Wildlife Conservation Through Sustainable Ranching
|
|
|
New Year, New Connections, New Opportunities
2022 promises to be a big year for Western Working Lands for Wildlife efforts
|
If you’ve followed the Sage Grouse Initiative (SGI), the Lesser Prairie-Chicken Initiative (LPCI), or Working Lands for Wildlife (WLFW) over the past decade, you’ve doubtless heard the following phrases: Win-win solutions. Voluntary conservation. Incentive-based action.
You’ve probably also heard that our work is science-driven, partnership-based, and proactive. These aren’t just taglines; they are the very foundation of our work across the country and especially in the West where America’s iconic rangelands support ranchers and rural communities, provide wildlife habitat, and store carbon.
WLFW bridges wildlife conservation with the people who are supported by these landscapes. As 2021 recedes and we march into 2022, we’re doubling down on our proven approach to conserving the West’s working rangelands for people and wildlife.
In April 2021, we released two Frameworks for Conservation Action, one for the sagebrush biome and one for the Great Plains grasslands biome, two of the most imperiled and important ecosystem types in North America. These frameworks serve as the NRCS’s continuing contribution to voluntary conservation of western rangelands with the people who live and work in these biomes. The new frameworks were built on past achievements of SGI and LPCI and provide a collective approach to target the most severe and large-scale threats causing biome-level impacts. Each framework also serves as NRCS’ ongoing contributions to efforts like the Sagebrush Conservation Strategy administered by the Western Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies and the collaboratively developed Central Grasslands Roadmap.
These frameworks provide a common vision and coordination to address resource concerns and ecosystem threats across state boundaries, along with new scientific tools that provide unprecedented opportunities to develop strategic approaches to combat these issues, especially when combined with on-the-ground landowner and rancher expertise.
While sagebrush country and the grasslands of the Great Plains may look different to the casual observer, they share a striking number of similarities. Two of the biggest threats facing each biome are the same: loss of native habitat to woody species expansion and to land-use conversion. Both are imperiled landscapes, yet both contain some of the most intact and resilient examples of rangelands in the world. And both are rooted in long-standing and hard-working ranching cultures.
These similarities drive our updated conservation approach in both landscapes as articulated in the frameworks. No longer are we focusing solely on a focal wildlife species, even though wildlife conservation still undergirds all our work. Our updated approach focuses on the health and resiliency of these entire biomes by expanding our partnerships and efforts to proactively address threats while ensuring that both wildlife and people benefit from our conservation investments. Between the Great Plains and sagebrush country, we have committed to reducing threats on more than 10 million acres of working rangelands.
|
|
|
Nebraska Ranchers Use Fire to Reclaim Grazing Lands
|
Neighbors team up to restore 85,000 acres of grazing lands lost to eastern redcedar encroachment
|
The rapid invasion of eastern redcedar across America’s Great Plains grasslands spells bad news for producers like Scott Stout (pictured above), who runs cattle on N-N Ranch with his family. These drought-tolerant, fast-spreading trees replace native grasses, which means less food for livestock and less revenue for ranchers. Nebraska ranchers lost 530,000 tons of forage in 2020 to trees, according to new data produced by the science team at USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Working Lands for Wildlife (WLFW).
In 2008, the Stouts started burning their ranch to reclaim productive grasslands lost to the encroaching cedars. “Cows hate cedar trees. So do the grasses they eat,” explains Stout. “Fire was by far the most cost-effective way to restore our grazing lands.”
Today, Stout is the president of the Loess Canyons Rangeland Alliance, a landowner-led group with 80-plus members who team up to shore equipment, labor, and expertise and conduct prescribed burns across property lines. Since 2008, the group has burned more than 85,000 acres of rangeland, restoring productive grasslands for cattle and wildlife.
|
|
|
New Research: Large-scale Fire Management Restores Grassland Bird Richness
In Nebraska’s Loess Canyons, prescribed fire boosts grassland bird diversity
|
New research from the University of Nebraska, funded by the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, demonstrates how prescribed fire treatments have not only restored productivity on privately owned rangelands but also increased the number of grassland bird species found across most of this Loess Canyons ecoregion.
The team found that the number of grassland bird species increased across 65 percent (~222,000 acres) of the Loess Canyons, and woody plant cover decreased up to 55 percent across 25 percent of all fire-treated areas.
This is the first study showing how strategic, long-term human management at the ecoregion scale can reverse the impacts that woody species have on grasslands and on the richness of bird species that depend on intact, resilient, and tree-free grasslands.
|
|
|
Want More WLFW News? Follow Us on Social Media!
|
Working Lands for Wildlife launches new Facebook and Twitter channels
|
Working Lands for Wildlife, the USDA-NRCS’s premier approach to wildlife conservation on private lands, focuses on win-win solutions and voluntary, incentive-based conservation. By doing so, WLFW produces results for forward-thinking producers, forest owners, ranchers, and landowners — all of whom understand that healthy wildlife habitat and productive agricultural operations can, and should, co-exist on the same piece of ground.
To learn more about all WLFW’s work, follow WLFW’s engaging and informative communications for details about conservation priorities in your area and how locally led programs are benefiting working lands, landowners, and wildlife.
|
|
|
Find more news and resources at SageGrouseInitiative.com
|
|
|
Want to learn more about why restoring wet meadows is so important and how to build wet-meadow restoration structures like one-rock dams, Zeedyk structures, and Zuni Bowls? Check out this series of short videos from our friends at the Wyoming Fish and Game Department.
|
WLFW-affiliated researcher Caleb Roberts’ research showing an increase in bird species richness is highlighted in the USGS’s January 2022 bulletin.
|
The USDA has expanded conservation program opportunities to help producers implement climate-smart agriculture. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program’s (EQIP) Conservation Incentive Contract has been expanded nationally with a focus on state-identified priority areas and the Conservation Stewardship Program no longer has a two-year ineligibility window for producers who didn’t, or couldn’t due to limited funding, re-enroll their CSP acreage the year their contract expired.
|
A new video from the Intermountain West Joint Venture highlights a fresh, flexible, outcome-based approach to grazing lands management on BLM lands that benefits rangelands and producers.
|
|
|
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
|
| |
|
|
