Jared Beaver: In the heart of America's grasslands, a battle
for survival is unfolding.
The lesser prairie chicken, an iconic species of the Great Plains,
is on the brink of extinction.
Ted Koch: If you imagine Native Americans and European settlers traveling across
the southwestern Great Plains through this endless sea of grass, feeding themselves
on lesser prairie chickens, they never could have imagined the day that all
that would be left is postage stamps of prairies and an endangered species.
But that's where we are.
Hallie Mahowald: And yet there's a growing network of producers and partners
across the plains looking to change that.
Ted Koch: The only places they are left today are where these caring ranchers
are stewarding the habitat and stewarding the landscape and stewarding these
native prairies, keeping them there.
Jared Beaver: And today we're gonna meet a few of these stewards.
Bryce Peterson: I think everybody that ranches knows that, uh.
If done in the right way, if grazing is planned in the right way, that it is
nothing but a benefit to the landscape.
I can't dictate what
Bret Riley: a chicken's going to do, but I can build them a home, and I can
build a habitat, and I can make it, you know, desirable for them to be there.
I think if we would open our eyes as a society and look at who's going
to be the one that's going to lead this, This ecological revolution,
it's going to be the producer.
Hallie Mahowald: And in a landscape that is 90 percent privately owned,
the conservation challenges we face today demand new solutions, like how
do we fund this important stewardship?
Jared Beaver: And how do we work to recover a species while
supporting the communities that are on the ground doing the work?
Kris Hulvey: In this time when we're trying to address a lot of
conservation problems across the country, that kind of innovation,
I think is where we need to go.
Jared Beaver: Welcome back to Working Wild U, a show about the people and
wildlife of the American West from the crossroads of culture and science.
I'm Hallie
Hallie Mahowald: Mahold, Chief Programs Officer at Western Landowners Alliance.
We are a network of landowners, managers, and partners dedicated to keeping the
working lands of the American West.
Whole and healthy for the benefit of both people and wildlife.
Jared Beaver: And I'm Jared Beaver, assistant professor and extension wildlife
specialist at Montana State University.
My work focuses on identifying and improving conservation efforts in
areas where people and wildlife share the landscape, a place
many folks call the working wild.
Hallie Mahowald: Today on the show, can ranchers and partners
work together to save the lesser prairie chicken while supporting
their livelihoods and communities?
Jared Beaver: We're headed to eastern New Mexico to find out.
Hallie Mahowald: Our show continues after the break.
Charlotte - UF: Working Wild U is a proud part of Natural Resources
University, a podcast network delivering science based information
for your natural resource management.
Other current network series include Timber University, Fish
University, Deer University, Fire University, and Habitat University.
Available wherever you get your podcasts.
Jared Beaver: The best known conservation stories often involve a sudden and very
visible threat to a species survival.
One of the most well known examples is the case of the bald eagle, and the
widespread use of the pesticide DDT.
Hallie Mahowald: DDT, introduced in the 1940s, was used extensively
in agriculture to control insects.
However, its impact on wildlife, particularly birds
of prey, soon became apparent.
Jared Beaver: DDT accumulated in the food chain, causing bald eagles
and other birds to ingest high concentrations of the chemical.
This led to reproductive problems, including thin eggshells, which
often broke before hatching.
Hallie Mahowald: As a result, bald eagle populations plummeted.
Prompting a listing under the Endangered Species Preservation Act in 1967.
This was a predecessor to the Endangered Species Act.
Jared Beaver: Soon after, DDT was banned by the Environmental Protection Agency.
This ban, coupled with conservation efforts mandated by the Endangered
Species Act, Allowed bald eagle populations to make a remarkable recovery.
Hallie Mahowald: It's a textbook conservation success story, with
a beginning, middle, and end.
It's simple, the cause DDT, and the effect thin eggshells.
Easy for us to wrap our heads around.
Jared Beaver: But as we are discovering this season, what if the cause and effects
impacting a species are less clear?
What if there are a hundred causes and a hundred different effects?
And what if the story is in slow motion, every day happening right before our eyes?
Hallie Mahowald: That is the conservation challenge of our time.
Not grabby headlines or juicy sound bites, no quick and simple solutions.
