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Protecting Carbon Stored in Western Rangelands
Western rangelands and grasslands are being recognized for their ability to protect stored carbon long into the future. Rangelands are vast and store over 25% of carbon found in western ecosystems. As the climate warms and the west experiences more extreme weather events like drought and fire, as well as landscape-scale changes like conifer expansion…
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Pacific Flyway Integrated Landscape Conservation
This report details the development of new science to support cross IWJV and Central Valley Joint Venture conservation planning and implementation. Work will identify emerging ecological bottlenecks by examining long term effects of climate change and land use practices influencing patterns of wetland resiliency and waterbird habitat availability supporting populations in the Pacific Flyway. This science project…
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Public Lands and Private Waters
Plan of work outlines the implementation of spatially explicit inventory and monitoring project to map summer habitats for greater (Centrocercus urophasianus) and Gunnison sage-grouse (C.u. minimus; herein sage-grouse) across occupied habitat (Schroeder et al. 2004), to include Priority Areas for Conservation (PAC) identified by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Conservation Objectives Team (2013 COT…
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SONEC: Dynamic Wetland Resources
The availability of surface water and wetland resources are highly dynamic in the western US. Until recently, broad-scale efforts to conserve wetland habitats for migratory birds have been unable to account for patterns of seasonal wetland dynamics that link the timing of wetland availability (i.e. flooding) to the chronology of bird migrations through landscapes. To…
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What is NAWCA? And is it Right for Your Project?
If you have questions about the North American Wetlands Conservation Act (NAWCA) and its Standard and Small Grants programs, here’s a decision-making tool that will help you learn a little more. NAWCA was signed into law in December of 1989 as a new continental conservation funding mechanism and has played a critically important role in…
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Conservation of New Mexico’s riparian and wetland ecosystems
This is a proposal for science monitoring seasonal surface water availability in New Mexico. New Mexico Wetlands Proposal Despite encompassing a small fraction of the landscape (< 2%), riparian systems in arid regions act as keystone features that concentrate biological diversity. These habitats are particularly important to waterbirds during migration and act as critical resting…
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Frequently Asked Questions and Answers about Outcome-based Grazing
In 2017, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced that it was beginning a collaborative approach to issuing grazing authorizations, which is the permitting system through which private livestock operators (known as permittees) utilize federal lands. In March 2018, BLM selected 11 demonstration projects in six states, with a variety of conditions and circumstances. The…
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SageWest 2020 Summer Series: Fire & Invasives
Invasive annual grasses are dramatically compromising sagebrush country by reducing forage quality and quantity, altering wildfire regimes, impacting species diversity, reducing wildlife habitat, and straining already challenged local economies. Amongst SageWest’s 150+ entities (state and federal agencies, universities, collaboratives, non-governmental organizations, etc.) are many that are tackling this challenging issue. Thus, this platform is uniquely…
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Intermountain Insights: Working Science for Working Landscapes
Agriculture and human settlement have long been tied to ecologically important wetland and riparian resources and the water they provide. For over one hundred years, this pattern has concentrated private land ownership in the West’s river bottoms and valleys, areas that are surrounded by publicly-owned sagebrush rangelands and forests. Those private lands account for only…
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Intermountain Insights: Maintaining Resiliency of Continental Waterbird Flyways
Waterbirds in the Intermountain West rely on a limited number of important wetland sites as they migrate hundreds of miles between breeding grounds in the north and wintering grounds in the south. This network of wetlands is vital for resting and refueling on these long journeys. What is more, these sites are also important centers…
