Podcast: BOSH Project Restores Sagebrush Sea at Grand Scale
September 25, 2024Welcome Tanner Swank, Great Plains Grasslands Biome Manager
October 7, 2024From Bird to Biome: Keeping the Range Intact for Wildlife and People
Learn more about our shift from species-centric to biome-centric conservation.
A recipe for success: Wildlife conservation through sustainable ranching
Back in 2010 when the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service launched the Sage Grouse Initiative (SGI) — the inaugural effort of Working Lands for Wildlife — it focused private land conservation resources into sage grouse strongholds.
Research now confirms that SGI’s ongoing incentive-based conservation on private agricultural lands has yielded positive results for this iconic upland bird. Our paradigm of voluntary wildlife conservation through sustainable ranching also benefits more than 350 other sagebrush species, as well as hundreds of rural communities that depend on healthy rangelands.
Plus, the success of the SGI partnership helped stave off the need for listing sage grouse under the Endangered Species Act.
Our pivot toward biome-centric conservation
After 15 years of innovation, experimentation, and observation, we’ve also learned a lot about how to better target and deliver our collective conservation efforts.
We’ve helped create science-informed tools like the Rangeland Analysis Platform that show where intact, core landscapes are supporting people and wildlife, and where to tackle the biggest threats to those core landscapes.
Today, WLFW is incorporating these insights and tools to conserve the best parts of America’s sagebrush and grassland biomes rather than focusing on a single indicator species.
This biome-centric approach is helping us save millions of acres of fertile rangelands – along with communities, wildlife, plants, and the ranching way of life – from the Mississippi all the way to the Pacific.
Widening The Lens
As part of our shift to a biome-centric approach, NRCS-WLFW adopted two Frameworks for Conservation Action that drive our strategy in the America West. These frameworks identify the top threats in sagebrush country and the Great Plains grasslands that are driving the loss of these culturally important, and rapidly dwindling, biomes. They also establish a common vision and strategy to address them.
Our focus on maintaining a healthy biome has garnered tremendous support from agricultural producers, wildlife enthusiasts, and many other conservationists. That’s largely because we’ve all arrived at the same conclusion: wildlife and people are impacted by the same set of common threats.
Today, WLFW is using these Frameworks to inform NRCS’s locally led processes, align Farm Bill programs with identified grassland priorities, and bring significant technical and financial resources to the table.
“This is truly a paradigm shift. We’ve widened the lens from a single bird to an entire biome — and in the process, we’ve expanded our partnerships and supersized our outcomes. Instead of managing for individual species' needs, we’re now managing for fully functioning ecosystems that support hundreds of species.”
Defending Intact Cores
Safeguarding core habitat in grassland and sagebrush biomes prevents intact areas from falling prey to threats like invading conifers or subdivisions. It also provides beneficial ecosystem services like clean water, healthy soils, and carbon storage. This benefits many different plant and animal species and improves people’s quality of life.
It is far more efficient and effective to spend limited conservation funding defending intact core sagebrush areas instead of spending it where threats havre already degraded sagrebrush ecological integrity. This approach is a fundamental strategy for stemming annual losses and restoring sagebrush rangeland where threats may be present but are not severe.
Conifer Expansion
Invasive Grasses
Degraded Streams
Land-use Conversion
Tackling biome-wide threats is the best bet for all species
Combating common threats is essential for the survival of wildlife and the future of agricultural operations. Our Frameworks for Conservation Action in the grasslands and sagebrush biomes detail specific, effective strategies for local and regional partners working to reduce these threats.
Our intentional pivot toward conserving the biome certainly doesn’t mean that we’ve forgotten about our favorite upland birds! Quite the contrary. Focusing on the biome allows WLFW to be even more effective and bring even more birds — as well as mammals and fish and amphibians and reptiles — under our conservation tent.
Setting the landscape stage for all the actors
To better understand why we moved from “benefiting the bird” to “benefiting the biome”, try this analogy. Picture a play at your local community theater: actors move, interact and speak on the stage. Lights and music give the show texture while sets and props create a believable scene. Take away the lights, costumes and props, and the actors will panic. Take away the stage and the actors will leave — the show is over.
The stage -- intact, core sagebrush habitat -- is shrinking across the biome. Without healthy, resilient sagebrush rangelands, the actors -- wildlife and people -- won't be able to fulfill their roles.
Ensuring the biome's "actors" can fulfill their roles
In an ecosystem, the actors are the wildlife. The lights, set, and props are habitat components like water, soil, and plants. The stage is the biome itself. In terms of conservation, we need to first make sure the stage and its parts remain in place so that all of the actors can fulfill their roles.
WLFW’s Frameworks for Conservation Action serve as a roadmap for how to maintain the stage so the show can continue. This benefits all of the actors in the grassland and sagebrush biomes: wildlife species, rural communities, agricultural economies, recreation lovers, and local cultures.
The frameworks also inform WLFW’s various landscape initiatives, like the Sage Grouse Initiative and the Great Plains Grasslands Initiative. NRCS initiatives funnel federal dollars (above state’s typical Farm Bill conservation allocations) and needed human resources to conserve priority areas in each biome.
