Montana Land Reliance - Friends of Conservation
George & Betty Swan
“I wanted to be a rancher since I was knee-high,” says George Swan, looking out from his kitchen window at the cattle grazing nearby. “I knew it would take work, but that’s something I’ve never been afraid of.”
As a teenager, George worked summers on his uncle’s ranch in Utah. After finishing college in the East, he convinced his bride Betty that their destiny was to raise cattle out West. She got a job as a nurse on a construction site in northern Utah while George went to work as a carpenter on the swing shift.
“Eventually,” says George, “we managed to save enough to buy a small place there, but our dream was to come to Montana.”
After a few years the Swans sold their Utah ranch and bought a place near Twin Bridges, in Montana’s Ruby Valley. “It was good ground,” says George, “and we were fortunate to raise three strong boys who were willing to work hard. And Betty got a job at the hospital in Sheridan. And all of us worked many long hours and many long days. And we survived, and managed to pay our bills on time—which, in the economics of the ranching world, means we were wildly successful.”
George had always been one of the leaders of Ruby Valley’s ranching community.
Then something happened that forced him to be a leader outside that community as well. In 1995, irrigators allowed the Ruby River Reservoir to run dry. The result was sediment coming down the Ruby River and a massive die-off of trout. For George, it was a wake-up call.
“What it was,” he says, “was an indication that we had to pay more attention to what we were doing, and not only to the extent that it impacted our livelihoods as ranchers. It became clear that what we were doing affected the public at large, including fishermen and others who had an interest in this land. And with that realization came responsibility.”
George was appointed by the Governor to head a task force to look into what had happened, and to try and find a way to balance irrigation needs with the health of the river.
His group was instrumental in getting measuring devices installed in the Ruby River and establishing minimum flows.
“It took a while,” he says, “but we managed to convince folks in the valley that there are more uses for this water than irrigating. And I also believe that we were able to make some people outside the ranching community understand the important role that agriculture plays here. We made people understand that it’s not an either-or situation, that sustainable agriculture is in everybody’s best interest.
“So although the fish-kill was divisive at first, in a funny way it ended up bringing ranchers and non-ranchers closer together. I think it made all of us realize how interconnected we are and how interconnected our interests are.
“It made us realize that, at the end of the day, we’re all in this together. That’s certainly true in the Ruby Valley and I believe it’s true in a much broader sense as well.”
That experience led to George’s involvement with the Ruby Habitat Foundation, of which he is a board member. The RHF, a supporting organization of the Montana Land Reliance, is a non-profit foundation that works to improve habitat and water quality in the Ruby Valley while ensuring the viability of agriculture here.
“For me,” says George, “the challenge of ranching boils down to this: to find a way to make a living on the land, while leaving the land in better shape than you found it. And I’m not just talking about improving the land from the standpoint of livestock, but improving the environment in general. And when you do that, you’re strengthening community at the same time. As a rancher, what better legacy could you want?”