Creating Miracles in the Desert
Dixie Creek is a small stream near Elko, Nevada. Changes in livestock grazing practices resulted in the plants that naturally grow along streams to come back which eventually attracted beaver. The beaver built dams which captured and slowed stream flows, ultimately creating a landscape full of water and wildlife even during recent periods of severe drought. Interviews with stakeholders show how a recovered stream can benefit a wide range of interests and offer hope for a better future.
Changing a Landscape to a Lifescape
The story of the Humboldt Ranch is about how a change in livestock grazing practices on a ranch in northeastern Nevada is transforming gullies to wetlands and landscapes to lifescapes. The Humboldt Ranch encompasses more than 140 miles of streams and over 350,000 acres of mixed public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and private lands owned by Nevada Gold Mines.
Partnering in the New West
Many conservation groups are working together to create cost-shared jobs that allow people in those positions to work beyond their organizations' silos and limitations. Called partner positions, these people provide crucial capacity to build relationships that results in durable conservation that benefits the ecological, social and economic foundations of rural communities.
Playing with Fire
If you’re recreating on public lands in the American West, you’ve probably already felt the impacts of the invasive annual grasses and wildfires that ruin habitat for wildlife and our outdoor activities. The non-native grasses, like cheatgrass, are extra-nasty plants. They are creeping into sagebrush country, a place of incredible biological diversity, and recreators play a key role in preventing their spread as well as halting fire ignitions.
Before and After a Zeedyk in Wyoming
The Need for Flexibility
In small communities like Plush, Oregon, where “The Need for Flexibility: Exploring Innovation in a Public Land Grazing System” was filmed, agriculture is a major economic contributor. Benefits extend far beyond the actual animal unit months provided to the producer. The Bureau of Land Management’s Outcome-based Grazing program offers a more collaborative approach between the BLM and its partners within the livestock grazing community when issuing grazing authorizations permits.
Sagebrush rangelands once covered nearly 250 million acres in western North America. Today, this landscape has been reduced to half its original size and is rapidly shrinking. Fire is a primary culprit and is fueled by annual invasive grasses. These rangelands help drive our nation’s economy through energy, recreation, and livestock production and are home to critical regional water resources. Equally important, these lands are wildlife meccas and provide habitat for some 350 species.
Zeedyk structures may look simple, but they do a lot for the landscape. These low-tech restoration structures help shore up soils in fragile, temporally wet mesic meadows to stave off erosion and keep the productive ecosystem intact. In this year-long timelapse video from the Sublette County Conservation District, we see how the installation of a zeedyk structure retains water in a wet meadow, leading to use by a variety of grazers, predators, and even Sage-grouse.