Why cattle and ecotourism combine on one Nebraska ranch
With the skill of a safari driver, Sarah Sortum eases her modified Jeep over a rut and bumps to the top of a ridge. Directly in front of her is what looks like a breached sand dune, more at home on an ocean coast than here in the rolling green pastures of central Nebraska. The left half of the knob still has its prairie grass on top, but the right half is completely missing.
“This is a blowout,” says Ms. Sortum. “Wind will just get hold of the sand and blow it out.”
Blowouts were a nuisance when her family was only raising cattle on this 2,000-plus acre spread outside Burwell. Now that the ranch has diversified into ecotourism, they’re suddenly valuable – a feature to show off to tourists and also a place for lizards and kangaroo rats to burrow, making the local wildlife even more diverse, tourist-friendly, and sustainable.
