Stewardship of the ecosystem is the primary focus of all King Ranch management programs. This focus, coupled with innovative vision and management techniques, makes the land simultaneously productive for livestock, wildlife, other fauna and the native range.
Managing renewable resources in a sustainable manner has been the benchmark of King Ranch’s “systems” approach to management. This approach has characterized King Ranch from the beginning and continues today as King Ranch prepares for the challenges of the future.
From the first time he laid eyes on the Wild Horse Desert country that would one day comprise one the largest ranches in recorded history, Richard King was taken with the variety of vibrant wildlife and flora that the land supported. Captain King marveled as wildlife from the surrounding brushlands converged in the evening to drink the life-giving waters of Santa Gertrudis Creek – the same waters that would give life to his first efforts at establishing a ranching operation. Successive generations of the Captain’s descendants have taken the love of the land and its wildlife to heart, and through the years, they have intensified this commitment to preserving the vast variety of plant and animal life that populates the rugged South Texas rangelands between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande Valley.
King Ranch’s game conservation efforts were some of the earliest and most progressive initiatives of their kind in American ranching history. That same vision for maintaining the balance of wild and domestic species on King Ranch lands is alive and well and very evident in modern-day King Ranch’s thorough and extensive nature stewardship programs.
King Ranch’s game conservation programs serve as the industry standard and the model for other ranchers. Wildlife conservation and habitat maintenance go hand-in-hand and are of paramount concern to King Ranch who continues to share the vision of stewardship and reverence for the land that Captain King and his forbearers embodied.