Welcome Home

Fly Ranch is a 3,800 acre ranch in Northern Nevada home to Fly Geyser. We’ve hosted open campouts, work days, and more than 700 public nature walks. Projects are organized by hundreds of volunteers and tend to focus on reconnection, healing, human creativity, and the land. Our goal is to produce public benefits as an agricultural site with regenerative cycles for food, water, power, shelter, waste, and air. Sign up for a nature walk and read our survival guide to visit.

Ecology

We’ve documented 144 plants, 15 mammals, 138 birds, a dozen reptiles, and other animal friends. The ecosystem relies on the water in geothermal hot springs, cold springs, and tens of millions of gallons of surface water. The water is full of life: a metazoan with the highest temperature tolerance of any metazoan in the world; photosynthetic microbial mats; and the Fly Ranch pyrg (Pyrgulopsis bruesi) that only lives at Fly Ranch. Nevada categorizes this freshwater snail as At-Risk and Highly Vulnerable. Our goal is to protect the ecology from climate change impacts and a pipeline.

Species List

Virtual Tour

Get a sense of the land.

Virtual Tour

Stewardship

Our 2030 goals are to be carbon negative, sustainably manage waste, and be regenerative. We might be able to 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.

Results

500 people on 185 teams submitted proposals. 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, seen here, received the most votes. Each of the shortlisted projects is open for comments. Leave your thoughts or a note if you’d like to volunteer. We plan to start with a dozen or so prototypes and hope to build more.

Portfolio

Fly Ranch Book

The LAGI 2020 book features six essays and profiles 70 proposals. A review in The Art Newspaper concluded: “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. But 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 now from Hirmer or Amazon.

Journal Post

Forbes Article

LAGI, Fly Ranch, & sustainability

Interesting Engineering

Solar Mountain article

MIT Article

Lodgers article

LAGI 2020 Call

For an in-depth overview of LAGI 2020 Fly Ranch, watch or listen to the call below. The call includes the top ten teams and LAGI jurors and advisors including 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 Cultural Co-Founders Will Roger & Crimson Rose, and Dr. Victor Santiago Pineda. The video link has timestamps for speakers.

Vision

The layout for Burning Man’s largest annual gathering did not come into being for a decade, once the city had reached 12,000 participants. Similarly, Fly Ranch has been and will be shaped by the creative input of the 600 people who participated in a 20 year process to realize the Fly Ranch dream and thousands more have participated since then. The shared interest that drives us seems to be reconnection, healing, and life. The broad aims that have emerged are to establish a permanent home for Burning Man, human creativity, and regenerative innovation at scale.

Vision

Emergence

LAGI 2020, nature walks, and other Fly Ranch programs and campouts have been proposed, organized, and managed by the community. See our approach.

Approach

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.

Art

The Labyrinth at Fly Ranch is the first site-specific art project. It is meant to be a respite from the often chaotic or overwhelming life experience.

Fly Labyrinth

Stewardship

Since 2016 participants have found new uses for relics from when Fly Ranch was an airport, homestead, cattle ranch, and alfalfa farm. Hundreds of land stewards have cared for the land, made progress on non-native species management, and built new fences to graze 150 cows. Dozens of Fly Guardians have stewarded and protected the land and ecology. You can lead nature walks, become a Fly Guardian, or join a Stewardship Day.

Stewardship Days

LAGI, Fly Ranch, & sustainability

Fly Guardians

Watch & Steward the Land

Become a Walk Guide

Help others explore Fly Ranch

We Are Guests

Fly Ranch is on occupied Numu (Northern Paiute) and Newe (Western Shoshone) land. At least four distinct Numu tribes have direct ties to the area. There is more we can learn and do to support Indigenous peoples, address settler colonialism within our culture, and support direct action.

Land Acknowledgement