Restoration is rarely a single action. It is a process.
Before crews can treat an invasive plant like cheatgrass, partners need to understand where it is, how it is spreading, and where limited resources can make the greatest difference. That requires field inventories and monitoring, shared data, spatial prioritization, project planning, environmental review under NEPA and other permitting processes, and coordination among landowners and organizations.
Treatment is one vital step—but the work does not end there. Partners must return to treated areas to ask: Did it work? Is the ecosystem healthier? What should we do differently next time?
In southwest Montana, Invasive Annual Grass Coordinator Emma Odden helps connect these pieces across a nearly five-million-acre landscape. Working through the Southwest Montana Sagebrush Partnership—and alongside essential partners including The Nature Conservancy, the Bureau of Land Management, the Beaverhead Conservation District, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service—Emma coordinates the people, information, and resources needed to turn individual observations of cheatgrass into collaborative, landscape-scale action.
This is why conservation delivery capacity matters. Across 11 Western states, the Intermountain West Joint Venture helps partnerships place dedicated conservation professionals in communities where they can coordinate monitoring, planning, collaboration, implementation, and follow-up. Because meaningful restoration takes more than the desire to “fix the problem”—it takes people with the time, relationships, and expertise to guide a project through every essential step.
