Synthesis Paper: Targeted Livestock Grazing: Prescription for Healthy Rangelands

Targeted livestock grazing is a proven tool for manipulating rangeland vegetation, and current knowledge about targeted livestock grazing is extensive and expanding rapidly. Targeted grazing prescriptions optimize the timing, frequency, intensity, and selectivity of grazing (or browsing) in combinations that purposely exert grazing/browsing pressure on specific plant species or portions of the landscape. Targeted grazing differs from traditional grazing management in that the goal of targeted grazing is to apply defoliation or trampling to achieve specific vegetation management objectives, whereas the goal of traditional livestock grazing management is generally the production of livestock commodities. A shared aim of targeted livestock grazing and traditional grazing management is to sustain healthy soils, flora, fauna, and water resources that, in turn, can sustain natural ecological processes (e.g., nutrient cycle, water cycle, energy flow). Targeted grazing prescriptions integrate knowledge of plant ecology, livestock nutrition, and livestock foraging behavior. Livestock can be focused on target areas through fencing, herding, or supplement placement. Although practices can be developed to minimize the impact of toxins contained in target plants, the welfare of the animals used in targeted grazing must be a priority. Monitoring is needed to determine if targeted grazing is successful and to refine techniques to improve efficacy and efficiency. Examples of previous research studies and approaches are presented to highlight the ecological benefits that can be achieved when targeted grazing is applied properly. These cases include ways to suppress invasive plants and ways to enhance wildlife habitat and biodiversity. Future research should address the potential to select more adapted and effective livestock for targeted grazing and the associated animal welfare concerns with this practice. Targeted livestock grazing provides land managers a viable alternative to mechanical, chemical, and prescribed fire treatments to manipulate rangeland vegetation

Female athlete politic Title IX and the naturalization of sex difference in public policy

How did the passage of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 politically define the “female athlete?” Since the mid-1970s, debates over the application of policy to athletic domains have been profoundly contentious. In this paper, I trace the policy deliberations concerning equity in athletics throughout the 1970s and explore the implications for our political understandings of what makes certain bodies “athletes” versus “female athletes” in contemporary sports and politics. I draw upon literatures from political science, sport sociology, and gender studies, and rely on archival methods to trace the process through which policymakers wed biological sex to policy implementation. I argue that Title IX unexpectedly became a central site for the construction of binary sex difference through three specific means: (1) conflict over the understandings of the role that biological sex should play in congressional debate before Title IX’s passage, (2) conflict over application of sex to policy design in light of perceived capacities of women’s bodies, and (3) naturalization of sex-segregated policy design which defines the relationship between sex and the physical body. The intersectional implications of Title IX’s history demonstrate that policy has not yet fully ameliorated the raced, classed, and heterosexist inequities haunting institutions of American education

College Athletes: Politically aware and prepared to mobilize on gender inequality, new study finds

Blog post for the Women\u27s Sports Foundatio

Sports, Transgender Rights, and the Bodily Politics of Cisgender Supremacy

Between 2020 and 2021, one hundred and ten bills in state legislatures across the United States suggested banning the participation of transgender athletes on sports teams for girls and women. As of July 2021, ten such bills have become state law. This paper tracks the political shift towards targeting transgender athletes. Conservative political interests now seek laws that suture biological determinist arguments to civil rights of bodies. Although narrow binary definitions of sex have long operated in the background as a means for policy implementation under Title IX, Republican lawmakers now aim to reframe sex non-discrimination policies as means of gendered exclusion. The content of proposals reveal the centrality of ideas about bodily immutability, and body politics more generally, in shaping the future of American gender politics. My analysis of bills from 2021 argues that legislative proposals advance a logic of “cisgender supremacy” inhering in political claims about normatively gendered bodies. Political institutions are another site for advancing, enshrining, and normalizing cis-supremacist gender orders, explicitly joining cause with medical authorities as arbiters of gender normativity. Characteristics of bodies and their alleged role in evidencing sex itself have fueled the tactics of anti-transgender activists on the political Right. However, the target of their aims is not mere policy change but a state-sanctioned return to a narrowly cis- and heteropatriarchal gender order

Taking Women College Athletes Seriously in the Political Arena

The Gender Policy Report. Minneapolis, MN:Center on Women, Gender and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affair

Why it is Time to Take Seriously the Political Power of Women College Athletes

Sharrow, Elizabeth. 2018. “Why it is Time to Take Seriously the Political Power of Women College Athletes.” Scholars Strategy Network Brief. https://scholars.org/brief/why-it-time-take-seriously-political-power-women-college-athletes (May 30, 2018)