Multifaceted problems often call for multifaceted solutions.
Jared Beaver: This is the story of the Lesser Prairie Chicken.
Bear with us, there are a lot of threads to this story.
The approach to saving the bird is so holistic that at times it may be
difficult to see just how everything connects back, but we will get there.
Hallie Mahowald: And be warned, you'll find no quick fixes or
simple answers in today's episode.
Instead, we'll witness the daily beat of collaborative conservation.
The quiet, thankless work of building trust, building community.
Jared Beaver: This isn't the end of the story for the Lesser Prairie Chicken.
This is only the beginning.
Before dawn on the high plains of eastern New Mexico, Megan Nastow,
a research scientist with Working Lands Conservation, was on a mission.
Megan Nasto: I really wanted to see a chicken.
Hallie Mahowald: We're talking about the Lesser Prairie Chicken, a species of
prairie grouse endemic to the southern and central plains of the United States.
Megan Nasto: So, before even starting our 10 hour workday of collecting soil.
You know, we woke up at like 3 a.
m.
or 4 a.
m., got in the truck, Um, packed up, you know, a thermos of coffee
and just went searching for leks.
Jared Beaver: Leks are areas where male birds congregate to attract
and compete for females during mating season in the early spring.
Megan Nasto: We would just choose a dirt road, drive down the dirt road,
and then stop, kill the engine, roll down the windows, and see if we could
hear that characteristic booming sound that the chickens make in the morning.
And of course, the first day we did this, we didn't hear anything,
but I was determined so that we went out the following morning and
did the whole thing over again.
And this time we actually did hear the booming.
Then we got out and we sort of crept as slowly as we could across
the rangeland or trying to make as little noise as we possibly could.
We didn't want to get too close.
that we were going to scare them off.
We just sat right down in the in the grasses and we just kept listening.
After five or ten minutes of hearing their booming over and over again, we pulled out
our binoculars and that's when I actually got to see them for the first time.
Lesser Prairie-Chicken: We
Megan Nasto: would see The males sort of jump just above the the height of
the grasses and boom come back down and jump above and come back down
and jump above and come back down.
It was so cool to finally see because they're just these neat beautiful little
birds that are so important but so elusive and it was in a pasture that had grazing
too so there was a there was a lek there where cattle you know rear cattle graze
and It just, it helped me really connect to the importance of this project.
Hallie Mahowald: So we've talked a lot this season about the
plight of our grasslands, the most imperiled ecosystem on the planet.
And that slow motion decline of lesser prairie chickens?
For the most part, it's driven by habitat loss.
Jared Beaver: This habitat loss originates from the patterns and policies of land
settlement history in the United States.
Think of the Homestead Act.
As a result of that history, the plains are largely privately owned.
Hallie Mahowald: And we're not just plowing up the plains for farming.
Development of homes and cities, oil and gas, and more.
and poor land management have contributed to the decline of America's
grassland biome, down to just 40 percent of what we had a century ago.
And much of that remaining grassland is fragmented.
Jared Beaver: In essence, we humans derive a lot of our basic needs from the plains.
Food, fiber, fuel, and shelter are all at the top of that list.
Hallie Mahowald: It's no surprise that a lot of species that depend
on grasslands aren't doing well.
And that includes prairie grouse species.
Ted Koch: Historically, we had six prairie grouse species in North America.
And today, three of them are either extinct or endangered, and
the other three are declining.
Jared Beaver: That's Ted Cook.
He's the executive director of the North American Grouse Partnership.
And before he retired a few years back, he worked for 30 years as an
endangered species biologist with the U.
S.
Fish and Wildlife Service.
Ted Koch: Of the six prairie grouse species, you know, heath hens in the east
have been extinct for over a century.
Atwater's prairie chickens on the Texas coast are functionally extinct in the
wild, and then there's lesser prairie chickens that were just listed under
the Endangered Species Act, and then the other three that aren't yet there but are
getting closer are sage grouse, which a lot of folks have heard about, and then
greater prairie chickens and sharp tailed grouse, which can still be locally common.
but have, uh, declined in range and in abundance, uh, from historical levels.
Hallie Mahowald: Prairie grouse, including lesser prairie
chickens, need wide open spaces.
