New report calls for cross-boundary collaborations and private-public partnerships that move from large landscape design and planning to pulling people through planning into implementation of conservation in grassland-forest ecosystems.
LUTHERVILLE, Md. (Dec. 2, 2024) – Drought and wildfire in the U.S. West grassland-forest ecology are climate-related challenges that ranchers have had to cope with and manage over centuries, but their intensity and frequency are now being fueled by changing climatic conditions. Many of these landscapes are multi-jurisdictional, involving private working lands owned by ranchers and foresters as well as public lands managed by local, state and national entities. Management of these large landscapes is complex and contentious, requiring purposeful collaborative efforts to bring ecological sciences and diverse stakeholders together to create environmental, social, and economic resilience of rural watersheds.
In a new white paper released today, Solutions from the Land highlights interviews with a cross-section of private and public partners in the Colorado River Basin that reveal agriculture and local community values and lessons learned about in addressing local- and landscape-level problems. Scientists, ranchers, public land managers and other stakeholders discuss shifts in current atmospheric and ecological conditions, and efforts to work together in designing and implementing conservation plans with goals to restore and adapt in response to accelerated and increasingly variable climate conditions.
The paper’s title, Cross-Boundary Collaboration in Large Landscape Management: Anticipating and Managing for Climate Disruption and Continuous Change in Western Grassland-Forest Working Landscapes, proposes increased cross-boundary collaborations in which aligned values are explored and become the foundation for design, planning and proactive commitments to adaptive management pathways.
“The roles of ranching, forestry and agriculture in managing large-scale working landscapes are underappreciated,” says Lois Wright Morton, lead author of the paper, a farmer and SfL board member. “Rancher and foresters have the capacity to safeguard ecosystems services, protect and regenerative water and soil resources, ensure open space vistas, strengthen biodiversity, and provide food and agricultural products of benefit to society and ranching families.”
Paper co-author and SfL president Ernie Shea elaborates on the resources needed to safeguard meadow-forest ecosystems and build strong landscape-scale cross-boundary collaborations.
“We must reinvigorate and enable local Soil and Water Conservation Districts to play key roles in accelerating and facilitating the bringing together of diverse stakeholders and incentivize multi-district collaboration beyond local interests to encompass land restoration at landscape scales,” he says.
Goals of the initiative
Solutions from the Land’s Headwaters of the Colorado initiative was inspired by former SfL board member Pat O’Toole, a multi-generational rancher and passionate leader in support of cross-boundary, large landscape, watershed management restoration. O’Toole, who died in February of this year, was president for 19 years of the Family Farm Alliance that represents irrigators in 11 Western states and was a former chair of Intermountain West Joint Venture, which conserves and enhances bird habitats. The Alliance and IWJV collaborated with SfL on the initiative, which is supported by a grant from the Walton Family Foundation.
“Our goals are to increase water storage and supply, support agro-forestry production and biodiversity, improve wildlife habitat and fisheries, sequester carbon, produce renewable energy feedstocks and enable economically viable rural communities to thrive,” Morton says.
“The challenges to large-scale management on working lands,” she says, are many. “There is a need for accelerated science-based monitoring and design and planning that anticipates future climate disruptions; a recognition that the climate is changing the ecosystem and regeneration management may require different species and approaches; and, most importantly, aligning of shared values and goals are critical if multi-pronged conservation strategies are to be successful.”
Examples show effectiveness of collaborations
“There are many good examples of collaborations bringing people together in the Western U.S.,” says Shea. Two examples are the Blackfoot Challenge in Montana and the Altar Valley Conservation Alliance in Arizona. “Both are centered around a watershed and keep ranchers and land managers at their core, empowering a diverse range of local citizens to take positive action for the watershed and their community.”
They give the initiative hope that the SfL cross-boundary collaboration model “can guide the integration ecological and human systems in large-scale working landscapes and anticipate future change so we can move forward with flexible strategies that enable all involved parties to adapt to continuous change.”
About Solutions from the Land
Solutions from the Land (SfL) is a farmer/scientist-led 501c3 nonprofit focused on land-based solutions to global challenges. SfL builds and facilitates state, national and global initiatives and alliances through which farmers, ranchers, foresters and collaborating partners showcase examples of innovation and proactively advocate for policies, partnerships, investments and research that will enable agricultural landscapes to deliver near-term, cost-effective, integrated solutions to global mega-challenges: food and energy security; sustainable economic development; and environmental improvement. For more information, visit www.solutionsfromtheland.org.
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For more information, please contact:
- Ernie Shea, President, Solutions from the Land
eshea@solutionsfromtheland.org 410-252-7079 (office); 410-952-0123 (cell)
- Lois Wright Morton, Farmer and Board Member, Solutions from the Land
lwmorton@iastate.edu 330-473-3390
