Welcome Home

Fly Ranch is a 3,800 acre ranch in Northern Nevada home to Fly Geyser. Projects are organized by thousands of participants and tend to focus on reconnection, healing, and the land. Our goal is to produce public benefits as an agricultural site with sustainable systems for food, water, power, shelter, waste, and air. Join a walk and read our survival guide to visit.

Visit Fly Ranch

Since 2016 stewards have walked, worked, and camped at Fly Ranch. We have found uses for relics from the old airport, ranch, and farm. We have cared for the land, started non-native species management, and grazed 150 cows.

Stewardship Days

LAGI, Fly Ranch, & sustainability

Fly Guardians

Watch & Steward the Land

Become a Walk Guide

Help others explore Fly Ranch

Land Stewardship

We’ve documented 144 plants, 15 mammals, 138 birds, 12 reptiles, and more animal friends. The water is home to a metazoan with the highest temperature tolerance of any metazoan and photosynthetic microbial mats.

Fly Ranch Species List

Water is Life

Life at Fly is connected to geothermal hot springs, cold springs, and tens of millions of gallons of surface water. The water is crucial for the Fly Ranch pyrg (Pyrgulopsis bruesi), an at-risk, highly vulnerable freshwater snail that only lives at Fly Ranch. This year, the pyrg was in an art piece at Black Rock City. Our goal is to protect the ecology from climate change impacts and a pipeline.

Learn about the pyrg

Virtual Tour

Get a sense of the land.

Virtual Tour

Sustainability Goals

Our 2030 goals are to be carbon negative, sustainably manage waste, and be regenerative. We could address the climate emergency if every government, organization, and person met these goals. We’re open-source and welcome collaboration.

Sustainability

LAGI 2020 Fly Ranch

Since 2018 we’ve partnered with the Land Art Generator Initiative on a design challenge focused on food, power, water, shelter, and waste.

LAGI 2020 Proposals

500 people on 185 teams submitted proposals based on our design guidelines. The proposals were reviewed by 200 technical advisors who left 2,000 comments. 50 members of the shortlist committee picked 52 shortlisted projects. 33 jurors selected the top ten projects. Lodgers received the most votes. Each of the shortlisted projects is open for comments. The top ten teams have started prototypes and we hope to build more.

Portfolio

Fly Ranch Book

The Art Newspaper noted in a book review: “Hopefully, Land Art of the 21st Century will inspire action on the climate and ecological emergencies worldwide. The methodologies and design philosophies employed by real-world regenerative structures can be copied. The real value of these land art installations will be that they embody collective, sustainable and inclusive principles. It is through the creation of new ways of organising our societies that we will discover the wisdom to live together in harmony with our home planet.” Order from Hirmer or Amazon.

Journal Post

Forbes Article

LAGI, Fly Ranch, & sustainability

Interesting Engineering

Solar Mountain article

MIT Article

Lodgers article

Dezeen Article

LAGI Top Ten

Burning Man Medium

LAGI Prototypes

Burning Man Journal

Tule Harvest

LAGI 2020 Call

The call below includes the top ten LAGI teams, jurors, and advisors. Hear from USA Today’s Nevada Woman of the Year Autumn Harry, Community Organizer Beverly Harry, Professor Kyle Whyte, Indigenous Women Hike Founder Jolie Varela, Burning Man Co-Founders Will Roger & Crimson Rose, and Dr. Victor Santiago Pineda. The link has timestamps.

Emergent Strategy

The layout for Burning Man’s largest annual gathering came into being after a decade, once the city had reached 12,000 participants. Similarly, Fly Ranch has been and will be shaped by the 600 people who participated in a 20 year acquisition process, 800 LAGI 2020 participants, and 2,000 Stewards who have participated in various programs. Anyone can propose, organize, and manage a project or event at Fly Ranch.

Approach

Vision

Our shared interests are reconnection, healing, and the land. The aims that have emerged are to establish a year-round sustainable Burn and home for human creativity and regenerative innovation at scale.

Vision

Campouts

Writer’s Emerging was a retreat to connect with the land and participate in creative workshops. One participant noted: “The Writers Emerging program epitomizes the highest and most multi-faceted potential of what your organization and its resources can do.” Read an interview with event producer Yodassa Williams to learn more.

Labyrinth

The Labyrinth is a respite from often chaotic and overwhelming life experiences.

Fly Labyrinth

We Are Guests

Fly Ranch is on the occupied Numu (Northern Paiute) lands of at least four distinct Numu tribes. We can do more to support Indigenous peoples, address settler colonialism in our culture, and support direct action. Pictured: Medicine Garden at Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Museum and Visitors Center. See PLPT post and video.

Land Acknowledgement