And according to Grant Beaupre, a lesser prairie chicken biologist with
New Mexico Game and Fish Department, habitat fragmentation to a chicken
can be as subtle as a telephone pole.
Grant Beauprez: A prairie chicken evolved with just really not
even trees on the landscape.
And so research has shown that prairie chickens exhibit avoidance behavior.
So you stick a tower up in the middle of the prairie, even if it's shorter
than a wind tower, say it's a, it's a telephone pole or line, um, they will
avoid that by a certain distance and won't use the habitat surrounding it,
whether that habitat is good or not.
So predator may or may not be on that perch, but the chicken thinks it's a
threat because the predator might be.
Looking for them on that thing.
Hallie Mahowald: So a few structures that seem spaced out and unobtrusive to
us may make an entire section of land uninhabitable for lesser prairie chickens.
Jared Beaver: And it's not just development and fragmentation
that have impacted the bird.
Poor land management such as overgrazing and a century of fire suppression
have allowed for woody encroachment of plants like shinery oak and
mesquite to dominate huge sections of what was once a sea of grass.
Grant Beauprez: There's some very good research that Sean, if you remove
the mesquite, prairie chickens will move back in and use that habitat
again, but they won't tolerate more than like one tree per acre.
Hallie Mahowald: So all of these changes, oil and gas development, cultivated
agriculture, homes and roads, and poor land management have put the lesser
prairie chicken in the crosshairs.
Jared Beaver: While historic estimates suggest the lesser prairie
chicken numbered in hundreds of thousands or possibly even millions.
Surveys today indicate there are now around 30, 000 to 40, 000 birds.
Ted Koch: If you imagine Native Americans and European settlers traveling across
the southwestern Great Plains through this endless sea of grass, feeding themselves
on lesser prairie chickens, they never could have imagined the day that all
that would be left is postage stamps of prairies and an endangered species.
But that's where we are.
Hallie Mahowald: So when it comes to lesser prairie chickens, we have
an understanding of the problem and the many contributing causes.
For So what about the solutions?
Where are lesser prairie chickens doing well, and how can we support more of that?
Grant Beauprez: I mean, honestly, we wouldn't have prairie chickens
in this state in the numbers that we do today if we didn't have private
landowners doing the conservation measures on their private property.
Ted Koch: The only places they are left today are where these caring
rangers are stewarding the land.
The habitat and stewarding the landscape and stewarding these
native prairies, keeping them there.
Jared Beaver: And native prairies are important for other reasons.
Not only do they support wildlife such as lesser prairie chickens, but grasslands
support human communities as well.
And well managed grasslands have the potential to sequester carbon.
This has implications for not only our planet, but for the
economics of land stewardship and conservation going forward.
Hallie Mahowald: And that's what's coming up next, after the break.
We're exploring a collaborative conservation success story in the making.
Western Landowners Alliance: We're in a new chapter of conservation.
In the first chapter of conservation in this country, you had
wilderness and then you had city.
But today, more and more, we understand that there's this very
important piece in the middle that we call the working landscape.
Working Wild U Producer Zach Altman: That is Lesli Allison, CEO of
the Western Landowners Alliance.
Western Landowners Alliance: These are the places that provide our food,
our fiber, they provide the jobs that sustain the rural communities.
These things are incredibly important and they're disappearing, and that's
really our next challenge going forward.
We have to think beyond protected wilderness, and you can't do that
unless you're engaging the people.
In those landscapes, first and foremost in that solution.
Working Wild U Producer Zach Altman: Led by the people on the ground, Western
Landowners Alliance advances policies and practices that sustain working lands,
connected landscapes, and native species.
Western Landowners Alliance: What we're seeing in the West today is incredibly
hopeful because you do see collaborations, working with partners, trying to realize
this vision that's so important to us.
I think many places in the rural West are actually leading the way on this.
Working Wild U Producer Zach Altman: And so can you.
Join us and learn more at
Jared Beaver: In eastern New Mexico, a group of ranchers, non profits, state
and federal agencies, all these partners are coming together to strengthen the
connections of land stewardship, healthy souls and supporting wildlife habitat.
Hallie Mahowald: Let's kick off by meeting one of the ranchers at the
center of this collaborative initiative.
