Partners for Grasslands Stewardship PDF Print E-mail
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Herding cattle on the Dakota Prairie Grasslands
Photo courtesy of USDA Forest Service
"I've seen quite a few consensus groups along the way and none of them lasted a year," says John Brown of the Little Missouri Grazing Association. Partners for Grasslands Stewardship is "evolving and people are talking."

Location: The Dakota Prairie Grasslands, 1.26 million acres administered by the U.S. Forest Service and intermingled with private lands. The grasslands provide forage for 63,000 cattle annually, making it the Forest Service's largest livestock-grazing program. These lands are actually four separate units of national grasslands in North Dakota (and a small portion of South Dakota); most of the organization's efforts focus on the Little Missouri National Grasslands in western North Dakota.

Objective: To create a collaborative framework for grasslands management, build consensus on grasslands public policy issues, and provide resources to stakeholders for innovative grasslands stewardship.

Participants: US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, North Dakota Fish & Game Department, North Dakota Farm Bureau, Little Missouri Grazing Association, The Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, Cass County Wildlife Club, Natural Resource Trust, National Audubon Society, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, West River Regional Tourism Council, Amerada Hess Corporation, and local ranchers. The Consensus Council serves as a process facilitator for the Partnership.

History: Despite an extremely low population density, North Dakotans have a bad habit of stepping on each other's feet when it comes to grasslands management. The hullabaloo over the Dakota Prairie Grasslands management plan was no exception. Community meetings launched by the Forest Service in 1995 triggered a contentious tug-of-war between two traditional adversaries, environmentalists and public-lands ranchers, over wildlife management, livestock grazing allotments, recreation, oil and gas leasing and economic impacts on surrounding communities. Instead of waiting for courtroom wrangling, public lands ranchers from the Little Missouri Grazing Association pushed for a change.

In 1999, the grazing association contacted the Consensus Council, Inc., a non-profit conflict resolution group based in Bismarck. The Consensus Council brought together diverse stakeholders, including grazing associations, environmental groups and sportsmen, as well as government agencies and representatives to talk through their differences - and discover their common values.

The group took a road trip to Lander, Wyoming, to see how a similar collection of rivals was solving problems through a consensus-based approach. When the participants returned, they formed the Grasslands Stewardship Initiative and identified 45 stakeholders to engage in discussions over management of the Dakota Prairie Grasslands. The massive roster included members of the Medora and McKenzie grazing associations, who feared the collaboration would destroy the ranching economy. Reaching consensus was difficult. A smaller group of committed stakeholders, minus ranchers from Medora and McKenzie, forged ahead as Partners for Grasslands Stewardship (PGS) in 2002.

Accomplishments: Before PGS, "people never got a chance to talk to each other," says John Brown, a board member of the Little Missouri Grazing Association and former President of the North Dakota Grazing Association. "We discovered we had a lot of the same goals."

The group has begun a monitoring program on the grasslands to build trust among partners. Through science-based assessment, public-lands ranchers can demonstrate their stewardship of the grasslands and promptly address concerns. PGS has also received money from Congress through Senator Byron Dorgan (D) to actively combat noxious weeds in and around the grasslands.

The greatest achievement of PGS so far has been the development of coordinated resource management (CRM). Typically, the Forest Service unilaterally develops 10-year allotment management plans, nestled within the comprehensive plan, which has led to appeals and conflicts. In comparison, CRM involves stakeholders in the design of allotment management plans from the onset, capitalizing on the collaborative framework of PGS. Currently, CRM is in place on an allotment of the Little Missouri and another in southeastern North Dakota on the Sheyenne National Grasslands. CRM means "less time and money spent in court," says John Brown, "and more time working on the resource."

This past January, PGS and Dickinson State University (DSU) announced a joint partnership to promote grasslands as a resource for rural community survival. DSU's Department of Agriculture and Technical Studies will provide facilities and funding to assist PGS in developing pilot grassbanking projects. In return, PGS will provide DSU students with the opportunity to participate in current projects on grassland health, grazing, and land management. PGS and DSU are also in the process of organizing a follow-up to the Great Plains Population Symposium, which sought to encourage community involvement and discuss strategies for grassland management and multiple-use.

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 The Eberts Ranch on the banks of the Little Missouri
Photo courtesy of the National Park Service
Challenges/constraints: The successes of PGS have come at the expense of grasslands interests that have refused to participate. The absence of the Medora and McKenzie grazing associations, major stakeholders on the Dakota Prairie Grasslands, has limited the scope of decisions and the effectiveness of the consensus approach.

Randy Mosser, president of the Medora Grazing Association, calls PGS "a secret organization" that his group has never been invited to join. He says the federal government set aside the grasslands to be grazed, but now "the Forest Service and all these other groups are trying to change that purpose."

While the Little Missouri Grazing Association has built trust with the federal agency and conservation groups through PGS, Medora ranchers remain wary through their opposition. The battleground in this struggle is the Eberts Ranch, a 5,000-acre private ranch with 15,000 acres of allotted public lands, that's up for sale. The Forest Service and the state of North Dakota are looking to buy Eberts and utilize the land as a "grassbank," or a common forage area for public lands ranchers.

"If a grassbank is created there," says Mosser, "it will never be utilized [for grazing] again because the Forest Service won't allow it." He opposes any government acquisition of private land and says the Eberts Ranch will be used for recreation, not ranching.

The Forest Service and PGS members dispute this allegation. Dave Pieper, Forest Service supervisor for the Dakota Prairie Grasslands, says the grassbank would provide flexibility for grasslands permittees looking to rest and restore their own allotments. But without the participation of the Medora Grazing Association in PGS, there's no collaborative process to work through the issue.

PGS has concentrated programs like CRM among supportive ranchers like those of the Little Missouri Grazing Association. They hope these projects will demonstrate the value of the collaborative approach and sway skeptics through productive results. They are learning, however, that collaboration doesn't come easy. Rangeland management is a "constant give-and-take. It is really adaptive management," says the Forest Service's Pieper. "It's that same give-and-take once you get [everybody] in the same room."


For more information see:

Dakota Prairie Grasslands

The Nature Conservancy North Dakota Chapter
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Last Updated ( Friday, 11 April 2008 )