Big Horn County Weed & Pest supervisor recognized

The Wyoming Society for Range Management recently honored the supervisor for Big Horn County Weed & Pest as the recipient of its 2024 Excellence in Range Stewardship Award.

Cliff Winters “exemplifies the meaning of excellence in rangeland management and ingenuity,” wrote Bryn Marah of the Bighorn National Forest, who nominated him for the award.

Winters, who has spent the last 15 years with BHC Weed & Pest said, “This achievement wouldn’t have been possible without the support and direction of my fantastic team and board of directors. Their guidance and motivation have been invaluable to me. 

“This award holds special significance as it acknowledges the hard work and commitment I’ve invested in the Big Horn County Weed and Pest Control District.”

In nominating him for the award, Marah said Winters “has applied for and utilized a wide gamut of funding opportunities to provide landscape level treatment of noxious and invasive species across National Forest lands as well as surrounding Bureau of Land Management lands, private lands, Wyoming State lands, and across state and jurisdictional boundaries with the neighboring Bureau of Indian Affairs and Crow Nation,” wrote Marah. “Not only has Clif built integral relationships across private, state and federal lands, he has implemented critical and consistent treatments that protect watersheds and landscapes from the adverse ecological impacts of invasive species.”

Marah said the forest relies heavily on Weed & Pest to apply treatment across the forest and that Winters and his team “are proactive at identifying new and emerging populations of invasives and providing thoughtful solutions to implementing treatment whether through additional funding opportunities, timing or technological applications. 

“Cliff has demonstrated his ingenuity by building a program that can apply a wide variety of treatment application options such as drones, backpack sprayers, pack horse sprayers and biocontrol options. 

“In addition, Cliff has been able to garner public support and input by creating user-friendly identification and information collection surveys through Survey 123 that are available to the public and federal partners. This information is essential to provide up-to-date information of established and emerging populations of noxious and invasive species.”