Wildlife Conservation Through Sustainable Ranching
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Holding the Line: Defending Wyoming’s Sagebrush Cores from Cheatgrass
A CONSERVATION SUCCESS STORY FROM SUBLETTE COUNTY
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After a long hard winter, the south-facing slope above Boulder Lake in Sublette County, Wyoming is lush. Needle and thread grass sways thigh-high and big bunches of arrowleaf balsamroot bloom in punches of yellow. Intermixed among the many large rocks are a host of other wildflowers and grasses.
Notably absent among these native species, is cheatgrass. This lack of cheatgrass is no lucky accident. It is the result of Sublette County’s proactive treatment program—one of the first success stories in treating cheatgrass at a landscape scale.
The road to this point hasn’t been easy, but as Julie Kraft, Sublette County’s Weed & Pest Supervisor, looks across the slopes of Boulder Lake today, her eyes brighten. “When we see results like this, along the scale of thousands of acres, it’s like, man, I’m glad that we didn’t give up.”
When Kraft first moved to Sublette County in 2010 to join the County’s Weed & Pest team, she wasn’t thinking about cheatgrass. But in one of her first meetings with the local sage grouse working group, the question was raised—did Sublette County have cheatgrass? And, if it did, what was Weed & Pest going to do about it?
In short order, Kraft teamed up with folks from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, USDA-NRCS, and others, and they got to work.
First, the group of resource managers invited anyone from the community who had information on cheatgrass, or who were simply interested in learning more, to an open house.
Today, nearly a decade after that first open house and years after they started treating cheatgrass along roadsides and south-facing slopes, the team has treated nearly every known area of cheatgrass in Sublette County – over 97,000 acres. Despite numerous challenges and setbacks, Kraft and her team of partners have worked across private and public land boundaries to successfully defend their valuable, intact sagebrush rangelands from further cheatgrass invasion.
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Who Fits Under the Sage Grouse Umbrella?
NEW SCIENCE SHOWS SAGEBRUSH SONGBIRDS BENEFIT FROM SAGE GROUSE CONSERVATION
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WLFW-affiliated researcher Elise Zarri studied how songbird populations responded to conifer management targeted at sage grouse.
Her research showed that non-target species that rely on sagebrush habitat experienced population increases following conifer removal, demonstrating that sage grouse conservation can benefit other species whose habitat closely overlaps with sage grouse.
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| Woody Species Impacting WY Pronghorn
RESEARCH DEMONSTRATES IMPACTS OF WOODY SPECIES EXPANSION ON ICONIC SPECIES
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New research from Wyoming looked at how different environmental changes are impacting pronghorn productivity in 40 herds across Wyoming.
The research showed that pronghorn populations are declining where conifer trees are encroaching onto sagebrush rangelands. As conifers move in, they displace native grasses and forbs that pronghorn eat, which can have impacts on the iconic species' productivity.
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Landscape Explorer Featured in Newspapers Across Montana
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WLFW'S LATEST ONLINE MAPPING APPLICATION FEATURED IN THE BILLINGS GAZETTE, THE MISSOULIAN, AND THE BOZEMAN DAILY CHRONICLE
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Working Lands for Wildlife's latest online mapping application, Landscape Explorer, which seamlessly pairs historic aerial imagery with modern aerial imagery to show how western landscapes have changed over the past 70 years, received some great coverage in several of Montana's largest papers in late March and early April.
The coverage highlights a Montana-specific version of the application that includes a layer showing conifer encroachment across the state. Landscape Explorer grew from a Montana-based research effort led by Scott Morford from the University of Montana that used historic aerial imagery collected by the Army during the Cold War to estimate conifer encroachment across Montana's rangelands.
Most current conifer encroachment analyses use satellite-based, remote-sensing tools like the Rangelands Analysis Platform. While these tools are accurate and easy to use, they only go back to the late 1980s. By using historic aerial imagery, Landscape Explorer-Montana provides an additional 30-40 years of conifer encroachment data.
After successfully pairing the historical and modern imagery in Montana, Morford expanded the concept across the West and ultimately created the Landscape Explorer application.
⇓ Read the different articles by clicking on the buttons below. ⇓
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Where Trees are the Problem - North American Grouse Partnership
STORY DETAILS WHY TREES ARE SUCH A PROBLEM AND WHAT GROUPS LIKE WLFW ARE DOING ABOUT THEM
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This story from the Fall 2023 Grouse Partnership News magazine provides a great overview of why expanding trees are a major problem for sagebrush shrublands and prairie grasslands.
If you've been looking for a high-level explanation of why encroaching trees are trouble and how groups like WLFW are fighting back, this story delivers.
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| 'Green Glacier' Burying Prairies, Threatening Ranchers and Wildlife
KANSAS NPR PODCAST TAKES A DEEP DIVE INTO WOODY SPECIES EXPANSION AND HOW THE NRCS IS HELPING LANDOWNERS
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This in-depth story from Kansas NPR's "Up From Dust" podcast does a fantastic job of digging into the real-world impacts of encroaching trees in Kansas.