Bryce Peterson: I'm Bryce Peterson.
I'm a rancher in eastern New Mexico.
I grew up in ranching.
Uh, my ranching family comes from Colorado.
Moved here in 1999 to the Mill and Sand area.
My grandpa acquired a ranch there, um, in the prairie chicken habitat
that we didn't even know was there.
And, uh, I have since managed three, three ranches and, uh, now Jamie
and I, my wife, are, uh, on our own.
And, uh, have acquired our own property and doing our own ranch.
Jared Beaver: The Mill and Sand area is often called the Lesser Prairie
Chicken Capital of New Mexico.
The center of Lesser Prairie Chicken habitat in the Southern Plains.
Though Bryce and his family ranch south of Mill and Sand, they
are well within chicken habitat.
And the bird remains a key player in his family's ranching story today.
Bryce Peterson: The Lesser Prairie Chicken and the listings and things have, uh,
It has brought a lot of attention to our area and to the ranching community.
Hallie Mahowald: And with that attention, some much needed funding, including
funding for this project we're learning about today, which includes three
ranches, Working Lands Conservation, Western Landowners Alliance, as
well as state and federal agencies.
Jesse Juen is a Western Landowners Alliance advisor.
and natural resource consultant.
Before retirement, he was the director of the New Mexico Bureau of Land Management.
Jesse Juen: So we have worked on a grant that took a large landscape to
look primarily at carbon in the soil and whether that carbon is affected
through different management strategies and could that be applied Looked at on
local ranches, but then also applied out to a much broader landscape.
And Megan Nastow explains
Jared Beaver: further.
Megan Nasto: The idea of the project is to build a capacity.
Um, for all of these groups to come together to develop better land
management practices that can solve some of the critical issues of this
region, of the Southern Great Plains.
And one of the main issues, um, I think that this region is facing is how to
conserve habitat for the endangered lesser prairie chicken while still maintaining
the economic livelihoods of ranchers and ranching communities in the neighbourhood.
And we kind of came at it.
Somewhat surprisingly, not from a prairie chicken habitat perspective, but from
the perspective of first understanding soil health and how grazing, or the lack
of grazing, or the removal of invasive plants, how any of these land management
strategies can be used to improve the health of the soils in these regions.
Hallie Mahowald: One indicator of healthy soils is carbon.
Jared Beaver: There are a number of reasons why soil carbon can be important.
From a land stewardship perspective, more carbon in the soil typically means there's
more water holding capacity, allowing for more resilience during dry times.
So, more water equals more grass.
Hallie Mahowald: And from a global perspective, studies indicate that
while forests sequester more carbon than grasslands, in an age of increased fire
and drought, Grasslands and rangelands could be a more resilient carbon sink
because they store carbon underground.
Jared Beaver: And that brings a third angle to this equation.
Ecosystem service markets.
Paying someone, like a rancher, for ensuring that their land produces
something we all need, like clean water or clean air, or as in
this case, sequestered carbon.
Basically, you find a way to measure these ecosystem services
and generate credits that can be bought and sold in a marketplace.
Hallie Mahowald: Now we're still in the early days of developing
these markets, and it really feels like the Wild West out there.
There are a lot of sales pitches, big promises being thrown around.
Western Landowners Alliance is committed to ensuring ecosystem service markets are
equitable for land stewards and actually reflect good stewardship on the ground.
Jared Beaver: If we get this right, ecosystem service markets have massive
potential to incentivize and fund conservation and compensate land
managers for benefits and costs.
they already provide to society.
Hallie Mahowald: Take this project, which is looking specifically into carbon.
It's funded by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, which includes
funding from food giants Burger King and Cargill as part of their
goal to reduce CO2 emissions and support stewardship on the plains.
Jared Beaver: All of these factors made this project interesting to ranchers
like Bryce and Jamie Peterson when they chose to participate, looking
at how their management practices influence carbon in the soil.
Bryce Peterson: What piqued my interest to start, uh, this
was, was the other markets.
Uh, ranching as a whole is, is, is a good business, um, but it takes other
avenues, um, and, and different sources, uh, to be viable in this business.
But data collection is important, and without data, we don't
really know what we have.
I, I feel like those that ranch with just cows, Only.