The funding boost from WLFW initiatives multiplies what can be achieved on the ground, helping communities scale up their efforts to maintain and grow productive rangelands at landscape scales. Plus, WLFW initiatives also provide additional science and technical resources that allow landowners and managers to prioritize where investments will have the greatest return.
Science shows biome conservation is efficient and effective
The benefits of prioritizing biome-wide conservation over focusing on individual species has also been backed up by science. In the Great Plains, researchers found that grassland bird species increased by 65% after prescribed fire. Fourteen years of landowner-led burns decreased encroaching woody species by up to 55%, restoring healthy native pastures for wildlife and livestock.
New research in the sagebrush biome shows that protecting intact landscapes also directly increases bird populations. Three different studies demonstrate how defending and growing core sagebrush areas boosted the abundance of ecosystem indicator species like sage grouse, sage thrashers, sagebrush sparrows, and Brewer’s sparrows.
Keeping trees from taking over grasslands is also good for big game like pronghorn. Many of the 40 herds of pronghorn in Wyoming have declined in productivity since 1984. Luckily, pronghorn herds grazing in places with fewer trees and more grasses fared better.
Along the U.S.-Canadian border in Montana, researchers found that conserving intact landscapes produced better outcomes for wildlife and was more efficient than centering efforts on a single species. The easements in Montana helped a host of imperiled species, including pronghorn, sage grouse, and grassland-nesting ducks.
"Instead of micromanaging fragmented habitats in hopes of maintaining landscape species, we're taking a more forward-looking and holistic approach and saying: ‘We need to proactively maintain the last remaining intact and connected pieces of these biomes to the largest extent practical.’”
While it’s still important to monitor individual wildlife populations as a barometer of ecosystem health, it’s critical to focus on maintaining the integrity and resiliency of the whole system. Parts of the biome like water quantity and quality, forage availability and landscape connectivity are of vital importance if we want wildlife and its people to thrive.
Montana
Wyoming
Oregon
Nebraska
Montana
In eastern Montana, beautiful, rolling ranchlands have been identified as core areas in both the sagebrush and grasslands Frameworks for Conservation Action. The main threat in this part of the West is converting rangelands into new cropland, which destroys native plants and disturbs healthy soils.
Using the Frameworks’ guidance, Montana NRCS is partnering with local land trusts and state agencies to enroll willing landowners in the Sage Grouse Initiative. These national NRCS easement programs to Montana landowners who agree to protect valuable ranches – and keep biomes intact – for future generations. Some of these easements also protected the longest-known migration corridor for sage grouse.
Wyoming
Wyoming’s Green River Basin shares a similar success story. Landowners here have protected 212 square-miles of core sagebrush rangelands in this spectacular landscape through conservation easements, funded in large part by NRCS through WLFW’s Sage Grouse Initiative. Wildlife and ranchers are thriving there, including five species of big game that rely on intact range to migrate.
Oregon
Strategic, large-scale conservation is also protecting the best parts of the sagebrush biome in Oregon’s Warner Mountains. In a decade-long effort, partners restored at-risk rangelands by removing encroaching conifer trees on more than 100,000 acres of public and private lands. This landscape level project allowed ranchers to maintain their businesses and livelihoods and boosted sage grouse population growth rates by 12%.
Nebraska
In Nebraska’s Loess Canyons, landowners have successfully reversed tree encroachment to save some of the last, best grasslands on earth. Local groups are leveraging funds and expertise from WLFW’s Great Plains grasslands to perform prescribed burns on hundreds of thousands of acres. These fires mimic natural processes to rejuvenate the biome, and also keep encroaching redcedars from taking over prime rangelands.
Healthy biomes benefit wildlife and ranchers alike
We’re losing more than two million acres each year of our valuable sagebrush and grassland biomes. We must work together to halt the loss of these biomes in order to maintain all they support. WLFW and our partners agree: now is the time to rally around strategically combatting the most pressing and widespread threats to America’s rangelands.
“Conserving these biomes is about a lot more than saving one bird. It’s about conserving our country,” Griffiths said. “It’s about making sure we have healthy and resilient working lands to grow our food and to provide habitat for all the critters that call these places their home — and to then pass these national treasures along to future generations.”
Our original SGI motto still rings true today: what’s good for the herd is good for the bird.
By zooming out from focusing on the bird to conserving the biome, we’re still doing what’s best for wildlife, communities, and ranchers alike: keeping the range intact for everyone to use and enjoy.
Introducing the Sagebrush Conservation Gateway
In 2022, a group of experts from across the sagebrush biome came together to publish the Sagebrush Conservation Design, which used new remote sensing technologies to map the entire sagebrush biome and categorize it into Core Sagebrush Areas, Growth Opportunity Areas, and Other Rangeland Areas.
It also evaluated the different threats facing the biome and showed that more than 90% of degradation across the biome stems from three main threats: invasive annual grasses, conifer encroachment, and land-use modification.
To best leverage the SCD's insights and map products, a diverse group partners came together to create an actionable path forward for sagebrush conservation. Their work has been published in a special issue of the Journal of Rangeland Ecology & Management, published in Oct. 2024.
The Sagebrush Conservation Gateway features all 20 peer-reviewed articles from the special issue, along with interviews and presentations from the researchers. Use this gateway to delve into the science of how, where and why conservationists are deploying the SCD to conserve the sagebrush biome.
