News

Meet the Cattle Ranchers Working to Preserve Southwest Florida’s Wild Side

Southern Living, March 21, 2022,  By Kaitlyn Yarborough Photos by Brown Cannon It’s a cool and breezy morning on Blackbeard’s Ranch in Florida’s Myakka River Valley. Clouds conceal the early hints of sun and allow the dew to nestle a bit longer on the grass. It’s quiet, barring the rustle of droopy palm fronds in...
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The Success of Strickland Ranch Centers on Stewardship

by Cathy Lockman April 17, 2022 Jim Strickland, owner of Strickland Ranch, is a cowboy and a conservationist. A Manatee County native, he grew up ranching with his father on Florida’s west coast. He bought his first cows when he was 13 and took over the family ranch four years later when his father died...
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Florida Trend 500 Profile

Excerpt from: https://floridatrend500.com/living-legends/jim-strickland/ “I’ve been a rancher my whole life, and it’s all I ever wanted to do. I love the cows, the woods and the wildlife,” says Jim Strickland. A Manatee County native, Strickland comes from a family that has been ranching in Florida since before the Civil War. He took over his family’s...
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The First American Cowboys

Excerpt from Craig Pittman: https://www.flamingomag.com/2021/10/18/how-these-ranchers-are-carrying-on-the-little-known-legacy-of-florida-cowboys/ On a steamy August morning, as the temperature rose with the sun, Jim Strickland stood on a raised cypress board in a rugged cow pen at Blackbeard’s Ranch near Myakka City, looking down on a series of brown, black and reddish cows scooting through a cattle chute. They flickered by...
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500 YEARS

Excerpt from Mary Wozniak: https://fortmyers.floridaweekly.com/articles/500-years/ IT ALL BEGAN THAT WINTER DAY in 1521 when Ponce de León came ashore near Charlotte Harbor on Southwest Florida’s coast, looking to create a permanent settlement. It was his second voyage to the land he had dubbed La Florida and this time he had 200 men, about 50 horses...
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Ranchers carry on history, family legacies

Excerpt and photo from Mary Wozniak: https://fortmyers.floridaweekly.com/articles/ranchers-carry-on-history-family-legacies/ This is a tale of two ranches. They are completely different, but each provides a brief glimpse into the cattle rancher’s way of life and a window into the ecosystem services they provide — benefits conservationists consider vital to protect remaining Florida ranchlands from development. They are only...
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Florida’s Ranches Play a Significant Role in Combatting the Threats from the Warming Climate

Excerpt from: https://floridaconserve.org/2021/04/16/floridas-ranches-play-a-significant-role-in-combatting-the-threats-from-the-warming-climate/ I consider myself blessed to live and work as a rancher in Florida. As a caretaker of the land, I have both the privilege and the obligation to protect the habitat and wildlife on our ranchlands. Florida ranches are part of the solution to protect Florida’s environment. Ranchers engage in conservation practices...
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Florida Ranch for Outstanding Environmental Stewardship

Excerpt From: https://www.environmentalstewardship.org/winner-gallery/inductees/blackbeard-ranch DENVER (July 30, 2019) – Blackbeard’s Ranch, in Myakka City, Fla., has been selected as one of seven regional finalists of the Environmental Stewardship Award Program (ESAP). The award, announced during the 2019 Cattle Industry Summer Business Meeting July 30 recognizes the operation’s outstanding stewardship and conservation efforts. This year’s regional winners...
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Raising Nature on Florida Ranchlands

Excerpt from Virginia Gewin: https://www.biographic.com/raising-nature-on-florida-ranchlands/ Blackbeard’s Ranch in southwestern Florida is hardly classic cattle-rustling terrain. Rumbling across his land in a swamp buggy, Jim Strickland steers past alligators and maneuvers through a dense mix of pines and saw palmettos. Cabbage palms soar in the distance. Strickland points out threatened sandhill cranes (Grus canadensis), crested caracaras...
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Ranchers say most owners support corridor: ‘It’s our livelihood’

