Grassroots in the grassland (complete article from source)
Source: Jackson Hole Star Tribune, by RENA DELBRIDGE
DOUGLAS -- Antelope weave a fluid ribbon, tracing some intuitive pattern across rolling land that shows off more shades of green than one knew existed.
A snowy owl swoops down from his perch in a roadside cottonwood, seeking one of the little mammals, as a tiny killdeer shows off, chasing a ferruginous hawk in circles through the pure blue sky.
Mama cows shift their bulk to shelter their babies, curious calves who dart around in playful leaps and dodges, from the red-dirt road.
Thunder Basin National Grassland is a land of multiple uses, where prairie dogs borrow conveniently softened dirt beneath pipelines and deer seek shelter in the shade of oil pumps that draw "black gold" from deposits far beneath the surface.
The grasslands are also home to hardy humans, many from families whose claim to the earth they live on stretches back three generations. It's not always an easy place to call home, to make a living.
Jewell Reed sums it up this way: Grassland cycles run in five-year increments. Out of any five, you'll get one great year, where grass grows lush and species of all sorts thrive. Then you'll have two average years -- and two truly awful years, without a drop of rain, when every living thing struggles simply to survive.
Worst of all for some who call this place home is the threat to their way of life that comes from decisions made by federal land managers, and from the potential listing of numerous species, feathered, furry and leafy, under the Endangered Species Act.
Now, an association of landowners has taken matters somewhat into its own hands. The plan? To foster healthy ecosystems for all grasslands animals in order to avoid future federal protection, or at least, to earn an exemption from restrictions such a listing could bring.
Doom and gloom
As a child, Susie Downs remembers her mother's overriding worry that the family ranch wouldn't be around for her children and grandchildren. It wasn't that ranching was so tough. Instead, her family faced what Downs calls a doom and gloom scenario every time a land- or animal-based decision was handed down by federal managers. The family wondered what was next, how it would hurt them.
Most ranchers in Thunder Basin lease federal land to supplement their privately held grazing areas. That's what makes the lifestyle work in such a tenuous piece of the world. But, any decision from above would have on-the-ground impacts.
Never was that so clear than around 1999, when a U.S. Forest Service management plan for several grasslands called for large areas dedicated to supporting huge numbers of prairie dogs -- which, in turn, would set the stage for a reintroduction of the endangered black-footed ferret. At the same time, some environmental groups petitioned the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to offer Endangered Species Act protection to the prairie dog.
Ranchers were befuddled. Protect the prairie dog? The animals were in full invasion mode, digging holes for shelter from predators, holes that young calves and lambs could fall into and break limbs. As colonies grew, dogs would eat away the vegetation. The loss of plant life led to erosion, and ranchers watched whole swaths of land essentially blow away in the Wyoming winds.
Worried, again, about how big decisions would affect their lifestyles and livelihood, some basin ranchers decided it was time to make sure their voices were heard to protect themselves.
The threat of the prairie dog listing was the main thing, Downs said. That really threatened all of our private lands.
That was the red flag, Joann Neumiller added.
Both are board members of the Thunder Basin Prairie Ecosystem Association, formed in 1999 as a coalition of landowners who realized they were more powerful together than individually.
Building a coalition
Now, 24 association members bring 931,000 acres to the group, along with Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management and state-owned property. Most members are in Converse County, with a few in Niobrara and Weston counties. The association includes two coal mines, Rio Tinto Energy Americas Antelope Mine and Powder River Coal Co. North Antelope Mine, and an oil company, Sunshine Valley Petroleum. One additional mine and four more ranches are considering joining.
From the start, the plan was deceptively simple. As an association, combining their land in some cases, the group could develop a plan to promote diversity and establish habitats for many native species, while allowing for ranching and energy production.
Of course, the prairie dog was of paramount concern, but it didn't take long for the association to realize that grassland species are inexorably connected. They could start with the prairie dog, but they'd be right back at the starting line with another species.
With that in mind, the basic premise landowners took to the federal agencies was an agreement to provide an ecosystem for all sorts of plants and animals, in exchange for protection to the landowners should any species become listed under the Endangered Species Act, board member Frank Eathorne explained. They thought -- naively -- that it would take a handshake, the way deals are done out West.
No deal. Agencies, under their mandates and rules, needed better information, quantified data, scientific terms. And the association members were mostly ranchers, not biologists, environmental scientists or wildlife experts.
Most ranchers figure they know their land pretty well, but we lack scientific credibility, Eathorne said.
On their own terms
What happened next is summed up by U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi as a paradigm shift.
Association members knew that to gain entrance to the discussions that would affect their lives, they'd need to earn a seat at the table. They learned to talk the talk, building a sophisticated vocabulary of federal-ese and specialized terms that gained them access to discussions.
It had to be based on the associations own terms, science-based, but led by landowners who know the earth from experience, not necessarily from textbooks.
They were informed in no uncertain terms this was going to be a landowner-driven organization -- and it still is, Eathorne said.
The landowners and agencies are building trust with one another.
The association pooled private money and some grants to hire Ecosystem Management Research Institute, a Montana-based nonprofit, to conduct an ecological assessment of what existed on the grassland, and what historically was there.
