is close to 60. Many ranchers are nearing retirement, needing the younger generation to replace them. Y Cross was set up to be a ranch where students could spend time working the land, fixing fences, driving cattle and gaining practical experience so they can someday run their own ranches.
The hidden message is that more educated ranchers do not work the land. They work in management and let unskilled workers work the land. This shift in ranch politics will mean fewer jobs and less state revenue. Family run ranches will quickly become a thing of the past, confined to western movies and stories told by grandparents.
The ranch will be sold if action is not swiftly taken. Log on to the Save the Y Cross Facebook page to find more about the politics involved in selling the ranch. Sign the petition and fight to continue training ranchers in Wyoming.
