Emergent Strategy
Fly Ranch has been and will be shaped by the 600 people who supported the 20 year acquisition process, 800 LAGI participants, and 2,000 Fly Stewards. Fly Ranch is the sum total of these participants contributions. Anyone can propose, organize, and manage a project. Projects tend to focus on the land, art, healing, transformation, regeneration, education, a thriving ecosystem, and a permanent home for Burning Man. As an agricultural site, we produce public benefits and regenerative systems for food, water, power, shelter, waste, soil, and air.
Approach
Welcome Home
Fly Ranch is a 3,800 acre ranch in Northern Nevada home to Fly Geyser, 144 plants, 15 mammals, 138 birds, 12 reptiles, and more animal friends. We are:
An open-source land stewardship project
A year-round community and Burning Man space
A home for Burning Man’s 2030 Sustainability Roadmap
A place for people to gather, be creative, and innovate
An oasis of ecology and art that inspires awe and wonder
We share stories, videos, and photos to invite open-source collaboration, share lessons, and inspire others. The Friends of the Black Rock host Nature Walks on Saturday. Please read our survival guide if you visit.
Sign up for a walk
Fly Ranch Vision
Burning Man Founder Larry Harvey shared a vision for Fly Ranch in a 2017 essay entitled “Giving to Fly Ranch: An Open Letter to Our Community.” He wrote:
It is our aim to treat these places as a platform from which to project our culture outward. We believe this platform can be made to function as a chambered heart, continually pumping new vitality into the body of a worldwide community…Anyone at any time can be a founder, and we invite you to join us.
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.
Help steward the land
Watch & Steward the Land
Help others explore Fly Ranch
Fly Ranch Residents
When we first began to steward the land in 2017, we carefully studied and observed the existing life and ecosystems for a year and a half. Fly Ranch is a novel desert ecosystem because of the abundance of water. The hot springs are 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
Burning Man Project’s 2030 Environmental Sustainability Roadmap laid out our commitment to be carbon negative, sustainably manage waste, and be regenerative. Fly Ranch supports these efforts. We could address the climate emergency if every government, organization, and person met these goals. We’re open-source and welcome collaboration.
Sustainability
Land Stewardship
As Burning Man’s CEO Marian wrote in Burning Man Project’s 2019 Annual Report, Fly Ranch sparked the 2030 Sustainability Roadmap: “Informed by our stewardship of the land and waters at Fly Ranch and the global climate crisis, we created an environmental sustainability roadmap that sets ambitious goals around waste management, ecological impact, and carbon sequestration.” A documentary from the International Wood Culture Society was filmed at Burning Man 2022 and shows how sustainability projects are coming to life in diverse and innovative ways.
LAGI & Fly Ranch
Since 2018 we’ve partnered with the Land Art Generator Initiative. In 2019 we launched a design challenge focused on regenerative systems for food, power, water, shelter, and waste. We made a global invitation to artists, designers, engineers, and dreamers to propose artworks that inspire wonder and awe in those who encounter and interact with their projects. We invited people to inspire others about the beauty of a world within which humanity achieves harmony with the natural world and environmental systems.
LAGI Fly Ranch Proposals
In 2020, 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
LAGI Summer Campout
During the last couple weeks of May, 2022, LAGI teams, jurors, advisors, and supporters gathered for a campout. Teams worked on prototypes, research, and connected to the land. Read this article by the LAGI co-founders with beautiful pictures.
Journal Post
Fly Ranch Book
In 2022, we published a book about LAGI at Fly Ranch. 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
Ripple Haba Build
During the 2023 Burners Without Borders Campout, Ripple Project built a traditional Northern Paiute shade structure at the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe Museum and Visitors Center. This is a photo from a Far Away Projects blog post on Ripple.
Ripple Haba Build
Lodgers Video
This short film shows the future vision of Lodgers Collective, a top LAGI at Fly Ranch team. The video by Zhicheng Xu showcases a mesmerizing glimpse into the future of the Fly Ranch landscape, brought to life through LiDAR scanned point cloud. The film juxtaposes this futuristic representation with the author’s on-site documentation, capturing the essence of the region’s vibrant ecosystem, birds, rodents, and lush vegetation.
Fly Ranch Media
Fly Ranch & Sustainability
Burners Without Borders Summit
Climate Change Adaptation
LAGI, Fly Ranch, & sustainability
Solar Mountain article
Lodgers article
LAGI at Fly Ranch 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.
Vision, Mission, & Goals
The Fly team helps people get involved. We focus on programmatic effectiveness, cost-effectiveness in how we allocate our $480K annual budget, transparency and collaboration through an open-source approach, and public benefit. We are accountable to our stakeholders.
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
Tule Harvest at Fly Ranch
In 2022 Dean Barlese, Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe spiritual leader, took a walk at Fly Ranch and made plans to return to gather Tule. The experience led to a collaboration: “While there Dean noticed an abundance of tule, a culturally significant plant for the Paiutes, and asked for permission to return and harvest. Much of the habitat for tule has been eliminated or destroyed by agricultural runoff, wetland destruction, or grazing, making the bountiful and pollutant-free shorelines at Fly Ranch a treasure trove of tule, cattails, and rushes, all important to the Paiute people for various purposes.” The video below by @mistyyoungbear documents the harvest.
Community
We share content and discuss projects in our FB group.
Facebook Group
Follow Along
We post pictures on Instagram.
@fly_ranch
Field Notes
We periodically send out an informative newsletter.
Sign up
Gallery
Links and photos about projects, ecology, campouts, operations, plans, and ways to participate.
Portfolio
Credits
Steve Tietze (header image). Introductory section: Fly Ranch Critter Cam (Joe Childs), Lodgers, Hirmer, Don Clark, Christopher Breedlove, Will Roger, Lisa Schile-Beers, Android Jones, Nicole Rodney, Baba Yaga’s Book Club, Robert Hershler & Donald Sada, SEED. Fly Ranch team: Erika Wesnousky (Volunteer Coordinator), Joe Childs (Land Steward), Lisa Schile-Beers (Land Steward), Matt Sundquist (Director), Zac Cirivello (Operations Manager).