Wildlife Conservation Through Sustainable Ranching
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Saving America's Grasslands
Emerging science and proactive management strategies focus on protecting healthy cores, removing trees, and keeping rangelands green side up
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Conserving America's last remaining grasslands, like Nebraska's Sandhills, Wyoming's Central Basin or Kansas' Flint Hills, is a key focus of Working Lands for Wildlife (WLFW) efforts across the West. Reversing tree encroachment and intercepting trees from expanding into healthy rangelands through proactive, science-backed strategies are foundational to this work. Preventing further conversion of rangeland to crops or other development is another key tactic that keeps working lands in working hands and grasslands green side up so they can continue to provide for livestock, wildlife, recreation, and store carbon below ground where it belongs.
A new interview with WLFW science advisor Dirac Twidwell and a new storymap highlighting America's incredible grasslands help articulate why saving America's last grasslands is so important.
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Ask an Expert with Dirac Twidwell
Twidwell highlights recent research, best practices for tackling woody species, and more
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Few people know as much about the state of America's grasslands as Dirac Twidwell. His advocacy has helped usher in a new era for grassland management. His research has identified the largest remaining continuous grasslands in the United States and has outlined a ‘call to action’ to protect and preserve these invaluable biomes.
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| Conserving America's Last Grasslands
New storymap highlights America's last intact grassland regions and why they're critically important
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From steppes to velds, pampas to prairies, the world's grasslands are critical ecosystems that provide humans and wildlife with myriad services. But across the globe, and especially in North America, grasslands are threatened by woody species and land-use conversion. This new storymap from WLFW highlights grasslands and why we all need to act now to conserve them.
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Where Big Data Meets Cowboy Boots
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University of Montana's Vision magazine features the Rangeland Analysis Platform and the researcher behind it
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It's not hyperbole to say that the Rangeland Analysis Platform or RAP, first launched in 2018, is revolutionizing rangeland management. This powerful, free online mapping tool delivers useful and accurate data about vegetation cover, biomass, and rangeland production that cover the entire Lower 48 states. From ranchers looking to learn more about a specific pasture to researchers investigating rangeland trends to practitioners seeking where to target restoration treatments, RAP is a breakthrough technology that's improving rangeland science and management.
RAP was developed through a partnership with the University of Montana, and the university's Vision magazine recently featured RAP and Brady Allred, the rangeland ecologist who led its development, in the summer 2022 issue.
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USDA Under Secretary Robert Bonnie Delivers YNP 150th Anniversary Symposium Keynote
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Under Secretary Bonnie highlighted the role working lands play in conservation and announced a new NRCS-Wyoming partnership focused on conserving migratory big game habitat on working lands
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2022 marks the 150th Anniversary of Yellowstone National Park, one of the most iconic pieces of publicly owned land in the world.
USDA Under Secretary for Farm Production and Conservation, Robert Bonnie, used his keynote address celebrating the Park's anniversary to announce the Big Game Conservation Partnership between the USDA-NRCS and the State of Wyoming. Bonnie also highlighted how working lands conservation is critical to keeping parks, and the wildlife, humans, and ecosystem services that parks support, resilient and healthy in the face of myriad challenges.
The speech is packed with great lines, but one, in particular, stood out:
“Conservation is succeeding where conservation is being done with private landowners, not to them.” ~Robert Bonnie, USDA Under Secretary
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The Kansas Grazing Lands Coalition and Kansas NRCS produced this great, short video on how trees can affect prairie grasslands. The video features Doug Spencer, USDA-NRCS state grazing specialist for Kansas.
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National Public Radio produced this great story on how neighbors are teaming up to use prescribed fire in Nebraska's Loess Canyons to reclaim grasslands taken over by trees. By working together and with support from the NRCS and other groups, these local coalitions are restoring productive grasslands one prescribed fire at a time.
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In Wyoming, the state's first all-women conservation crew is kicking off a busy summer of work. Improving sage grouse habitat and tackling invasive weeds are just some of the projects this dedicated crew will be focusing on for the next few months.
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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is set to receive more than $9 million to support more than 40 projects in eight western states in the sagebrush biome, including three of the four major threats in the WLFW conservation framework: combating invasive annual grasses, reducing conifer encroachment, and riparian and wet meadow restoration.
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This great Capital Press story highlights targeted grazing - the use of grazing animals like goats, sheep, or cattle in a targeted, management-focused manner. From reducing invasive weeds to improving wildlife habitat, targeted grazing may have benefits for rangelands.
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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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