THE LATEST
The deadlines for local conservation districts and landowners to apply for funds under the Water Quality Grant Program (WQGP) and the Rangeland Health Assessments Program (RHAP), both Wyoming Department of Agriculture funding programs, are coming up in early June. Both programs require projects to have a 30% match, which can be cash or in-kind, and can also be federal funds such as 319 grand funds.
As part of their devotion to "the inextricable link between the public lands surrounding our private working lands", the Lemhi Land Trust joined forces with The Nature Conservancy and Pioneer Mountain Group to create the Central Idaho Rangelands Network to encourage collaboration and rangeland monitoring across a large landscape with diverse public and private ownership in Central Idaho.
National agriculture industry consulting and CPA firm K-Coe Isom recently announced a new program aimed to help ranchers generate revenue from conservation projects while simultaneously reducing the rancher’s inherent risk of testing and implementing such projects. Funded by the USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), the program is specific to ranchers whose property is located in priority sage grouse habitat or crucial mule deer winter range or designated mule deer migration corridors within Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, or California.
As part of the The Western Governors' Association (WGA) hosted a webinar on Rangeland Management Strategies, the speakers dug into some of the challenges and opportunities with reseeding.
There are a number of barriers, which vary across time and space, to native seedling survival. If soil freezes for even a 24-48 hr period, up to 90% of the germinated seeds can die. Alternatively, a couple of warm days in December can cause seeds to germinate. Precision restoration is key to perennial grass reseeding.
Because the ways in which land is managed affects the future ability to utilize the land, there's a case to be made to consider adaptive management today to best plan for tomorrow. By definition adaptive management is simply the systematic approach for improving resource management by learning from management outcomes.