From 2003 through 2005, EMRI gathered the necessary scientific information, which is presented on an ecosystem-wide spectrum to allow individual ranches some privacy. The coal mines anted up funds for the wildlife portion, to avoid having to make that information public. An advisory committee of professionals representing a range of disciplines was formed.
With the assessment in hand, the association is able to develop a plan to offer habitat to all species. The group hopes that it can approach federal agencies to negotiate a deal, probably in the form of a conservation agreement assuring that stewardship activities will continue along with ranching and energy production.
The plan is more than that, though, and calls for on-the-ground treatments and monitoring that will benefit the species and the landowners.
The white-haired lady
And the ecosystem association is being heard, even in the halls of the nation's capital. Betty Pellatz, who has worked particularly diligently on the political end of the spectrum, has come to be known as the little white-haired lady from Wyoming.
Pellatz smiles as she hands over a framed photograph of herself, Frank and Leslie Eathorne and other association members with Vice President Dick Cheney, noting that only about 13 organizations get into his office each year. In another framed photo, association members are grinning beside Enzi.
Sen. Enzi has really been a good help to us, as far as spearheading politically what we've been doing back in Washington, Pellatz said. For example, he has earmarked some money for funding landowner-based initiatives like this one.
The Thunder Basin Grasslands Prairie Ecosystem Association is unique in both their approach and their formation, Enzi said. People complain about the Endangered Species Act, and I agree with those folks that it is broken, but we have to live with it until it can be changed. This is a group who recognized that and is taking actions to avoid a listing.
He said the group's face-to-face updates are valuable, and believes their template is one that should work and could be adopted by others.
The association also meets with state agencies, the governors office, county commissioners and regional directors for federal land agencies each year. Large meetings are held each fall, with invitations to all interested parties.
The political connections are pretty new to these ranchers, but are also a simple extension of the way they've always known to get things done. Neighbors are partners. You make your face known to those you need to communicate with, and you pay them visits. Like Reed says, get to know the leaders. She's sometimes surprised by how close different peoples goals come.
On the ground
Relationships are the hub of the associations efforts, and that includes the landowners relationship to their property. Through monitoring and treatments, such as burns, reseeding, using herbicide to knock out noxious weeds and controlled grazing, they're learning that the native plants best suited for the grassland are also good for their ranching enterprises.
If we can improve our ground, get as many pounds of meat to sell from fewer animals and take better care of the land, we will be better stewards and better off all around, Reed said.
Along with pasture treatments, the association hammered out an amendment to the Forest Services management plan addressing prairie dogs. The amendment uses a concept of categories for colonies, allowing ranchers to kill prairie dogs outside of the key colonies needed for black-footed ferret transplants.
Several landowners offered some of their private holdings for colonies -- a remarkable move, considering the historic relationship between ranchers and prairie dogs, Pellatz noted.
Monitoring has retrained some landowners to notice the incredible diversity on the grassland. Eathorne talks about four chicks following a sage grouse hen across the road, as Reed describes seeing fox and deer that have been largely absent since she was a child. As they travel their fields, ranchers are keeping track on maps and in diaries of the flora and fauna they notice, thanks in part due to training sessions offered by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.
The group gave several members of the Cooperative Sagebrush Initiative a tour of the grasslands, hoping to become a partner in sage grouse conservation. Some landowners are considering offering habitat on their property to re-establish the grouse, in part as a mitigating measure for their coal mine partners -- something like a sagebrush bank,Neumiller said.
While the association members monitor their lands, they've got one eye toward the power that an agreement with the Fish and Wildlife Service would hold. Pellatz laughed, explaining that most conservation agreements submitted to the agency are for one or two species. The associations covered 100, although thats been trimmed down to 15 or so.
The prevention of listing any new species is paramount to the association members, who collectively feel that when people in more densely populated areas are willing to sacrifice habitat for development, they assume the government will conserve the animals and plants in other places, such as Thunder Basin. That results in some conflicted feelings.
I don't think we should have to provide for everything that everyone else is destroying, board member Lona Nachtman said.
We do care about the land, and we are taking care of it, Downs joined in. Just don't force it on the ranchers through endangered species listings, she added.
* Although antelope may be the most visible grasslands resident to a passer-by, the ecosystems are host to a wild array of mammals, birds and plants -- some of which are species of concern or listed as threatened by the Endangered Species Act.
* Thunder Basin carries the biodiversity found before human settlement, a true picture of the Western grasslands. Along with short and mixed grass prairie, one finds sagebrush, of course, and special little pockets of riparian areas.
* Those ecosystems support the black-tailed prairie dog in force, making the federally owned portions of the grassland a key target for reintroduction of the endangered black-footed ferret. Sage grouse love the gentle slopes dotted with sagebrush. Burrowing owls and the swift fox, which feed on or otherwise use ferrets and dogs, are also present.
* Feathered friends also abound. There's the mountain plover, loggerhead shrikes, ferruginous hawks, upland sandpipers, a variety of longspurs, long-billed curlews and more.
* And along with those antelope roam mule deer and elk, and the mountain lions which prey on the larger mammals.
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