Palouse Outdoors: A New Day for Grasslands Conservation

The early golden hour bathed the landscape in a peachy hue as the setters and I stood by the truck. It was somewhere around day number 200 that I had set foot on the grasslands between Waitsburg and Minnesota since 2011. This day, we would embark on the Sheyenne National Grasslands in North Dakota. Sharp-tailed grouse were beginning to stir somewhere in the expanse before us.

We were north of the Sheyenne River in an area where it was safe to hunt sharp-tails. Endangered Species Act-protected lesser prairie chickens were found south of the river. While I cannot recall if it was even legal to hunt on the south side, the likelihood of discerning a sharp-tail from a prairie chicken on the wing or even sitting was a task for which these virgin eyes were unprepared.

Black Angus grazed among much of the acreage, and the feel of mixed hardwood bottoms and hillsides giving way to grasslands was similar to the patchwork of woodlots I grew up within the Shenandoah Valley. Only on the Great Plains, the grasslands ecosystem is far more complex, supporting myriad pollinator, plant, bird, and other wildlife species.

The setters cast in and out of senescing tree lines as dry burr oak and green ash leaves fluttered to the ground in the early November breeze. The terrain undulated softly with small dune-like mounds scattered about, similar to what one would see in eastern Montana and locally at Juniper Dunes. Small forbs dotted the ground, retaining some emerald in their leaves, seemingly fighting off the inevitable burgundy overtaking them as the plant withdrew its nutrients before winter.

We departed the grasslands without a single flush, only a lone sharp-tail feather with a black spot in the center to show for our efforts. But the hunt is less about taking game and more about the experience of seeing and learning new and legendary places.

The Northern Great Plains are a gem of North America, spanning five U.S. states and two Canadian provinces across 183,000 square miles of mixed-grass prairie. And, like the lesser prairie chicken, the grasslands themselves are imperiled.

At present, America is experiencing an interesting fortune of strong bipartisan support for conservation legislation in D.C. Similarly, conservation organizations like Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, Backcountry Hunters Association, the National Wildlife Federation, and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership are at the forefront of new initiatives which are gaining steam to conserve our wild places.

Since 1970, grasslands bird populations have declined by 40 percent, with iconic species like bobwhite quail seeing declines greater than 80 percent.

Since 2007, crop production acreage enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program declined from 36.7 million acres to 21.9 million acres nationwide.

In December 2020, an article was published by The Hill presenting a call to action on grasslands conservation. Seventy-three percent of our grasslands have disappeared, and less than three percent of historic longleaf pine woodlands remain. A study published in September 2020 supports the losses, showing that up to one million acres of natural land covers – grasslands, wetlands, and forest – are developed in the U.S. annually.

In response to these declines, in March 2021, Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever rolled out their "Call of the Uplands" initiative, which strives to "...raise $500 million, encompasses habitat conservation, education and outreach, and national advocacy strategies as part of an effort to conserve 9 million acres, engage 1.5 million outdoor participants, and enact landscape-level national policy for wildlife and rural communities." The initiative was aimed at volunteer chapters of the organization, non-profits, fish and wildlife agencies, and within the parent organization in the form of a new landscape-level policy.

Ten conservation organizations are working collaboratively with policymakers in D.C. to develop the North American Grasslands Conservation Act (Act) with Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever standing at the spearhead. Given the variety of conservation legislation and initiatives already on the books, one would think our nation's grasslands would be the target of such effort, but the Act is the first to focus on the vast North American prairie ecosystem.

The Act will resemble the highly successful North American Wetlands Conservation Act, which utilizes federal grants to fund projects to enhance, expand, and conserve wetland habitats nationwide. Coupled with the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), landowner incentives for restoring native grasses and controlling invasive species provide additional opportunity to regain quality habitats for plant diversity, pollinator species like North America's iconic monarch butterfly, songbirds like the meadowlark, upland birds, deer, pronghorn, bison, and small mammals like the black-footed ferret.

In the meantime, grasslands conservation is alive on the Palouse with croplands enrolled in CRP and volunteers with Blue Mountains Pheasants Forever (BMPF) enhancing habitat through cooperative agreements with landowners. Additionally, BMPF heads up a youth outdoors program and is building a "Women on the Wing" program to encourage more ladies to join the upland hunting and conservation community. To learn more and heed the Call of the Uplands through local conservation, reach out to BMPF via email at bmpf@bmpf258.org.