Rinker Rock Creek Ranch

Author: Jacqueline Snow

Located in southern Idaho, Rinker Rock Creek Ranch is an immersive field education facility that allows students to learn about land management, science based practices and so much more. Acquired in 2019, this working 10,400-acre ranch provides education on rangeland, plants, wildlife, stream restoration and cattle management. Student’s can spend a day or even a month down at the ranch conducting research that other potential land managers can use in their work.

Rinker Rock is providing us the unique opporuntity to study recreation and assist with setting up a more comprehesive monitoring network. The goal of this public monitoring network is to document recreation types and implement a sustainable visitor use counting system for use by stakeholders and managers.

By using traffic counters, motion-sensing camera traps and social-media tracking data to compile a baseline data set inclusive of seasonality, activity types, and use density. This information is key to implementing and altering management strategies at the Rinker Rock and other ranches.