Sage Grouse Initiative

* WORKING LANDS FOR WILDLIFE *

The Sage Grouse Initiative (SGI), launched in 2010 by the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), has quickly become one of the largest conservation success stories in the West. It's a win-win program to conserve world class wildlife and sustainable ranching. At the heart of the success are the hundreds of partners joining forces for a common goal.

The incentive for the Initiative came on the heels of the March 2010 designation of the sage grouse as a “candidate” species for listing as “threatened or endangered” under the Endangered Species Act. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has delayed final consideration of listing until 2015, providing time to take a voluntary and non-regulatory approach to recover a bird in trouble.

To date the program has enrolled more than 450 ranchers, invested in excess of $100 million and generated nearly $60 million in partner matches.

The results are pouring in from 11 western states - improving grazing systems, removing encroaching conifers, and adding conservation easements across hundreds of thousands of acres. SGI harnesses the power of the Farm Bill to strategically focus budgets and partner matches. The goal is to shore up the best private land habitat for sage grouse by helping landowners make improvements so their livelihoods will be healthy, too.

The Sage Grouse Initiative is an excellent example of how NRCS is orchestrating a paradigm shift in recovery for at-risk species. Instead of regulatory burdens, the Initiative takes a voluntary approach that benefits agriculture and sage grouse – along with a suite of other wildlife species too, from pronghorn to mule deer.