Habitat meets profit as ranchers restore native prairies

Jim Faulstich drives through a landscape as stark as brown and green. On the left of the road lies a field of tan earth and stalk residue ​– cropland that is still unplanted because of the pools of water in the low spots. On the right lies his green pasture. It has less water, and what pools exist are nearly covered over with lush new grass that means extra feed for the cattle. “Compare that picture right there,” says the Volga rancher. “If it takes crop insurance, government payments to keep people afloat [on the cropland on the left], how is that a sustainable approach?” In places, his own grassland is so thick with pintail ducks, deer, and other wildlife that it seems in almost constant movement as his car rolls by. Slowly, a prairie restoration movement is gaining momentum here in the Great Plains. After decades of plowing up native grasslands to plant crops, some ranchers are moving in the other direction. Helped by environmentalists in a sometimes uneasy alliance, they are restoring prairie pasture, which not only improves water retention and sequesters carbon in the soil, but can also improve their profits by creating better feed, allowing them to brand and sell their beef directly to consumers, or through ecotourism. This new breed of ranchers faces formidable odds. Conversion of the Plains ​– one of the world’s largest remaining grasslands ​– to cropland continues. As of 2017, nearly a third of the northern Great Plains, a swath of land running from central Nebraska to southern Saskatchewan and Alberta, had been converted. In that year alone, more than half a million acres were plowed under. The silver lining: The rate of conversion slowed considerably compared with 2016 in every state except here in South Dakota. It’s not clear why. Also there was a pickup in cropland that had gone back to grass, although it’s not certain that will be a permanent switch. “We’re getting to understand how important healthy grasslands are,” says Leo Barthelmess, a rancher outside Malta, Montana, and president of the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance. For him, a high priority is making sure that his cattle do not overgraze an area, which means frequently moving the cows. When his father started ranching in the area in 1964, he moved cattle 10 times a year. Now, Mr. Barthelmes moves them 100 times a year, so “the grass has the opportunity to regrow.”...MORE