AVIS RANCH

This project is a long engagement based on preserving, maintaining, and restoring a 17,000 acre ranch in southwestern Montana. Interventions completed to date have ranged from modest fence realignments to the renovation of an abandoned turn-of-the-century granary and a derelict Sears Roebuck mail-order house; a more audacious project was the restoration of the creek to its natural drainage. The Ranch Headquarters upgrades several log cabins from chicken coops to small ranch management offices and turns an old outhouse into modern privy with a composting toilet. Future projects include a small fishing shack and an off-grid guest/meeting house. Land management strategies have moved cattle away from the watershed, thereby restoring fish, beavers, and red willows to their natural habitat.