Research Projects

Native rangelands, at more than 700 million acres in the U.S., are a major contributor to the natural resource base of the nation. With over two thirds of this resource held as private lands, a large portion of our future water, wildlife, and livestock productivity depends on the stewardship of private ranches. Texas alone has over 92 million acres of native rangelands on private ranches, representing some of the nation’s most valuable wildlife habitats while also the source of our country’s largest cattle production. However, native rangelands are under increasing threat from drought, disease, invasive plants, and exotic animals.

The purpose of our research program is to understand and improve the productivity of native rangelands for both wildlife conservation and livestock production. Our approach is to generate science-based solutions to help ranchers conserve wildlife habitats while sustaining livestock production.

East Foundation’s lands are a living laboratory.

• Using state-of-the-art tools, we track over 625 wildlife species that are found across our rangelands and monitor response to drought, grazing, and other factors that influence native rangelands.
• We maintain biological collections of all vertebrate species to serve as a long-term reference for scientific study.
• We use innovative methods to understand the competition among cattle, native wildlife, and exotic animals.
• We document the population changes and structure on one of the largest un-hunted and un-managed white-tailed deer herds in the state.
• We have developed one of the nation’s largest grazing demonstration studies to test the influence of cattle stocking rates and grazing systems on rangeland, wildlife, and cattle productivity.

See the links adjacent for more details about our research projects.