(crickets chirping)
- [Garth] Grasslands have tremendous amount of value.
It's important that we manage them so deliberately.
It goes beyond just the intrinsic value of the habitat,
it's about a working landscape.
(gentle piano music)
- To me the grasslands is one of the most beautiful places.
It's absolutely spectacular.
It's got the most austere beauty.
- [Renelle] Probably the favorite thing about living here
is the wide open spaces.
- It's quiet.
We don't have any neighbors.
We're pretty attached.
We wouldn't want to live anywhere else I don't believe.
- [Matt] Sagebrush steppe is the habitat type
that you see right here.
This is what sagebrush steppe is.
We're in it.
(hawk screeching)
(grouse calling)
- [Garth] And of course sage grouse is a big part of it,
a very important part of the Curlew.
As the sage grouse is threatened from a variety of reasons,
it's a special place.
- There's a variety of big game animals
that also utilize the Curlew.
- [Garth] It's also important for working ranching.
- Our interest out here is to merge or bridge
relationships between public land and private land.
We're stronger together.
(gentle piano music)
- The border is kind of taken away with this project.
I think the impact from that is big.
- If we get everybody involved,
the chances for success skyrocket.
- [Garth] It's a tightrope that we walk that we want people
to be able to use the land but we have to use
the best available science to protect it.
- If you treat it well, it will treat you well.
- We don't want to ruin our land,
we want to take as good care of it as we can.
- It a remarkable landscape with a lot of opportunities
here to really do some good things.
Not only from a wildlife perspective,
but also from a landowner perspective.
(gentle piano music)
- The Curlew has been managed hard historically.
Generations have been down here, things have changed.
- [Matt] A lot of landowners, their fathers and grandfathers
spent their entire lives removing sagebrush.
- You read about my pioneers
and they chopped a lot of that sagebrush down with axes
and then they took it and put it in a big pile
and burned it.
- Sagebrush isn't worth havin'.
It's a waste.
- There is an argument that there is too much sagebrush,
you know you hear that from some people.
But really when it comes right down to it
this does serve and incredible function for wildlife
and for livestock.
(cows bellowing)
- [Ken] My great great grandfather settled here in 1938.
There's like about 18 permitees
that rely on the Curlew Grasslands for all their grass.
- [Renelle] We feed 'em hay in the winter time
and in the summertime, we're on public lands.
- In the past the cattle have been grazing out of the stream
and our aquatic habitat ultimately suffers
and we lose our stream bank
so we're getting them some alternative water sources.
If you can move the water then the cows will move,
for the water.
We've had a lot of years workin' with the farmers
and ranchers and I think that's to our advantage,
they have a lot of trust in our agency for the most part
and the nice part about all this is it's voluntary.
We present them with some of our technical assistance,
show 'em how conservation can help them out.
We provide some financial assistance
and they provide some financial assistance
so they have a buy-in into it.
- We just got some new pivots in,
that's a first for us.
These pivots are turning out to be really a good asset
making it so we can utilize the water better that we have.
We have a creek that runs through that we irrigate with,
without that water we wouldn't have anything.
- [Jay] It's the lifeblood of agriculture
and now that we're getting into no till
that will only work if we get some moisture.
No till is a term used for farming without any tillage
practices other than planting.
- After you harvest your crop there's a residue left
and the residue will stay on the soil called with armor it.
- [Jay] In my mind erosion's the primary reason for no till.
- [Louis] It will help keep the soil in place
so we're really trying to get these guys to do a lot more
no till.
- It takes a financial commitment
in many cases to make a change,
and unfortunately it's the dollar that determines
a lot of what you do.
- It's a little bit of a mindset change,
it's a little difficult for these guys to grasp onto that
at times, but they see that they're losing top soil.
- We have work to do.
When we see erosion going we have work to do.
There's only a few streams on the Curlew National Grasslands
and those streams in certain spots
they're so down cut you sometimes can't even tell a stream
is there and when you get glimpses of them,
there's raw vertical banks.
So a tremendous amount of bank erosion has gone on.
We're not gonna take it back to what it historically
used to be.
What we're doing is re-elevating the channel.
(gentle piano music)
- From that milkweed up I wouldn't even worry about that.
- Efficiency is extremely important
because I'm spending taxpayers' dollars, my own money.
(gentle piano music)
A 100 feet of stream channel can be done
in two to three hours.
(majestic music)
The juniper are actually going in
for stream bank stabilization.
Something that stabilize, holds the banks in place
while the vegetation gets established.
Yeah right in there then you can pull the tops back
toward the bank.
The neat thing is that by using natural things
that we already have around us we can keep costs down.
It's a cost savings for the public.
- When I start seeing finished products and outcomes
and the benefits that it's providing the community
and our landowners and our farmers and our ranchers,
that gets me really excited.
- [Louis] On the Curlew National Grasslands
the streams are a limited resource.
That's a tremendous habitat and a tremendous resource
that we need to protect.
- One of the most important small parts of that habitat type
that sage grouse need to be successful
in a sagebrush steppe ecosystem
is the wet are of that system.
(static hissing)
- [Chris] As wildlife biologist
the main reason we come out here is to do wildlife surveys,
check up on primarily sage grouse and sharp tail grouse.
Then we have a few other things we're lookin' at too,
monarch butterflies.
- What we're looking for is milkweed
which is the only plant that the caterpillars can eat.
Showy milkweed is an increaser,
so it increases with disturbance.
So there's a chance that actually the history of Curlew
and the grazing here actually created the habitat
for the monarch butterflies.
(cows bellowing)
- Livestock operation in general is not a problem,
sometimes some of the infrastructure can be,
particularly fences.
Sage grouse like to fly in the dusk or at dark
and they fly at very very low level.
Just sagebrush height, they can fly into those fences
and get killed.
So one of the things we're doing there is marking them
with little plastic tags so they can see 'em.
We estimate about 900 to 1000 tags per mile of fence.
That's a fair amount of work and money to put in
to this particular species.
Is it worth it?
Absolutely!
- We've got a declining sage grouse population.
It's in the best interests of everyone
to get that population back to a healthy level
whether it's our sportsmen or whether it's the people
who rely on that landscape for their livelihood.
- There are challenges to being able to work
when you have multiple interests on a piece of ground.
You know what's more important, a species or my livelihood?
That's a hard question to answer.
So what I try to do is find other ways
so we're not pitting them against each other.
That's the only way we'll make this work
here for this species,
and for a lot of other things across the West.
- Restoring our landscapes, be them forested or non forested
is the highest of priority.
That's what our mission is when we say caring for the land
and serving people, that's what restoration work is.
(gentle piano music)
- It brings a lot of satisfaction to me
to be able to see these projects go in
and see how much improvement that can actually make.
(gentle piano music)
- I'm very proud of this project.
(gentle piano music)
- [Matt] It is a tremendous partnership,
it's been years in the making
to get to the point where we are.
(gentle piano music)
(grouse calling)
- [Garth] A lot of folks are coming together to realize
that we have common ground to use this place
but to use it we have to be able to sustain it
for the long term.
- No matter what the federal incentive is,
the core value is improving our landscape.
What we're doing on the ground is the important thing.
(gentle piano music)