ranching

Decades ago, she’d married into a ranching and timber family, and a chunk of the forest she owned was bulldozed for a transmission line.

They gathered at the University of California’s Hopland Research and Extension Center, where students learn about ranching and wilderness ecology.

Torres and many other ranchers in California live where two very lofty and environmentally satisfying ideas collide: all natural, free-range ranching and the government-assisted return of a predator our ancestors hunted to near extinction.

Even as the elk moved in, many ranching families were beginning to chafe at what they said was government red tape that made it hard to run their operations.

Sometimes the streets in the town known for cattle ranching, apple orchards and ironworking can be so quiet it feels like a ghost town.