Working Grasslands Initiative

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. 

A 5-year special Initiative by Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks, the Working Grasslands Initiative delineates Montana’s role in the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Business Plan for the Northern Great Plains. The state program aims to institute a non-regulatory, incentive based strategy to grassland conservation, partnering with private landowners and other cooperators.

As the WGI intends to be non-regulator, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks has identified the following as the proposed conservation tools: conservation leases, conservation easements, range infrastructure cost-share, and native grassland conservation cost-share. The range infrastructure cost-share program implemented is designed after a similar program by the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance. Partners will be crucial to providing the resources and systems for all of these tools; some of these identified partners include the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, and the USFWS Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program.

The document outlines the current threats to Montana grasslands, land and species conservation targets, assessment of implementation monitoring, and details of conservation project implementation. Making a point to identify stakeholders, the authors state that the most important conservation cooperators are the private landowners of Montana.

See a presentation summary of the Working Grasslands Initiative here: http://www.albertapcf.org/rsu_docs/mtfwp2018tgp.pdf

http://fwp.mt.gov/fishAndWildlife/habitat/wildlife/programs/