Wildlife Conservation Through Sustainable Ranching
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Montana Sheep Grower Explores Value-Added Options for Livestock
WHEN IT COMES TO LAMBS, WOOL, AND CONSERVATION, BEN LEHFELDT IS MODELING INNOVATION WELL BEYOND THE BORDERS OF HIS OWN RANCH
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In the wide-open rangelands of eastern Montana, Ben Lehfeldt shepherds thousands of sheep over hill and dale near the Musselshell River. As a fifth-generation rancher, his herds are reminiscent of centuries past.
Lehfeldt’s great-great-grandpa first settled these rolling grasslands in 1885 at the beginning of Montana’s sheep boom. By the turn of the 20th century, Montana was the nation’s top sheep-growing and wool-producing state, with six million sheep roaming the range. According to the American Sheep Industry, 180,000 sheep and lambs were raised in Montana in 2024, ranking it 8th for sheep-growing in the nation.
“When we’re talking about rangeland health, sheep can bring diversity to the grazing plan because they graze different plants from cattle,” noted Tom Watson, state conservationist for Montana NRCS. “They can also help to manage invasive species like leafy spurge.”
Lehfeldt raises both sheep and cattle on their deeded and leased rangelands. Sheep yield annual profits from selling their wool or by leasing them out to graze weeds, he pointed out. They also tolerate Montana’s cold winters well and tend to cost less than cattle to raise. And when cattle prices drop, selling lamb and wool products can help make up the difference.
One innovative income stream Lehfeldt taps into is using his herds to get rid of noxious weeds. “In terms of managing weeds, sheep can be very specific. We try to time it just right so the sheep eat mostly the weeds, not the grass.”
In exchange for keeping weeds under control on public or private land during the summer, Lehfeldt is able to keep his sheep on those parcels into the fall for free or reduced lease rates.
This year, he’s experimenting with virtual fencing on his cattle, which he thinks might be more cost-effective than rebuilding old fences as well as better for range health.
Lehfeldt is interested in using virtual fencing for his sheep, too, in order to maximize their weed-eating powers. “We could map areas that have noxious weeds, create a virtual fence around those areas, and the sheep would be guided by their collars to those areas,” he explained. “You could switch the area the next week or even the next day to get the most out of the sheep.”
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Livestock Grazing Makes More Habitat for Native Bees
RANGELAND POLLINATORS ARE MORE ABUNDANT IN GRAZED PASTURES THAN UNGRAZED
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This Farmers.gov post features recent WLFW-supported research from Hayes Goosey, an entomologist with Bozeman State University.
Goosey's research showed that ground-nesting bees are more abundant in pastures that have been grazed versus ungrazed pastures. These critical pollinators rely on bare ground to nest and brood their young and grazing helps provide this key habitat feature.
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| Learn About Low-Tech Restoration Practices
NEW FACT SHEETS FROM THE INTERMOUNTAIN WEST JOINT VENTURE HELP NEWBIES (AND EXPERTS) ALIKE
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As low-tech methods to restore healthy streams and meadows are implemented across the West, more and more people are becoming aware of these approaches.
Thanks to our friends at the IWJV, there's now a fact sheet in online and print versions to help low-tech newbies learn the basics of these practices. Check out the resources today and get up to speed on this powerful restoration practice.
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Playa Lakes Joint Venture: Communicating Effectively About
Woody Plant Encroachment
NEW RESOURCE DELIVERS PRACTICAL, SCIENCE-BASED TIPS
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This guide offers communication strategies based on social science results to help conservation delivery staff communicate more effectively with producers.
This guide is part of a larger project, funded by a USDA-NRCS Conservation Innovation Grant, that integrated social science and communications to drive earlier and more effective invasive woody plant removal practices in Kansas and Oklahoma. The goal was to understand producers’ attitudes regarding invasive woody plant management to inform better and support grassland conservation and to create communications messages, products, and tools that increase earlier and more effective woody plant removal.
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| USDA Announces Department-wide Effort to Support Terrestrial Wildlife Habitat Connectivity
NEW EFFORT WILL WORK ACROSS USDA AGENCIES, INCLUDING NRCS, TO BENEFIT WILDLIFE
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The USDA recently announced a Department-wide effort to support connectivity of wildlife habitat on working landscapes through the management of National Forests and voluntary conservation assistance on private agricultural lands.
The effort is designed to improve terrestrial wildlife habitat connectivity and corridors in a way that recognizes and leverages state and Tribal authorities, capitalizes on public land management and respects private property rights through voluntary, locally-led conservation.
