California State University, Fresno celebrates the 75th anniversary of the San Joaquin Experimental Range in the Sierra foothills northeast of Fresno, with a new management partnership for California’s first center for rangeland research.

The partners are the university, the Pacific Southwest Research Station of the U.S. Forest Service and the University of California’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources. The recent partnership agreement is designed to enhance the facility’s research and education mission.

The experimental range – 4,462 acres of annual grass, oak-pine woodland – is on Highway 41, about seven miles north of Highway 145 in Madera County, a 30-minute drive from campus. Since 1978, it’s been jointly managed by the Agricultural Foundation at Fresno State and the Forest Service station.

Renee Denton, the experimental range conservationist, said the collective goal is to encourage the increased use of the range for research and educational activities to increase understanding of the foothill ecosystem. Included would be a balanced and sustainable plan that allows for livestock production.

“The San Joaquin Experimental Range’s long, rich history of rangeland research has diversified. Now it includes work contributing to the knowledge of watershed management, wildlife and plant ecology, species biodiversity, methods and design for resource inventory and monitoring, archaeology, geology and integrated hardwood management,” Denton said.

The range also serves as an outdoor laboratory for livestock production and management and environmental education.

Fresno State faculty and students use the facility quite extensively for education and research, said Dr. Ganesan Srinivasan, director of University Agricultural Operations for the Ag Foundation.

“Classes taught at the range include range-beef cattle production, range pasture managemen and astronomy, to name a few,” Srinivasan said. “Faculty from biology, geographic instrument systems and engineering departments have taken their classes to the facility.”

Co-sponsors of the anniversary event April 10 are the Fresno State Young Cattlemen’s Association, the Fresno-Kings County Cattlemen’s Association and the Madera County Cattlemen’s Association.

(University Communications news intern Sadie Thomas contributed to this copy).