Hello, my name is Brian Hays, and I am a new pasture and range consultant here at the Noble Research Institute. I received both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in rangeland ecology and management from Texas A&M University. For the past 21 years, I worked as an extension specialist with the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service. For the past three years, I have lived in Ardmore, Oklahoma, with my wife Amy, our two sons and one daughter. During that time, my frequent visits to the Noble Research Institute have provided me the opportunity to collaborate with the consultants there on educational events and trainings.
I am passionate about native rangelands and natural resource management. I enjoying hunting and fishing, and spending time with family and friends.
I am very excited to join this team and to continue working with stewards of the land to help meet their management goals.
I would like to highlight a few of the projects I’ve worked on with extension service to give you a better understanding of my work experience and background. Most recently, I led the private land stewardship efforts that included coordinating and delivering training and educational activities highlighting the public benefits derived from good land stewardship. The majority of the land in the Southern Great Plains is privately owned and managed. In my opinion, it is important that the general public understand the benefits producers and landowners provide to society through good land stewardship practices. Good stewardship leads to diverse plant communities, which in turn provide forage for livestock, create wildlife habitat, protect the soil and promote rainfall infiltration to retain moisture and reduce run-off. With good, sound management practices — such as planned grazing management, proper stocking rate, prescribed burning, wildlife management, etc. — producers and landowners are able to maintain and improve their property to the benefit of their operations and society as a whole.
I’ve also had the opportunity to work on several projects that provide proactive management strategies for habitat management on private working lands for the benefit of the producers and landowners, and to promote such lands as partners in conservation strategies. These projects include developing conservation markets for endangered species in Central and West Texas. These voluntary programs provided producers and landowners with incentives to maintain and improve habitats on their properties, and included management plans to accomplish that goal. The plans included the management of grazing, brush, grassland restoration, prescribed fire and wildlife sections that met the producer’s and/or landowner’s long-term goals for his or her property.
Several of my other extension service projects focused on working with producers and landowners on native grassland restoration to improve grassland bird habitat and rangeland watershed management. On both of these projects, I worked with land managers through result demonstrations to examine rangeland best management practices for reseeding native grasses, conserving water and improving water quality.
I enjoy working with producers and landowners, and I look forward to helping you make informed management decisions that will hopefully lead to profits and help you maintain and/or improve your land stewardship. Noble Research Institute consultants are highly respected among their peers, producers and landowners. I am very excited to join this team and to continue working with stewards of the land to help meet their management goals.
