A Hub for Conservation and Ranching on Montana’s North-Central Grasslands

Providing livestock with consistent water is often one of the biggest challenges faced by ranchers in the West. Opportunities to do so are thin on the ground and become even thinner throughout the summer, especially in a drought year like the one experienced in north-central Montana in 2021. Tyrel Obrecht, who operates the Louie Petrie Ranch out of Turner, Montana alongside his father, has long felt the need to provide his cows with water that wouldn’t fade away as the grazing season wore on. This year, that need became pressing.

“It’s not a big deal in April and May most years, but this year we found out otherwise,” he said.

Seeking a longer-term solution that could carry his livestock through dry years, Obrecht turned to the Rancher’s Stewardship Alliance. The Rancher’s Stewardship Alliance, or RSA, is a rancher-led nonprofit covering 150,000 acres of north-central Montana that works to steward the rich habitat of the northern prairies in the name of strengthening the rural community and economy. In doing so, they collaborate with conservation organizations and state and federal agencies to identify ways that conservation and ranching can work together. Martin Townsend, who is the Conservation Coordinator for the RSA and a Coordinating Biologist for Pheasants Forever, likened the RSA to a hub for those invested in the land’s long-term health.

The Louie Petrie Ranch project was enabled through resources from the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS), Sage Grouse Initiative, grant funding from Ranchers Stewardship Alliance Conservation Committee, and assistance from its partners (such as screening tools from National Wildlife Federation), World Wildlife Fund, Native Energy, Western Sustainability Exchange, Partners for Fish and Wildlife (through Secretarial Order #3362), and Pheasants Forever were compiled to complete the whole project. This model of partnership for habitat and ranch improvement led to a 2021 Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) is bringing $6.4 million to the partnership for big game habitat improvement led by Pheasants Forever. This project will enhance big game migration habitat across central Montana by benefiting ranch improvement projects. 

“If someone has an interest in doing things, they can call us and we can be the support they need to connect them to the resources that can help them,” Townsend said.

That includes ranchers like Obrecht. He began attending RSA meetings when moved home to his family’s ranch in 2017. Now, he serves on the RSA’s Beginning Rancher Committee and said he values the format for networking with other ranchers in his community.

“Ranchers have always felt like they have to keep the way they do things a secret from their neighbors, but there’s a lot of value to the ability to bounce ideas off of each other and sharing information through a peer-to-peer network,” Obrecht said. 

Thanks to his involvement with the RSA, Obrecht was able to make headway on providing reliable water to his herd. One of the management projects the RSA works on is integrated stockwater systems, which involves drilling new wells and installing pipelines and tanks to provide water in otherwise dry areas. This was just what the Louie Petrie Ranch needed. The RSA also specializes in prescribed grazing plans, wildlife-friendly fencing, weed control and prevention, and the re-planting of native grassland. All of these conservation-focused projects are in addition to the educational and community events organized and hosted by the RSA since its inception in 2003. The conservation tools used by the RSA often are bundled together in one project, enabling them to be funded with a combination of grants, agency dollars through Farm Bill programs and agency agreements, as well as landowner in-kind donations. 

But the real power of the group is its landowner leadership, according to Marisa Sather, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Partners Program biologist who works with the RSA.

“The landowners don’t just have a seat at the table, they are the table,” she said. “That makes it a real gateway to the entire community and brings a level of transparency and openness to what we’re doing.”

As a result of that trust, Sather said, people have shown an immense willingness to collaborate to get work done and learn from each other. This was no different for the stockwater project on Obrecht’s family ranch. According to data from Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks (FWP), the Louie Petrie Ranch is home to a key migration linkage for pronghorn antelope. FWP, along with Pheasants Forever and NRCS, the Department of Interior (Bureau of Land Management, and USFWS Partners for Fish and Wildlife through Secretarial Order #3362), and other groups like the National Wildlife Federation and The Nature Conservancy are all working to preserve such connection points in big game migration corridors in north-central Montana through projects like road crossings and installing wildlife-friendly fencing on private ranches like Obrecht’s. Layering one of these fencing projects on top of the stockwater project made it a win-win solution for everyone involved.

Working with landowners like the Obrecht family presents golden opportunities for projects that make it easier for animals like pronghorn and mule deer to move across a landscape, said Brett Dorak, a wildlife biologist for Montana FWP. GPS collar data collected over the years and information on local fencing enables biologists to pinpoint locations like the Louie Petrie Ranch where projects like fence modifications can be most effective. 

On top of it all, Dorak said, working with the RSA provides critical connections to landowners and their intimate knowledge of the landscape, which makes this work especially powerful for facilitating big game migrations. 

“If there’s good fence and good water, there’s going to be good grass and good forage for everything on the landscape,” he said. “Being able to help incorporate an efficient agricultural system into these projects helps both the livestock and the wildlife out there.”

Part of the RSA’s success, according to Townsend, is the focus on building long-term relationships between ranchers and conservation entities. The long-term nature of the program and the community transparency involved means that landowners are involved in every step of the process, even years after the project is completed. Sather said what usually drives an RSA project is not necessarily quick gains for conservation but rather the opportunity to build these long-term relationships.

“A lot of times there’s a project that might not be a home run for a wildlife species here and now, but it might build a relationship with someone that could keep their ranch in place and keep the grass in place and open the gate for something down the line,” she said.

This sense of long-term sustainability is at the heart of what the RSA provides to the community. Obrecht said the group’s investment into both people and place is what ranching communities like his need the most in order to continue to thrive.

“If you want intact landscapes and intact grasslands, you need working families that are intact,” he said. “We want young people to realize that they can come to this part of Montana and be a part of a thriving, progressive community that values the land, too.”