Jerry Scheid

It is an honor to be a member of the board of ICL. Over the years I have been involved with several environmental organizations. I was a founding board member of the Greater Sawtooth Preservation Council and the Idaho Environmental Council. I also served on the boards of The Nature Conservancy in Idaho and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition.

I can sum up my feelings about conservation by quoting the words of Aldo Leopold in the forward to A Sand County Almanac: “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”

I was born in 1936 and grew up in the little town of Jerome. My father was in the sheep business and some of my boyhood memories are of helping to trail sheep from pasture to pasture in the fall when I was not in school, and standing on a hayrack and driving a team of horses while the sheepherders fed the hay. In the spring when school was out, I went with my father as we trailed the sheep to our summer range in Montana.

I graduated from New Mexico Military Institute high school and attended University of Colorado for two years until my father’s health problems made it necessary for me to return to the ranch. I later received an associate degree in Farm Business Management from Idaho State University.

In the early sixties, I took over the family ranching business, which now included a cow-calf and yearling steer operation. Over the years, I got out of the sheep business and went strictly to cattle. In 1991 I became a partner in a row-crop farming operation near Idaho Falls, and I retired in 2012.

My wife Carrie and I make our home in Idaho Falls.