Cows in mind, they're either very far ahead in the financial curve
and they can focus purely on that, or they're probably falling behind.
And those of us in the middle are probably, uh, looking at every avenue
we possibly can to be viable and stay doing what we do for a living.
I think I'm constantly looking outside of the cow to figure out
what that viability would be.
Hallie Mahowald: So with this project, we're looking at how land management
practices influence carbon in the soil.
But how is this study actually conducted?
Jared Beaver: According to Chris Holvey and Megan Nastow at Working
Lands Conservation, the first steps in co producing research
like this is always listening.
Kris Hulvey: One of the first things I think is always important
to do in a project is figure out what everybody wants to learn.
Monitoring is a term that's thrown around, and you can monitor
so many things on a landscape.
You can monitor how tall the grass is, you can monitor what
kind of species are there, you can monitor all sorts of things.
But if you don't really start by asking a question, you're gonna,
Just collect a lot of data.
It's not going to tell you an answer.
Hallie Mahowald: So all these ranchers and partners got together to determine what
questions they really needed answered.
Kris Hulvey: Those included, how do grazing systems affect soil carbon?
How does shrub removal affect soil carbon?
So we really structured our sampling based on answering those questions.
Jared Beaver: And in this project, The ranchers are using adaptive
management and that includes applying intensive rotational grazing.
But as Chris said, all of this listening is critical to designing a
study in a way that provides practical knowledge for everyone involved.
Hallie Mahowald: So first you listen, then design the study, and then
Megan Nasto: It was really just a lot of digging holes and collecting
soil and putting them in bags.
Um, so then I could take back home to a lab to actually analyze for, for carbon.
But the fun part of it was, is that, you know, I, I spent weeks digging holes,
which is something I love to do, but so many other people volunteered to help me.
I mean, we had Jesse Jewin, who's a great partner in this project, former state BLM
director from New Mexico, spending his retirement, spending three, four weeks
out in the field with me every single day.
And he was just fantastic.
You know, we had folks from the agencies come out and help, and we even recruited
two high school students from the Tatum High School in Eastern New Mexico, spend
their entire spring break working with us and digging holes and collecting soil
and just having a great time with us.
So it was.
It was a fun time, um, but it involved really just getting to
know that landscape and driving all over and sampling in one spot after
another after another after another.
It ended up being easily well over a thousand samples that I had to load
up into my truck and drive back to Utah, um, and then process and analyze.
It was a It was kilos of soil.
It was a huge amount of soil, but it was a lot of work.
Jared Beaver: So getting additional help to dig that
many holes makes perfect sense.
But there's another benefit when you're getting a group of people who historically
may not always see eye to eye.
Simply getting on the land together can help build that crucial ingredient
to a successful collaborative.
And that crucial ingredient is trust.
Kris Hulvey: I found that there's kind of this magic in doing field science
and getting a bunch of people together.
Everybody starts interpreting what they're seeing together, and we as scientists
might put one language on it, and the ranchers put another language on it,
and the land managers put a different language on it, but that's how you start.
You know, all speaking the same language.
Hallie Mahowald: So Working Lands Conservation and Partners and a couple
of local teenagers dug a ton of holes and took kilos of soil back to the lab.
What did they
Kris Hulvey: find?
We found that in areas where there is grazing, that there was more soil
carbon, uh, detectably more soil carbon than in areas that weren't grazed.
Areas that The roots were not grazed, the root systems were not as deep, areas
that were grazed, they were deeper.
And the thing about plants is, they act as little carbon pumps.
They take carbon out of the atmosphere, they, they Put it into
their roots and their plant biomass.
And then that carbon kind of leaks from the roots into the soil.
And so there are these little pumps that bring carbon into the soil.
So when you have those deeper roots, it's, there's the potential of getting
more carbon in deeper layers of the soil.
And that's exactly what we found.
Jared Beaver: This finding.
That well managed grazing could increase soil carbon?
That was no surprise to the ranchers.
Hallie Mahowald: We're dropping a lot of terms here today, including adaptive
management and rotational grazing.
Jared Beaver: There are a lot of working definitions for adaptive management.
It's basically the willingness to change management, to meet changes in weather,
climate, feed water availability, markets, predator challenges, really anything.
