Wildlife Conservation Through Sustainable Ranching
|
|
|
Southwest Montana Sagebrush Partnership
Creative collaborative effort improves rangeland resilience, employs local youth, and boosts rural economy.
|
In southwest Montana, the multi-generational family ranches are breathtaking, full of cowboys, and critters galore. The sprawling sagebrush valleys near Yellowstone National Park are some of the few places left in our country “where buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play.”
Yet this iconic range in southwest Montana is threatened by the same suite of problems that afflict much of the grazing land in the American West: invasive weeds, encroaching trees, eroding streams, and increasing pressure to carve up and develop working ranches.
One of the best ways to tackle these threats and keep ranches productive is through cooperative, voluntary conservation practices — better yet, ones that create jobs in the local community. Southwest Montana is setting a perfect example for how to keep working land healthy while also fueling its rural economies.
The Southwest Montana Sagebrush Partnership (SMSP) was formed in 2018 by ranchers, business owners, federal and state agencies, local conservation districts, and non-profit organizations looking to improve range health for people and wildlife. In just four years, the SMSP has leveraged more than $1.8 million to:
- Conserve 48,000 acres with easements to maintain working ranches
- Restore 8 miles of streams and wet meadows
- Modify 50 miles of fencing to benefit migrating wildlife
-
Remove encroaching conifers from 23,000 acres to preserve biodiversity and boost livestock forage
The most exciting part of SMSP is that it’s also creating jobs through conservation. This includes new start-up businesses focused on selling wood products, contractors doing year-round restoration work, and dozens of local youth employed in resource management.
|
|
|
The last continuous grasslands on Earth
New research, led by WLFW science advisor Dirac Twidwell, ranks the largest intact grasslands on the planet.
|
Newly released research by Rheinhardt Scholtz and Dirac Twidwell found that
two of largest grassland regions on Earth are found in the United States.
The Sandhills of Nebraska ranked as the most intact grassland remaining of the world’s temperate and tropical grasslands at 80 percent intact, and the sagebrush steppe in Wyoming’s Central Basin ranked as the third-most intact arid grassland-shrub steppes at 71 percent intact.
|
| The world's most intact prairie
University of Nebraska highlights WLFW-affiliated finding that Nebraska's Sandhills are largest intact prairie on Earth.
|
"Protecting signature species from extinction. Maintaining the quality of air and aquifers. Mitigating wildfires and floods. Preserving cultures and livelihoods that echo across generations."
These are just some of the reasons conserving the world's last remaining grasslands is so critical, according to this informative story highlighting Nebraska's Sandhills region as the largest intact temperate grassland on the planet.
|
|
|
Browning Family Conserves Grasslands for Livestock and Wildlife
|
Kansas ranching family gets support from NRCS's Great Plains Grasslands Initiative
|
Last year, the Brownings became the first producers to sign up for the Kansas Great Plains Grassland Initiative, part of the NRCS' Working Lands for Wildlife's efforts to protect and conserve Great Plains grasslands. From technical assistance to helping with prescribed burns, the Brownings and the NRCS are keeping their ranch tree-free, benefiting their operation and wildlife, like the 60-plus prairie chickens that live on their ranch.
|
|
|
Find more news and resources at SageGrouseInitiative.com
|
|
|
In Kansas, Max and Eleween Good were the first landowners to voluntarily participate in the NRCS's Wetland Restoration Program - back in 1994. Today, their land is a thriving oasis for wildlife, especially for birds, and proof that "if you build it, they will come."
|
Colorado's Gunnison County is getting proactive about battling invasive annual grasses, like cheatgrass, in order to get ahead of this major threat to rangeland health.
|
It's not a coincidence that Nebraska's Sandhills represent the largest intact prairie in the world; landowners in the region have long valued this grassland ecosystem and the wildlife that live here. When asked if they would delay grass harvesting to benefit grassland birds, even if it meant reducing the quality of the harvest, more than 60 percent of Sandhill landowners said yes, and ranchers were even more willing to delay harvests until after grassland-bird breeding season finished.
|
Proactive not reactive. That's the approach taking root in Idaho as landowners, land managers, and state and federal agencies team up to battle cheatgrass by focusing on defending healthy cores from this unwanted invader.
|
|
|
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.
|
|
|
Manage your preferences | Opt Out using TrueRemove™
Got this as a forward? Sign up to receive our future emails.
View this email online.
|
info@sagegrouseinitiative.com
|
|
|
|
|
