TOPEKA — An organization dedicated to preserving the endangered lesser prairie chicken and other grouse species is changing tactics to work with farmers and ranchers on grassland preservation and needed policy changes.
Ted Koch, executive director of the North American Grouse Partnership, is a retired biologist whose second career led him to the partnership. Once there, he realized that making moves to protect the prairie grassland ecosystem would have a cascading effect to support farmers and ranchers, as well as grouse populations.
He recently visited state and national legislators to share about the challenges of protecting grasslands through increasing compensation for ranchers who put environmental conservation practices in place.
It’s a different message for his organization, which has been focused solely on protecting 12 grouse species, including the lesser prairie chicken. It has been listed as endangered twice in the past 10 years, Koch said.
As he talked to state agencies and others about grouse, someone pointed out that most of the prairie chicken habitat was on private land. Koch reached out to 10 ranchers for a call.
“I said I want to save chickens and ranching,” Koch said. “And all the ranchers said, ‘Sorry, Ted, we’re not interested. We want to save ranching.’ Direct. Clear cut.”
The Grouse Partnership learned that if it wanted to save grouse, the group needed to expand programs supporting ranchers who want to initiate conservation practices but can’t afford to, he said.
Rancher and farmer Stacy Hoeme practices conservation on his farm’s acreage in Gove County and along the Smoky Hill River. He and his son have used limited tillage and crop rotation, and through a research project they became interested in prairie chicken populations.
Hoeme also committed to a permanent conservation easement, an option as part of the farm bill.
He, like many farmers and ranchers, understands the benefits of taking care of the land and the grassland ecosystem.
“You need to have sustainable grasslands to have good water, which our water situation out here is critical,” Hoeme said. “(Grassland) helps put water back in the aquifer by slowing it down.”
Although he’s committed acres to long-term conservation projects, Hoeme knows that it’s not practical for many people to put land in the Conservation Reserve Program, or CRP.
He’s watching as many farmers and ranchers take land out of the CRP.
“The value of CRP grass is half of what it is if it’s ag ground,” he said.
Koch has been talking to legislators to explain the challenge and highlight the interconnected ecosystem. Saving ranching and the grasslands are intertwined, and policy changes need to be made, he said.
The Grouse Partnership formed the Lesser Prairie-Chicken Landowner Alliance to create a workable plan with the mission to “save ranching, rural communities, water, and wildlife,” all in cooperation with ranchers.
“Why are these conservative western Kansas ranchers willing to partner with a retired federal endangered species biologist to save the most threatened ecosystem?” Koch asked. “It’s wildly unacceptable to them that we’re losing 2 million acres of grasslands every year, and that there’s fewer livestock producers and lower cattle herds. That’s where we come together.”
The alliance wants to create ranching strongholds in the southwestern Great Plains, Koch said. That includes establishing 10 200,000-acre ranching areas that will be the “last best places of grasslands for rangeland cattle production, wildlife populations, aquifer protection, and sustained rural communities,” according to the organization’s explainer.
That work has been going on over the past five years using market-based models, where ranchers are paid fair market value for conservation services. They’d like to see those types of programs expanded, Koch said, so farmers are able to make finances work.
“If we have to reduce our herds by 10 or 20%, we need to get paid for that,” Koch said. “My analogy there is it’s completely unreasonable for Americans to go to these ranchers and say, ‘We want you to recover this endangered species and we’ll give you 60% of the cost and take the other 40% out of your pot.’ Wildly unreasonable.”
It’s important to understand that ranchers want to be paid for producing conservation outcomes on their land, he added. They don’t want subsidies, cost shares or incentives.
Much work remains to be done to create a system that supports preserving the grasslands — and of course, prairie chickens — and supports farmers and ranchers, Koch said.
“They want to engage in the business negotiations just like anyone else,” he said, pointing out that when the federal government buys products from Ford Motor Co., it doesn’t tell the company how to make trucks.
“Let’s treat ranchers like they’re business professionals that they are, and contract with them to produce meaningful, measurable conservation outcomes on their working range lines while they continue to raise and sell beef and feed America,” Koch said.
This story was originally published by the Kansas Reflector.
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