Through WLFW's Migratory Big Game Conservation Initiative, the NRCS is already working with private landowners to improve habitat connectivity. Working across public and private boundaries will add more benefits for wildlife and landowners.
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Featured Video: Awareness to Action - Producers from the Great Plains Share Their Thoughts on Battling Encroaching Woody Plants
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THIS MONTH'S THROWBACK VIDEO FEATURES PRODUCERS FROM ACROSS THE GREAT PLAINS WHO HAVE PARTNERED WITH THE NRCS TO ADDRESS ENCROACHING TREES THAT ARE TAKING OVER PRODUCTIVE RANGELANDS
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For the last few years, producers across the Great Plains have been working with the NRCS through the state-led Great Plains Grasslands Initiatives to battle encroaching trees that reduce forage production, displace native vegetation, suck up water, and harm wildlife.
This video collects their thoughts about the threat of woody encroachment and how WLFW-supported science and partnerships with the NRCS are giving them hope for the future of their rangelands.
If you're inspired by their thoughts or want to learn more about woody encroachment and how producers in the Plains view this threat, see the story above for a link to a new report produced by the Playa Lakes Joint Venture on effectively communicating about woody plant encroachment.
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Join Pheasants Forever/Quail Forever and Eastern Working Lands for Wildlife staff for the next installment of their Bobwhite Quail Webinar Series. This webinar will focus on Bobwhite in Pasture Systems and will be lead by Tanner Patton from Quail Forever. These webinars are held the second Thursday of each month at 12:30 ET. Learn more about the series and access past webinars here. Register for the upcoming December 12th webinar here or via the link above in the title.
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This excellent interview with Andrew Olsen from the Intermountain West Joint Venture and Brian Mealor with the University of Wyoming's Institute for Managing Annual Grasses Invading Natural Ecosystems dives into how to best get technical and science information into the hands of on-the-ground practitioners and decision makers, so it can inform conservation and policy. Olsen and Mealor are two of the authors of a paper featured in the recently published special issue of Rangeland Ecology & Management about this topic. The storymap-style interview provides a wealth of practical tips for this type of knowledge transfer.
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Learn more about the Bureau of Land Management's "Outcome-Based Grazing" and how it empowers producers and local BLM staff to implement adaptive grazing management techniques that reflect changing weather, forage, and other conditions in this great six-part video series put out by the Intermountain West Joint Venture.
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This informative post from the U.S. Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station features Forest Service-affiliated articles from the recently published special issue of Rangeland Ecology & Management devoted to the latest sagebrush science.
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This latest video from South Dakota's Our Amazing Grasslands film partnership highlights how beaver reintroduction is helping revitalize riparian revegetation in degraded waterways in South Dakota. Beavers actually help trees grow by damning creeks which slows down water and allows it to percolate into the ground where vegetation can access it later in the year after snowmelt has run off. By installing human-made "beaver dam analogs," producers and practitioners can jump start natural processes that create a cycle of restoration, eventually allowing beavers to recolonize and fully restore historic hydrological function.
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The USDA recently announced it has dedicated $83 million for conservation projects across South Dakota. The biggest award is $24 million to Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever. Their project will fight the encroachment of eastern redcedar on grasslands by using prescribed fire to target the trees and by planting prairie grasses. The effort includes prescribed fire on 50,000 acres and other efforts to help landowners fight eastern redcedar encroachment on another 75,000 acres. This is great news for this landscape and for the wildlife and producers that rely on healthy, tree-free grasslands.
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WLFW loves celebrating good wildlife news, even if we weren't directly involved in a particular project. Case in point: Idaho's first wildlife overpass, built for animals to be able to safely cross a major highway, recently won a national award. Highway overpasses make it safe for both motorists and wildlife, adding permeability to barriers that make it difficult for migrating (and resident) wildlife to move across the landscape. While WLFW's Migratory Big Game Initiative focuses on making fencing more friendly to wildlife, news like this is worth sharing, and celebrating!
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Arthur Middleton, a professor and researcher at the University of California, Berkely and a science advisor to the USDA-NRCS Migratory Big Game Initiative, penned this opinion piece about the fragmentation of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, driven in part by the popularity of the Yellowstone TV series. Through the Migratory Big Game Initiative, WLFW is working with landowners in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, and now Colorado, to improve fences and help protect agricultural lands through conservation easements, some of the solutions Middleton points to in his essay.
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Join ENVU and other partners for part two of their invasive annual grass webinar series. This webinar will share real-world lessons learned from large-scale restoration projects including topics like: the importance of partnerships, developing shared goals, project site selection, acquiring funding, and communicating success to funders and beyond. This is the second session of the series. Follow the registration link above to access session one and to register for session two.
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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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