It's about staying flexible in your management in response to new
information or changing conditions.
Hallie Mahowald: And in addition to strategies like woody brush removal
and prescribed fire, ranchers in this project are grazing cattle as
part of their adoptive management.
Jared Beaver: But not all grazing is created equal.
Grazing is a tool, and if thoughtfully applied, can
improve overall rangeland health.
The ranchers involved in this study practice a form of rotational grazing.
Meaning that instead of letting cattle out across the entire range in the
spring and rounding them up again in the fall, they intensively graze smaller
pastures for a short period of time, followed by an extended period of rest.
Hallie Mahowald: Grazing in the appropriate intensity and duration for
the landscape can lead to more forage availability above ground and deeper roots
underground, meaning more carbon storage.
But
Jared Beaver: remember, this project is trying to determine if this
landscape can sequester enough carbon that it's worthwhile to
participate in carbon markets, a potential tool that could support
communities and their land stewardship.
So what's the outcome there?
Kris Hulvey: One thing that people are really excited right
now about are carbon markets.
So, you know, are, is there enough carbon in those grazed areas that now we can get
a profit off of that additional carbon?
And in these landscapes, maybe not.
It's a very small amount of carbon.
Hallie Mahowald: It's worth noting that this study found that rangelands that were
adaptively managed by the ranchers had about double the amount of carbon in the
soil compared to a nearby area of public land that had not been grazed in 15 years.
Kris Hulvey: Ecologically, that's really important in our landscape, even
that small amount of carbon, because these are really dry landscapes.
And when carbon is in the soil, it actually binds water a little bit.
So when the rains come in these areas, that carbon prevents that
water from just seeping right through the soils, which are really sandy.
And so there's more water for the growth of plants in those areas that are grazed.
And so ecologically, those soils are healthier.
Jared Beaver: Okay, so this emerging collaborative group is studying
how adaptive management practices can impact levels of soil carbon.
But what does this have to do with the lesser prey chicken?
Hallie Mahowald: Well, it really comes down to this.
Grant Beauprez: Probably more than 60 percent or 70 percent
of the chickens are on private land in the state of New Mexico.
Jared Beaver: Why are the birds on mostly private lands?
Well, for one, the plains are largely privately owned, right?
But also, how those lands are managed is providing habitat for the birds.
And simply put, ranching and chickens rely on similar habitats, healthy grasslands.
Hallie Mahowald: If ranch operations and the people and communities they support
can remain economically viable, They're less likely to be sold and developed.
Jared Beaver: So if we as a society can compensate land managers for
providing essential ecosystem services like wildlife habitat or carbon, that
stacking of enterprises can keep these ranches and their communities afloat.
Hallie Mahowald: After all, it's the people on the ground that are maintaining
and improving habitat conditions.
Jared Beaver: Now let's hear from Brett, another rancher involved in the project.
Bret Riley: Brett Riley, um, we ranch here in Southeastern
Mexico and in Western Oklahoma.
Hallie Mahowald: Brett is also now the Eastern New Mexico Resource Coordinator
for the Western Landowners Alliance.
Bret Riley: This ranch, you know, primarily is cow calf operation, um, you
know, nestled here, you know, we're in a checkerboard ranching area, private,
state, and BLM lands, um, and then, you know, we're also, um, Right in
the middle of prairie chicken habitat.
So, you know, that's kind of a driver always has been on this ranch and
probably, you know, probably what got us into the conservation field to begin with.
Jared Beaver: We talked earlier about how the ranchers involved in
this study are using an adaptive management approach to their operations.
Brett helped us connect the dots between his management actions
and the Lesser Prairie Chicken.
Bret Riley: And if we, you know, we take care of the soils, they take care of
the, you know, the biomass and, you know, if we can build healthy ecosystems and
then we, you know, we're sequestering a little carbon along the way, you know,
we're helping our water infiltration by building up the organic matter in
the soils with our grazing patterns.
And then at the end of the day, you know, we're building, you know, healthy
habitats for, you know, in our instance, primarily the Lesser Prairie Chicken,
but in other areas, there's lots of other different kinds of wildlife.
Hallie Mahowald: Brett also tells us that he's involved with the Lesser
Prairie Chicken Landowners Alliance.
