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Steamboat Springs — For 25 years, there’s been some interesting research at Utah State University from a program with the acronym BEHAVE. Behave stands for Behavioral Education for Human, Animal, Vegetation and Ecosystem Management.

The program’s mission is to inspire people to master and apply behavioral principles to discover sound ecological, economical and social solutions to land management issues and to work with others to reconcile differences of opinion about how to manage landscapes managing ecosystems. In essence, they have been studying animal behavior and how we might be able to modify that behavior to benefit people and the environment. For instance, some of their research has been to condition domestic animals to eat certain plants that they normally wouldn’t. One interesting, successful experiment conditioned cows to eat sagebrush, knapweed or leafy spurge.

BEHAVE is a research and outreach program aimed at understanding the principles that govern diet and habitat selection. 

We often see livestock and wildlife as eating “machines” and don’t understand that an animal’s history influences its diet and habitat preferences. Animals learn from social interactions with mom, peers and people; feedback from nutrients and toxins in plants; and interactions with their physical environment including location of water and predators.

Animal behavioral principles can provide solutions to problems faced by producers and land managers. Unlike the infrastructure of a ranch such as corrals, fences and water development, behavioral solutions often cost little to implement and easily are transferred from one situation to the next. Unfortunately, we often ignore the power of animal behavior to improve systems. As animals grow and develop, their interactions with the environment shape their behavior. Animals adapt to changes in their environments every day of their lives. The only question is whether people want to be a part of that process.

Although I have no research to back up my interest, it makes me wonder: As we’ve selected domestic animals for their productivity traits, did we inadvertently de-select animals that had a more varied diet? Do we need to consider diet behavior as part of selection? Or do we need to view domestic animals as a land management tool and how we might train them to control undesirable plants or forage for improved land health?

The BEHAVE people at Utah State University have many resources and publications.

They also have an e-mail newsletter you can subscribe to and a good Web site with case studies and will periodically do workshops across the West. If you want to know more about this program, you can contact me or visit the Web site by doing a search for behave at Utah State University.