Wildlife Conservation Through Sustainable Ranching
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Defend the Core: From concept to practice
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Across the West, partners are taking the Defend the Core, Grow the Core, Mitigate Impacts strategy and applying it to the biggest threats facing productive rangelands: annual invasive grasses and woody species expansion
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From the sprawling sagebrush sea to the swaying prairies of the Great Plains, a new strategy aimed at protecting healthy, intact rangeland cores from threats like invasive annual grasses and woody species encroachment is taking root. Informed by new spatial technology, "Defend the Core, Grow the Core, Mitigate Impacts" flips the script on rangeland management by focusing on defending intact cores through proactive, preventative measures instead of reactive and cost-intensive efforts that simply don't produce the large-scale results needed to perpetuate resilient and productive rangelands.
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Fighting invaders in sagebrush country
Learn how "Defend the Core" is helping address the threat of invasive annual grasses across the sagebrush sea
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Invasive annual grasses are one of the biggest threats facing sagebrush rangelands. But more than 70 percent of sagebrush country is still healthy and productive. Keeping those lands from being infested by invasive annual grasses is critical. The Defend the Core, Grow the Core, Mitigate Impacts approach promoted by Working Lands for Wildlife is playing a key role in new efforts and partnerships aimed at addressing this threat.
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| Halting woody spread in the Great Plains
Learn how "Defend the Core" is helping address the threat of woody encroachment into grasslands
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Across the Great Plains, woody species are turning productive grasslands into woodlands that suck up water, reduce forage productivity, and degrade wildlife habitat. New strategies that take a Defend the Core, Grow the Core, Mitigate Impacts approach to preserving intact grasslands are showing how proactive management can not only prevent grasslands from transitioning to woodlands, it can also expand healthy grasslands.
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Sneak peek: Upcoming issue of Rangelands focuses on invasive annual grasses
"Changing with the range: Striving for ecosystem resilience in the age of invasive annual grasses” dives into one of the biggest threats facing the West's rangelands
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The journal, Rangelands, is focusing its upcoming spring issue on invasive annual grasses. We're highlighting two papers from the issue that detail how the "Defend the Core" strategy of proactive management is addressing invasive annual grasses in sagebrush rangelands.The issue is sponsored by the High Desert Partnership.
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Expanding on Defend the Core Strategy
New paper provides more detail on how a Defend the Core strategy is being applied to invasive annual grasses in sagebrush rangelands
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An upcoming paper expands on the Defend the Core strategy, highlighting how a vulnerability-based approach coupled with spatial technology can inform a proactive management that defends intact rangeland cores from invasive annual grasses.
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SageCon's Invasive Initiative
New paper details initiative to tackle invasive annual grasses across Oregon
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The SageCon Partnership launched a new Invasives Initiative in Oregon aimed at protecting intact rangeland cores from invasive annual grasses. This spatially explicit strategy provides a framework and maps for addressing annual grasses across multiple land ownership boundaries in Oregon.
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Grasslands are one of the most important, and imperiled, ecosystems on Earth. This story from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service highlights the critical role that ranchers, and sustainable ranching, play in perpetuating healthy, resilient, and productive grasslands here in the U.S.
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USDA recently announced a new initiative to expand markets by investing $1 billion in partnerships to support America’s climate-smart farmers, ranchers and forest landowners. The new Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities opportunity will finance pilot projects that create market opportunities for U.S. agricultural and forestry products that use climate-smart practices and include innovative, cost-effective ways to measure and verify greenhouse gas benefits.
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This great story from Western Confluence highlights a great partnership between the Institute for Applied Ecology and the BLM where inmates from several western states (NV, ID, CA, OR, WY) grow sagebrush seedlings for restoration projects across the sagebrush sea.
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When the Bootleg Fire burned through Oregon's Upper Klamath Basin in 2021, it left behind a charred landscape. But biologists noticed one area that wasn't affected by the fire...a beaver dam complex. Even cooler, the complex didn't just provide refuge during (and after) the fire, it helped clean up downstream water by trapping fire-caused debris, helping fish and other wildlife.
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A new storymap, produced by Oregon NRCS, tells the story of the decade long conifer removal effort in Oregon's Warner Mountains. In partnership with producers, the BLM, and university researchers, WLFW removed encroaching conifers and studied how sage grouse responded (a control area where no trees were removed was also part of the study). Check out the storymap to learn about the project and the results. Spoiler: sage grouse moved back in to the restored areas and populations grew!
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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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