A group of about 25 landowners across New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, and
Colorado working with federal agencies to forge a path to chicken recovery.
Jared Beaver: Ted Cook and the Grouse Partnership helped
get the alliance started.
Ted Koch: I like to joke that I called up these landowner leaders in the
different states in the southwestern Great Plains and I said, hey.
Ted Cook with the Grouse Partnership, and we want to save, uh, lesser
prairie chickens and ranching.
And they said, well we disagree with you, we want to save ranchers,
ranching and lesser prairie chickens.
And so, uh, obviously our interests were highly congruent.
Hallie Mahowald: And the vision for the Lesser Prairie
Chicken Landowners Alliance?
Defend the core of remaining chicken habitat across their range?
What
Bret Riley: we are trying to envision is, you know, connecting these habitats
and, and building, you know, a pathway.
And, you know, we talk about strongholds, right?
What we're looking at doing here is building a over 110, 000 acre stronghold
right here in this part of the world, you know, and trying to put some things in
place and, you know, kind of use it as a model as, you know, how do we do this?
How, you know, what percentage shenry do we need?
What percentage?
Tall grass do we need?
Well, how much open ground do we need?
I mean, these are all questions that we need to ask that probably
haven't been looked at close enough.
And I don't really think we've studied the ecology of the soils and the
ecology of the, of the ecosystem enough.
We studied the bird, but I'm not sure we've studied their home enough.
And so what we're trying to do is put it together so we've got, so we
can connect all these pathways to go all the way from here up into,
you know, west central Kansas.
Which is a northern range of the lessors and, and try and, you know, build it
so that, so that we can put that back together as it was years ago, you know,
and I mean, you know, reality is such that we know we'll never be able to make
it like it used to be, but I think with a little help and a little bit of, of
collaboration, we can put it, get it to the point to where we can, you know, have
enough birds that they can have a thriving population and be successful again.
Jared Beaver: And according to Brett's philosophy, what's good for the
ranchers comes from Good for the bird.
And participating in studies such as this one helps him understand
how his management actions are impacting the landscape.
Bret Riley: We kind of look at it as a holistic approach.
If, you know, what, what works for our chicken and, and not just the chicken, but
the other wildlife species that are on the ranch, um, also work for our cow habitat.
I mean, we've, we've just got some research data in that showed
that, you know, parts of the ranch were like 35 percent less bare
ground than we were 10 years ago.
Hallie Mahowald: But what about this project in particular?
We asked Brett his thoughts about the results of this
landscape level carbon study.
Bret Riley: Certainly, this project's been very useful and been very informative.
Um, do I feel like carbon's ever going to be a leader for us?
I don't.
I don't feel like out here in these arid environments that we're ever
going to sequester enough carbon.
to actually make the carbon sequestration portion of it pay.
But what I do think is more important than that is the fact that the adaptive
grazing and management systems that you can utilize that will sequester the carbon
are far more valuable than the carbon itself that you're putting in the ground.
The practice maybe is more important than the end result.
Jared Beaver: As we mentioned earlier, improving soil health through adaptive
management can lead to outcomes like more water in the soil and an
increase in forage availability, which can help ranching operations be
resilient to challenges like drought.
Hallie Mahowald: And while Brett doesn't think carbon credits could be
worthwhile in eastern New Mexico, Some sort of habitat lease or biodiversity
credit could go a long way to support ranching communities who are actively
stewarding our remaining grasslands.
Bret Riley: When we start talking about biodiversity and wildlife
and I think maybe that's a new frontier that we're We're just
kind of getting in on right now.
And I think it's one that probably, especially in our part of the world, is
going to be probably more significant.
Hallie Mahowald: In addition to ecosystem service markets, Brett thinks modifying
existing federal farm bill programs could also support lesser prairie
chicken conservation on working lands.
That's one avenue the Lesser Prairie Chicken Landowner
Alliance is working on right now.
Jared Beaver: But in any case There needs to be a toolbox of financial
support for ranchers and communities who are proactively building and
maintaining critical wildlife habitat, especially when we consider how
little intact grasslands are left.
Bret Riley: We've squeezed the margins on all these producers to the point to
where, you know, you have to be bigger and bigger and bigger, and then we've
gotten to the point to where there's just not many cents left over when
you get done at the end of the day.
