McCabe’s work exemplifies what happens when conservation is rooted in community.
MALTA, MT – The Ranchers Stewardship Alliance (RSA) is proud to announce Shaun McCabe, farm bill biologist for Pheasants Forever in Chinook, MT, as the recipient of the 2025 Gold Star Award. This annual recognition honors individuals who demonstrate exceptional commitment to collaborative conservation and make a lasting impact on working lands and wildlife across our region.
Since joining Pheasants Forever, Shaun has played a key role in expanding and strengthening on-the-ground conservation efforts across the western portion of RSA’s focus area. His leadership in the Montana Grassland Partnership has been especially notable, where he coordinates the Grassland Retention Team’s work to engage landowners, identify high-value conservation opportunities, and bring together diverse partners around shared goals.
In particular, Shaun’s work has been instrumental in shaping projects within the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP). He was a driving force behind the development of project concepts for the Big Game Habitat Improvement RCPP proposal, facilitating meetings between ranchers, conservation professionals, and agencies to ensure that habitat goals could be met without compromising the operational needs of working ranches.
Beyond RCPP, Shaun has actively pursued additional funding streams to bring conservation practices to the ground. He has helped craft and implement funding strategies that combine support from local Pheasants Forever chapters, the Mule Deer Foundation, and RSA’s own grant-supported conservation efforts. These efforts have translated into on-the-ground outcomes across Blaine, Phillips, and Hill Counties—enhancing native range, supporting wildlife corridors, and sustaining the working lands that define our communities.
The 2025 Gold Star Award was presented to Shaun on June 4 at the Science Symposium hosted by The Nature Conservancy on the Matador Ranch in south Phillips County.
“Shaun’s ability to bring people together, build actionable plans, and keep projects moving is exactly the kind of leadership grassroots conservation requires,” said Martin Townsend, RSA Conservation Director. “His work has been crucial in enabling RSA to expand on-the-ground conservation efforts on the western edge of our landscape.”
At RSA, it’s more than a motto: ranching, conservation, and community cannot function in isolation. Ranchers must be part of conservation solutions. Conservation efforts must make sense on the ground. And rural communities must remain at the center of it all. Shaun’s work embodies that philosophy—demonstrating what’s possible when partnerships are rooted in trust and built to support both wildlife and the ranching families who steward the land.
