The University of Nebraska-Lincoln Range Management team scored in the top half of each contest they participated in at this year’s Society for Range Management’s meeting Feb. 8–11 in Monterey, California.
The 2026 SRM Annual Meeting, “Herd ’round the World,” highlighted why healthy rangeland ecosystems matter for livelihoods, food security and economic resilience.
Across three competitions, no awards were earned this year, but the students secured a ninth-place finish in the Plant Identification Contest and a 10th-place finish in the Undergraduate Range Management Exam.
“The contests were fun, and it was a great educational experience,” noted senior Clara Freese. “The exams were particularly more challenging than last year, but we still considered this trip a success, and this enabled us to grow and learn.”
Team members included College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources students Aidan Choat and Bobbi Guggenmos, agricultural leadership, education and communication majors; Gabrielle Clifton, an agronomy major; Clara Freese, a fisheries and wildlife and grassland systems major; Abby Hirschman, an agribusiness major; Cassidy Maricle, a grassland systems and animal science major; Chris Olson, a data science and grassland systems major; and Jarett Walter, a fisheries and wildlife major.
The URME team included Choat, Clifton, Freese, Guggenmos, Hirschman, Maricle, Olson and Walter. Over 150 students from 25 universities competed in the exam.
The hour-long URME features multiple-choice questions across six categories — Range Ecology, Grazing Management, Range Improvement, Range Regions, Range Inventory and Analysis, and Multiple-Use Relationships. Students also face problems in grazing management, range improvements and inventory analysis.
The Rangeland Cup team included Choat, Guggenmos, Hirschman and Maricle.
The Rangeland Cup is a competition that fosters critical thinking on important and historically significant topics in rangeland ecology and management. It includes a research poster presentation where students receive range science-related prompts and are tasked with finding potential solutions.
Rangeland Cup team members (from left) Bobbi Guggenmos, Cassidy Maricle, Abby Hirschman and Aidan Choat prepare to present their poster on rangelands in Switzerland during the 2026 Society for Range Management meeting.
The Plant ID team included Clifton, Freese, Olson and Walter.
The Plant ID Contest challenges students to identify 100 mounted, dried range plant specimens within a tight timeframe, usually allowing one minute per plant. Competitors must identify the scientific name — family/tribe, genus, specific epithet — and often include characteristics such as lifespan and origin.
“Notably, we did have two members score on the Plant ID Contest for the first time, which is not an easy feat — the exam is very challenging,” Freese said.
Celebrating the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists, the meeting included symposia, talks, posters and workshops that explored ecological resilience, biodiversity, food security and economic vitality.
In addition to competing in various competitions, students networked with professionals and attended sessions and keynote speakers on a wide variety of rangeland-related topics.
“After taking home several awards last year, and none this year, we realized the point of this conference is not to win,” Freese said. “We still put in as much effort as we did last year, if not more, and even though we did not score as high, we all learned substantially more throughout our experience.”
The team’s coaches are Department of Agronomy and Horticulture’s Aisha Sams, a research technologist who instructs the URME and Rangeland Cup team; Cheryl Dunn, a lecturer and Herbarium Curator who leads the Plant ID team; and Nic McMillan, an assistant professor in range and forage sciences who guides the Rangeland Cup team with Sams.
