What Are Mesic Resources?

THESE PRECIOUS WET PLACES COVER JUST 2% OF WESTERN LANDSCAPES, YET 80% OF WILDLIFE RELY ON THEM AT SOME POINT IN THEIR LIFECYCLE

Mesic areas are the wet, green places where water meets land. This includes riparian areas along streams and rivers, wet meadows, springs and seeps, irrigated fields and high-elevation habitats. In these mesic areas, the soils have a well-balanced supply of moisture throughout the growing season, allowing plants to grow longer into the dry months.

In the arid American West, wet places cover less than 2% of the entire landscape. Since early settlers homesteaded along rivers and streams, the vast majority of precious mesic resources are located on private lands. In the dry Great Basin, for instance, 87% of wet meadows are on private land.

Natural mesic areas like riparian corridors, springs, and wet meadows are defined by water-loving vegetation. Examples of plants that prefer growing in wetter soils are sedges, rushes, willows, or cottonwoods. Some mesic areas have moving water (called lotic systems) while others have standing or underground water (called lentic systems).

Mesic habitats can also include high-elevation uplands along mountain tops that simply stay wetter and greener longer into the summer. Agricultural fields in sagebrush country may also be mesic areas when irrigation maintains wet soils to grow alfalfa and grass hay.

Often Overlooked

Premiering June 5th

NEW VIDEO SHOWS HOW WOODY PLANTS IMPACT GRASSLANDS 

We are excited to announce the upcoming premier of a new video from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology called Often Overlooked. WLFW partnered with Cornell, Pheasants Forever and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to create this six-minute video. It artfully highlights one of the most impactful drivers of ecological change in grasslands and sagebrush shrublands: woody plant encroachment. 

We're launching the video on June 5th in celebration of National Prairie Day. Check out our website to watch the video, learn from experts on woody plant encroachment, hear from the folks at Cornell who produced it, and from landowners restoring their grasslands after trees have moved in.

New WLFW Science to Solutions Seminar Series 

JOIN US MAY 28 FOR OUR FIRST SEMINAR FOCUSED ON CONIFER ENCROACHMENT IN WESTERN RANGELANDS

On May 28th, from 10:30-11:30 am MT, Western Working Lands for Wildlife is hosting the first seminar in our new online series, Science to Solutions: For Western Working Lands. 

This new series is designed to connect conservation practitioners, partners, and stakeholders with current science, tools, and strategies related to some of the most pressing challenges facing western working lands today. All seminars are free and open to anyone interested. Registration is capped at 500 people, so sign up today! Keep an eye out for our next seminar in July. 

Where There’s Width, There’s A Way (For Big Game To Move)

NEW WLFW-AFFILIATED RESEARCH CHARTS A PATH TO REDUCE IMPACTS OF RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT ON MIGRATORY BIG GAME

For the West’s big game – elk, mule deer, pronghorn, and moose – there are few threats as impactful as residential development in previously undeveloped landscapes. As housing spreads into typically open, working rangelands which support migrating big game and other sagebrush-associated wildlife, these species face not only the direct loss of habitat from the building footprint, but also the indirect loss of habitat by avoiding spaces surrounding development.

Without clear guidance on how much open space must be maintained between homes, new housing development, especially in rural areas, risks constraining animals into narrow bottlenecks, threatening to cut off movement and habitat use entirely.

New WLFW-supported research led by Jerod Merkle, WLFW’s Migratory Big Game science advisor and associate professor at the University of Wyoming, takes a novel approach to looking at how houses impact big game.

Broadly, they found that big game species were less likely to use narrow spaces between houses and more likely to move through as those spaces widened, with some exceptions in semi-urban contexts. However, they found that the specific distances at which animals shifted from avoiding to tolerating housing varied by species, study area, and whether individuals spent their time in rural or semi-urban areas.

To help put this new research into practice, the team translated the results into a publicly accessible tool (wildlifemovetools.org/width-calculator) where users can assess the configurations of housing development that maintains enough space for migratory big game to access habitats.

Bringing Back The Water

THE BOSH PROJECT IN IDAHO IS PUTTING PRECIOUS WATER BACK ON THE LANDSCAPE

This inspiring story from Pheasants Forever highlights one of the largest sagebrush restoration projects in the country: the Bruneau Owyhee Sage-grouse Habitat, or BOSH, project.

The BOSH project is a collaborative partnership between agencies, conservation groups, and landowners that is tackling juniper encroachment in sagebrush rangelands at an unprecedented scale. Through a combination of hand-cutting and prescribed fire, crews are restoring hundreds of thousands of acres of prime sagebrush habitat.

Check out the story to learn more about BOSH and how removing junipers puts precious water back onto this dry landscape.

Meet The American Burying Beetle

THIS POST FROM THE WLFW ARCHIVES GETS UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL WITH NORTH AMERICA'S LARGEST CARRION BEETLE

In the prairie twilight, a giant beetle with a red-orange head emerges from the ground. It flies over wide-open grasslands in search of a dead animal, preferably something the size of a quail.

Once the beetle finds a fresh carcass, it wrestles it back underground to its lair. Next it secretes an embalming fluid from its anus that preserves the dead animal so its babies can feed on it.

It sounds horrifying, but the American burying beetle provides an essential service: they clean up our landscape.

Learn more about this fascinating, and threatened species, and how grassland conservation efforts in Nebraska's Loess Canyons are boosting beetle populations.

Conserving Working Lands in the Sagebrush Sea

The Nature Conservancy recently completed two conservation easements protecting more than 3,700 acres in Box Elder County, Utah. Together with earlier projects, TNC has now secured nearly 14,000 acres within one of Utah’s most important sagebrush landscapes. While the NRCS wasn't involved in these easements, support from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service helped make them possible. 

Gunnison County Asks Residents To Help ‘Beat The Cheat’

Cheatgrass, an invasive annual grass, is the largest driver of ecological change in sagebrush country, according to the Sagebrush Conservation Design. This story details a creative community effort in Gunnison, Colorado that brings community members together to "beat the cheat." 

Record Low Snowpack Across Western U.S. Means Impending Water Shortages

Across most of the West, the 2025-2026 winter failed to launch. Record-low snowpacks and early melt-offs portend a dry summer. This makes mesic resources even more important for wildlife and livestock. Low-tech restoration practices like one-rock dams, beaver dam analogs, and post-assisted log structures can make a big difference for late-season vegetation. Learn more about WLFW's mesic restoration strategies on our website.

The Working Lands for Wildlife partnership supports the USDA-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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