The book is a firsthand account of Dr. Hannah Jaicks’ journey through western Montana's ranching landscapes to showcase the stories of ranchers and affiliated groups who are pioneering strategies for reducing conflicts with wildlife, while also stewarding the landscape. Often seen as antithetical to one another, American ranchers and wildlife have long been entangled with another. This book is about producers who are forging new paths in conservation and addressing these seemingly intractable entanglements to sustain working ranch operations alongside healthy wildlife populations. It elevates the voices of these people striving daily to achieve wild and working landscapes in the West and serves as a model for how others can begin to do the same. Dr. Jaicks takes readers on a journey up western Montana to a different valley in each chapter and showcases the place-based stories of everyday conservation heroes who provide consciously raised agricultural products and protect vital habitat for endemic wildlife that would otherwise be developed and subdivided beyond repair. This book will inform readers about progressive ways to make the world we share – with people and animals – a better place to live.