Excerpt form Mary Wozniak: https://fortmyers.floridaweekly.com/articles/ranchers-say-most-owners-support-corridor-its-our-livelihood/?fbclid=IwAR3XUAb0W5scF2EGHruhZtCScc6eax-SKn89gef2zZuCA6pq5uqdzekpBIY Florida has 47,400 farms and ranches covering 9.7 million acres of land that provide a large and stable economic base, according to the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services’ 2020 agricultural overview. These working lands are also essential for the Florida Wildlife Corridor. “Helping to sustain this state’s working...
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Florida’s Remarkable New Wildlife Corridor from the Panhandle to the Keys

Excerpt from Dexter Filkins:  https://www.newyorker.com/news/us-journal/floridas-remarkable-new-wildlife-corridor-from-the-panhandle-to-the-keys?fbclid=IwAR2pFTlnOF2kN9L2ZtKf0dbSdxgsU3hXV0jS9xYy93mF8-my3T1C1aumGCE his week, Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, who is known nationally for his unstinting impersonation of the state’s most famous new resident, signed into law a remarkable piece of environmental legislation that could become a model for the rest of the country. The project will establish the Florida Wildlife Corridor, a...
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jim strickland your observer

Myakka City rancher honored by Audubon, Manatee County

Excerpt from Pam Eubanks at Your Observer: https://www.yourobserver.com/article/myakka-city-rancher-honored-by-audubon-manatee-county Wearing his cowboy hat, cattle rancher Jim Strickland rolled through pastureland on the 4,500-acre Blackbeard’s Ranch in eastern Manatee County in his pickup truck. He nodded toward the window. About 50 feet away, deer walked along the tree line, barely noticing the truck had stopped. On the...
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Audubon Florida Sustainable Rancher of the Year 2019: Jim Strickland

Each year, Audubon honors a rancher who has demonstrated exemplary environmentally-sustainable ranching practices and makes efforts to conserve native wildlife habitat. Audubon is honored to be able to present this award to Jim Strickland this year. Jim Strickland grew up ranching with his father along the west coast of Florida in the 1950s and 1960s....
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Florida Climate-Smart Agriculture Initiative Announced

The following is an excerpt from Brad Buck.   GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Florida agricultural leaders are calling for deeper exploration of farmers, ranchers, and forest land owners as suppliers of environmental protection as well as of food and fiber. The Florida Climate-Smart Agriculture Work Group has declared ­its ambitions to craft a plan for how the state’s...
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Conservation Cowboy

Excerpt from USNEWS.COM by Katelyn Newman Jim Strickland is a sixth-generation cattle rancher who, alongside fellow ranchers in the Sunshine State, is working to preserve Southwest Florida’s natural habitat. As the sun begins to rise and the mist breaks on a clear Florida morning, wild turkeys, white-tailed deer and pesky feral pigs rummage for breakfast...
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Florida cattleman donates cow to UF’s campus food pantry

Dana Edwards May 10, 2018 GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the University of Florida, 16 percent of those who visited the on-campus Alan and Cathy Hitchcock Field and Fork pantry mentioned the service was their sole source of food when they needed temporary assistance. While students working with the Field and Fork student gardens grow fresh...
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Ranch near Myakka River State Park will be preserved under conservation easement

Excerpt from article by Zac Anderson in the Herald Tribune. Nearly 1,500 acres of cattle ranch close to Myakka River State Park will be protected from development and restored to native habitat after the federal government recently signed off on a conservation easement for the site. The National Resources Conservation Service, an agency within the...
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East County cowboys still bullish on ranch life

An excerpt from Jessica Salmond at YourObserver.com Ranchers learn to adapt when development changes the landscape. Standing in a 20-acre pasture east of Lorraine Road, Jason McKendree remembered the days when he couldn’t hear the sound of bulldozers working on a new subdivision. That was a time the Mary Fran Carroll Bridge was made of wood...
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Jim Strickland

The Joe What? An Interview with Jim Strickland

The Joe What? Podcast is a series of interviews by Joao (Joe) Vendramini of the UF/IFAS Range Cattle Research and Education Center. Recorded in May 2017.
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