And so, I think if we're gonna ask these folks to go in there and maybe improve
the ecology on certain portions of this landscape, And build these habitats.
There has to be an offset somewhere there to provide them
with the monetary stability.
We would welcome any kind of collaboration.
You know, we just want what's best for the, for the ecosystem.
We're here.
This is where we live.
This is how we make a living.
Hallie Mahowald: It's clear from visiting with the ranchers involved in this
project that when it comes to staying in business and supporting wildlife.
They're committed for the long haul.
Jared Beaver: And that's a good thing.
After all, it's thoughtful ranchers like Brett and Bryce and their families
and a collaboration of partners who are pushing against the decline of habitat
that's slowly eating away at the plains.
Bret Riley: I think if we would, you know, You know, open our eyes as a society
and look at, you know, who's going to be the one that's going to lead this, you
know, ecological revolution, you might say, it's going to be the producer.
Hallie Mahowald: So if we want resilient ecosystems, we need to support the
people on the ground, stewarding them.
Bret Riley: I was on a zoom call while back with some folks in the
Fish and Wildlife Service, and they said, We cannot mandate or dictate
our way into saving the chicken.
If we don't have the, the producers on our side working with us, you know,
the species is going to go into extinct and, and they're probably right.
I mean, not probably right.
I know they're right because, you know, producers are the ones with
the boots on the ground out here.
We're the ones that see it every day.
We know what's going on.
I feel confident we can build a habitat out here.
We've done it.
We know how to do it.
I mean, we've done it enough now and know the grazing.
Utilizing cattle is another tool, right, in that toolbox to build that habitat.
But what I don't know, I don't know when the chickens are going to come back,
or where they're going to come back, or what they're going to do, because I can't
dictate what a chicken's going to do.
But I can build them a home, and I can build a habitat, and I can make it, you
know, desirable for them to be there.
And I have a pretty good feeling if we do that, they'll, they'll
expand again and come out.
Jared Beaver: At the end of the day, the collective vision emerging from the plains
is a biome level model for conservation.
And while the lesser prairie chicken may have been the trigger,
It's not just about the bird.
Hallie Mahowald: Where do we have these remaining intact systems?
How do we protect them?
And how do we expand the central core and support what is working?
This is a model of thinking that can be applied to conservation challenges
anywhere, and it requires leadership from the land and people working
across boundaries to make it happen.
Jared Beaver: And it's the continuous, thoughtful stewardship by communities
on the ground that is supporting the Lesser Prairie Chicken.
It's not setting aside land and simply letting it be.
So how can we do a better job supporting those people and their
contributions, whether it's a private market solution, a public funding
solution, or a toolbox of both?
As a society, we need to better support what we truly value.
Hallie Mahowald: And so while the future of Lesser Prairie Chickens remain
uncertain, and the challenges we face are complex, if we work together, we
can chart a path forward that supports people, wildlife, and the spaces we share.
The critical piece we call the working wild.
Bret Riley: Let's sit down at the table, everybody, you know, I'd even
invite the environmental groups that don't like cows, come, come talk to us.
Let's sit down at the table and visit about it and let's go out
in the country and look at it and let's, let's fix this problem.
I mean, it's not anything that's insurmountable.
We can do it.
It's just a matter of rolling your sleeves up and getting it done.
Working Wild U Producer Zach Altman: Working Wild You is a production of
Montana State University Extension and Western Landowners Alliance
with support from the Arthur M.
Blank Family Foundation and you, our listeners.
This episode was written and produced by me, Zach Altman, with support from
our hosts Jared Beaver and Hallie Mahal.
Lewis Wirtz and Jared Beaver are our executive producers.
Music is from Artlist and Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to Bryce and Jamie Peterson, Brett Riley, Jesse Juen,
Chris Halvey, Megan Nasto, Grant Bupre, Ted Cook, Hannah Weaver, the
Bureau of Land Management, New Mexico Department of Game and Fish, New
Mexico State Lands Office, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
And as always, please be sure to follow us on social media, www.
And head to our website to check out show notes and bonus content.
That's at workingwild.
us.
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We'll see you next time on Working Wild U.