Kristie Maczko, PhD

Research Scientist, University of Wyoming and Executive Director, Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable 

Dr. Kristie Maczko is a Research Scientist at the University of Wyoming and Executive Director of the Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable (SRR). She has served on the USRSB board of directors for the civil society constituency. Dr. Maczko works with interdisciplinary research teams to develop rangeland assessment and monitoring applications, and conceptual frames for ecological, social, and economic aspects of rangeland sustainability. Monitoring frameworks have been developed for regional and national scales, as well as the ranch level, in the context of ranchers’ business plans. She was previously the co-director of Colorado State University’s Rangeland Resources Institute. Dr. Maczko has spent more than 20 years working with federal and state agency personnel, policy experts, professional societies, producer groups and other stakeholders to advance common understanding of sustainable rangeland systems. She recently worked with SRR teams conducting a national rangeland sustainability assessment, and published a book on this topic with Taylor and Francis CRC Press. Additional projects have engaged interdisciplinary teams of scientists, post-docs, research associates, and graduate students conducting valuations of rangeland ecosystem systems goods and services, studying social and economic characteristics of ranchers, future directions of usable science (soil health, plants, animals, and socio-economic aspects) for rangeland sustainability, ranchers’ attitudes and objectives around prescribed fire, cost/benefits of invasive species management, ranch economics of targeted grazing, impacts of removing grazing from federal lands, tradeoffs associated with energy development, climate change, and food security, ranchers’ motivations for participating in conservation programs, benefits of managing for rangeland soil health, integration of social and economic information with natural resource data, and ranch economics associated with management of sage grouse and lesser prairie chicken. In addition, Dr. Maczko represents the Sustainable Rangelands Roundtable on the US Roundtable for Sustainable Beef. She also is a member of the National Grazing Lands Coalition’s Advisory Committee, serves on the board of the Plank Stewardship Initiative, and participates as a member of the US delegation to the USDA-EU Collaborative Platform for Agriculture. She received her Ph.D. in Ecology from Colorado State University, M.S. from University of Memphis, and a B.A. and B.S. from Rutgers University.