Enhancing Prairies and Ranches

Some years ago I concluded that those of us who are interested in the natural world would have to work with ranchers if we wanted to conserve biodiversity in the West. Today I am convinced that many ranchers serve a public purpose and provide a public economic benefit that is coincident to their basic work. This benefit is the management of land in a manner that helps to ensure the conservation of the West’s biodiversity. – Bill Weeks of The Nature Conservancy, in Ranching West of the 100th Meridian: Culture, Ecology, and Economics. Edited by Richard Knight, Wendell Gilgert and Ed Marston.

Montana has recently been proclaimed a “last best place” for prairie conservation: both The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund have pinpointed this region as critical for the future of northern prairie wildlife. Land is changing ownership, and large ranches are being transformed into wildlife reserves. National media have portrayed the situation as ranchers versus environmentalists, a war over the future of the plains. Which is more important, culture or conservation, and who makes that decision?

Photo © Kathe Lesage

With many people eyeing this area as choice range, Montana ranchers now have an unprecedented range of choices about how the future could look here. We are blessed with key components of lasting success: a committed workforce of site-savvy land stewards, abundant wildlife, an economic base of ranching that sustains biodiversity and a rich heritage, and the attention of environmental groups who could invest deeply into the area. But if we act from fear, energies could easily turn dark and degenerate into bitter attacks and desperate holding actions against one another which surely would fracture both land and community. So how can we build a bright future for this and later generations?

We of the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance have high hopes for the future, and better than that, we have plans for how to build that bright tomorrow. Our organization is young and we spend much of our time exploring options presented by some of the best conservation collaboratives in the world (please see “Partners” for links). We talk with people near and far, looking for likely solutions to current and expected challenges. We’ve engaged the best thinkers with the biggest hearts and the highest principles to help us chart a course for success for the communities and land we love.

The mission of the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance is to promote the ecological, social and economic conditions that will sustain the biodiversity and integrity of America’s northern mixed-grass prairie for present and future generations.

We support cost-effective, sustainable conservation that features private and public cooperation in a working landscape stewarded by profitable family ranches and thriving rural communities. We employ collaboration, education, innovation and sound science to conserve and enhance the natural resources and pastoral heritage of the northern Great Plains.

Photo © Anne Sherwood

Our specific purposes are to:

1. Engage in collaborative conservation and community building.
2. Encourage ranching and other traditional livelihoods which will sustain our native grasslands and rural communities for generations to come.
3. Collect, implement and disseminate accurate information on the ecology and sustainable management of the northern grasslands.
4. Promote understanding and respect for ranching and the critical role it plays in conservation.

Photo © Leo Barthelmess