It features a Flint Hill ranching family and what they're doing to fight back against the "Green Glacier" invading their rangeland. It also details the Kansas Great Plains Grassland Initiative, launched by Kansas NRCS, and includes loads of great quotes from Dirac Twidwell, WLFW Great Plains grasslands science advisor.
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To Protect Two Declining Western Birds, Scientists Seek a Tricky Balance
AUDUBON MAGAZINE STORY LOOKS AT EFFORTS TO SAVE PINYON JAY AND SAGE GROUSE
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Sage grouse and pinyon jays both live in the West. Sage grouse require large, tree-free sagebrush rangelands, while pinyon jays require healthy mixed-age stands of pinyon pine trees.
Cutting pinyon and other trees helps sage grouse, but may have negative impacts on pinyon jays.
This article from Audubon highlights new research and collaboration that is proving pivotal to finding a balance between helping jays and helping sage grouse.
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| Mapping Riverscapes to Support Productive and Resilient Working Lands
JOIN THIS CEAP CONSERVATION WEBINAR ON MAY 2 @ 2 PM ET.
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Healthy riverscapes, with connected floodplains and rich riparian wetlands, are critical pieces of natural infrastructure that reduce the risk of floods, drought, and wildfire, and increase the resiliency of water resources, working lands, and rural economies. Managing rivers and streams as systems that include riparian wetlands helps maximize these benefits.
Dr. Joseph Wheaton with Utah State University’s Department of Watershed Sciences and Jeremy Maestas, a Sagebrush Ecosystems Specialist with the NRCS Western National Technical Support Center, will share new findings on effectively targeting wetland restorations in the riverscapes of the intermountain West.
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This "Fridays on the Farm" story highlights the Bones Family, fourth-generation farmers in South Dakota. The Bones family has been ardent users of FSA’s Conservation Reserve Program over the years. Practices on those acres included new windbreaks and shelterbelts, buffer strips, wetland restoration, and rare and declining habitat for pollinators and songbirds. These practices help protect water quality, soil quality, air quality and provide habitat for wildlife to flourish alongside working lands.
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What is a fire culture? How do people successfully live with wildland fire, and incorporate it into their land management and community well-being? Interviews with over 50 ranchers and others living in the Flint Hills region of Kansas have been crafted into a new 26-minute video from the Great Plains Fire Science Exchange.
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During their recent spring meeting, the Boone and Crockett Club presented Robert Bonnie, USDA Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation, with its Conservation and Stewardship Award. The Club’s most prestigious award for conservation partners, the Conservation and Stewardship Award is given annually to the organization or individual that best exemplifies excellence in natural resource conservation and stewardship—core values of the Boone and Crockett Club and its founder, Theodore Roosevelt.
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Just west of Albuquerque, New Mexico, lies what many describe as an enchanting landscape of mesas, foothills and mountains. Spanning four counties of this vast western landscape is the 500,000-acre territory of the Pueblo of Laguna - a federally recognized Native American people.
Over the years, members of the Bell Rock Livestock Association, alongside the NRCS, have implemented significant conservation practices and enhancements across the landscape. Utilizing Inflation Reduction Act funds through CSP, the association will incorporate forage sampling throughout its vast livestock working lands.
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PLJV is seeking a dynamic leader with the drive and entrepreneurial spirit to develop collaborative conservation programs that advance the PLJV partnership. PLJV is a regional partnership of federal and state wildlife agencies, conservation groups and private industry dedicated to conserving bird habitat throughout portions of Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas. Click the link above to learn more and apply. Deadline: May 10, 2024.
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The USDA is investing up to $22 million in partnerships that expand access to conservation technical assistance for livestock producers and increase the use of conservation practices on grazing lands. The NRCS is accepting proposals through its Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative (GLCI) until Sunday, May 26, 2024.
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The USDA recently announced $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2024 to invest in partner-driven conservation and climate solutions through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program as part of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda. The USDA is accepting project proposals now through July 2, 2024 that will help farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners adopt and expand conservation strategies to enhance natural resources while tackling the climate crisis. These projects in turn can save farmers money, create new revenue streams, and increase productivity.
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The NRCS recently added Fiscal Year 2024 data as of April 1, 2024, to its Data Visualization Tool. The tool shows state-by-state investments for the Farm Bill and Inflation Reduction Act.
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Working Lands for Wildlife is the Natural Resources Conservation Service's premier approach for conserving America's working lands to benefit people, wildlife, and rural communities. In the West, WLFW is guided by two, action-based frameworks for conservation. The framework approach is designed to increase conservation and restoration of rangelands by addressing major threats to rangeland health and through the implementation of conservation measures that limit soil disturbance, support sustainable grazing management, promote the strategic use of prescribed fire, and support native grassland species. Together, the frameworks leverage the power of voluntary, win-win conservation solutions to benefit people and wildlife from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.
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