Independent study

Sustainability of Game Ranching and Complementary Land Uses

Exotic game ranching is an increasingly important land-use practice with substantial implications for environmental sustainability, economic development, and social responsibility. Across the United States, particularly in Texas and Colorado, landowners have expanded their operations to include species such as Oryx gazella and Bubalus bubalis, introducing new ecological pressures and management demands as they diversify their ranching portfolios and offer hunting excursions. As this practice grows, it is essential to ask not only how exotic game ranching affects local ecosystems, but also how its sustainability compares to regions where the industry has been established for decades. This project begins to address that need by pairing a U.S. focused assessment of emerging game ranching landscapes with an in-depth case study in South Africa, where game ranching has long shaped environmental, economic, and social systems. Together, these contexts create an opportunity to analyse sustainability across different ecological regimes, regulatory frameworks, and land-use histories.

The project is organized around two interconnected research components. The first is a field-based ecological monitoring initiative conducted on a mixed land-use ranch in Limpopo, South Africa, where ecological indicators were developed and tested to assess forage palatability, shrub encroachment, pioneer-species abundance, and rangeland condition. Through fieldwork, collaboration with land managers, and the integration of spatial tools, this project component produced replicable monitoring frameworks that support early detection of woody expansion and inform decisions about grazing, bush control, and long-term land-use planning. The second component situates these fine-scale findings within a broader comparative analysis of exotic game ranching in South Africa, Texas, and Colorado using nine years of Sentinel-2 vegetation index and moisture index data. This remote-sensing assessment revealed that vegetation dynamics in Colorado are moisture-limited and trending downward, Texas exhibits volatility driven boom–bust cycles tied to rainfall timing, and South Africa demonstrates resilience-mediated stability despite water stress. The findings underscore the importance of context-specific ecological and regulatory conditions.

Together, these components frame a student-led research project that integrates ecological monitoring, remote sensing, policy analysis, and qualitative inquiry to examine the sustainability of exotic game ranching across multiple scales. The research combines environmental assessments, interviews with land managers, and spatial analysis to understand how sustainability is defined, practiced, and regulated in different settings. By involving students in all stages from idea generation to data collection, analysis, and results dissemination the project not only advances knowledge but also serves as an educational platform that builds capacity for future research at UCCS. Given Colorado’s prominence as a hunting destination and the significant national investment in wildlife-associated activities, the project also functions as an outreach vehicle, using a topic of high public interest to deepen understanding of sustainability principles.

Importantly, the project’s scope is both local and global. Locally, it provides insights into the ecological and social implications of exotic game ranching in Colorado and the broader American West. Globally, the comparison with South Africa highlights how long-term regulatory maturity, ecosystem dynamics, and land-use integration shape sustainable outcomes in ways that emerging U.S. systems can learn from.

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Click here to link to component 1 story map: Sustainability of Mixed Land Uses: South Africa

Click here to link to component 2 story map: The Ecological Footprint of Exotic Game Ranching