Consequently, farmers and ranchers cannot increase or even maintain their income by buying additional acreage. Thus, for retirement income, or for equitable distribution among children at the death of parents, the land will likely be sold to outsiders rather than kept in the family. The cultural values of trans-generational farm families and the ecological integrity of their operations are often lost when current land owners cannot pass their operations to their children. This is a rare opportunity to study how ranchers and their adult children, business owners, and newcomers adapt to these changes and to each other in a traditional, ecologically sustainable community. Thus far, the pilot project has focused on ranch families.
Additional resources can broaden the study to include newcomers and business owners.
The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks estimates that only 3,000 are left in the Big Hole drainage, and these are the last of their kind south of the Canadian border. Thus, the fish is a prime candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act. But grayling are not the only rare creatures in the Big Hole. The ranchers of the Big Hole learned long ago to integrate their cattle and haymaking operations using the least-cost technology. Baling and shipping hay is a rare practice in the Big Hole.