8-24 SS Sage Grouse

8-24 SS Sage Grouse

SAGE-GROUSE RECOVERY GETS BOOST FROM USDA FUNDING

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is sending the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Idaho an additional $5.5 million to help conserve critical sage-grouse habitats. The funding is to establish conservation easements through the Grassland Reserve Program that will maintain large tracts of sagebrush habitat important to sage-grouse. 

Studies show that fragmented habitat is the primary cause of sage-grouse population decline. One way landowners can help maintain continuous sagebrush habitat for the bird is through the service’s voluntary Grassland Reserve Program. This program limits future development of private rangeland using conservation easements; landowners still retain grazing rights to the land. Here’s Wade Brown, an Easement Specialist with NRCS: “There will be a grazing plan written for your  ranch and that grazing plan will identify specific areas where maybe you cannot hay in the fall or hay during the summer. This is basically to protect sage grouse habitat’s. So there are some specific things there that you can and cannot do within that easement. That easement will stipulate things that you can and cannot do and they are stipulated through that grazing plan.

 

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