Tag: Montana

2021 Ranchers Stewardship Alliance Annual Report

While 2021 was a year full of challenges and trials, it was also a year where we saw the intersection of “ranching, conservation, and communities” truly create “a winning team.” The severe drought, not just in our northern Montana counties, but across a large sweep of the region, brought with it feed shortages, water concerns, and even tough decisions for ranchers to destock their herds if their hunt for feed supplements or additional pasture came up short. However, in the face of that, the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance (RSA) truly embraced its mission leading to one of its most successful years to date.

We hosted multiple inaugural events and educational efforts, saw new participants seeking information from a larger region, forged stronger partnerships with those who shared our concern of preserving this range when drought placed it under pressure, and helped ranchers manage a bit more effectively by implementing water projects when they were needed most. And none of that could have happened if it wasn’t for dedicated RSA staff rolling up their sleeves, our loyal Board of Directors taking time out of their own strained schedules for the greater good of our collective mission, and our reliable partners continually seeing the need for and providing assistance through collaborative
conservation.

Throughout this Annual Report, it’s evident the work RSA was able to achieve with the help of our staff, Board, and partners was necessary for not only ranchers, but for the greater good of our communities. Events like the Rural Resilience webinar series, the book club, and the Soil Health Tour convened thousands of participants craving more knowledge, seeking new relations, and embracing adaptive management to better their businesses, their local communities, and their part of this larger landscape. The miles of fence and waterlines, and the many new tanks and wells all illustrated not just the ranchers dedication to conservation, but our partners willingness to help improve this
ecosystem for everyone involved – people, livestock, and wildlife.

Looking back at 2021, we may initially remember heat, grasshoppers, water shortages, and drought, but let’s not fail to acknowledge the many wins we experienced – each one coming about because in the face of adversity, we chose to come together as a winning team working collaboratively for ranching, conservation, and community.

Leo Barthelmess, RSA Board President

View a full digital version of the 2021 Annual Report here. Want to receive a printed copy? Email Anna at [email protected] to request your copy!

2021 Impact Report

Hi friends,

We’re so grateful that you’ve been a part of this Ranchers Stewardship Alliance Community over the past year. Together, we’ve made progress in our aim to help multi-generational and beginning ranchers build the collaborative, trusting relationships and community-based solutions we need to create healthy working landscapes and vibrant rural communities.

Here are a few highlights that you helped make happen in 2021:

Last year, the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance’s Conservation Committee worked with 18 ranch families in Phillips, Blaine, and Valley Counties to help implement grazing land improvements aimed to increase the resiliency of their ranch business, our grasslands, and wildlife habitat.

Ranchers Stewardship Alliance committed more than $377,000 to these projects. Conservation Committee partners and the ranchers & landowners themselves contributed another $1.8 million to the projects. That means that together, we invested more than $2.1 million in grassland & grazing improvements that impacted our local communities’ economies this year.

That included:

• 60 miles of wildlife friendly fence built
• 4,500 acres of grazing habitat restored to perennial habitat and native grasses
• 192,595 feet of water pipeline laid for enhanced water systems
• 60 livestock tanks installed with 25 bird escape ramps
• 5 new water wells for stock tanks for enhanced water systems

Our Education Committee cranked its efforts up a notch last year, too!

In July 2021, RSA partnered with Winnett ACES and area Conservation Districts to host a five-stop Nicole Masters Soil Health tour, gathering 221 ranchers across our region for hands-on soil health training and analysis.

The inaugural Graziers’ Gathering in October 2021 focused on elevating local ranching knowledge and experience in peer-to-peering ranching TED-styled talks. The event sold out in the first two weeks of ticket sales!

We hosted our first two Ranch Stewards Book Club sessions, featuring Nicole Master’s For the Love of Soil and Dr. Fred Provenza’s Nourishment. These virtual discussion groups created a community that spans the Northern Great Plains for inspiration to read, learn, grow, and create stimulating discussion around ideas that matter to healthier landscapes, people, and animals.

The first five sessions in the Rural Resilience webinar series shared world-class speakers and innovative ranching and conservation ideas with 944 registered guests, representing up to 26 different states, right in the comfort of our ranch homes!

We share these numbers and celebrations as a constant reminder that even in tough years — the years where drought tests our faith and economic challenges try our spirits — we can still grow and learn and build more resilient ranches, landscapes, and communities to not just weather the next storm, but to thrive in doing what we love.

Thank you for your support, encouragement, and participation in 2021.

You can help continue these efforts in 2022.

Our 2021 Impact Report is in the mail! Check out the digital copy here. We’re looking forward to growing stronger in 2022.

Preserving agricultural land, legacies in North-Central Montana

Internationally known speaker brings tools to navigate transitions and transfers for farm and ranch families to Malta and Glasgow events in March

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Do you want your farm or ranch business to remain intact for the next generation? Most do.

Do you want the family to get along and come home for gatherings? Most do.

What most farms don’t do is break down assumptions, have robust respectful family meetings, and discover the expectations of ALL family members for the succession or transition of the farm. Elaine Froese is an expert in quickly mapping out the family dynamic and identifying the key challenges that need to be unpacked.

Froese is a certified professional speaker, certified coach, and author. She’s a go-to expert for farm and ranch families who want better communication and conflict resolution to secure a successful farm or ranch transition.

“Most farmers are concerned about death and taxes,” Froese says. “But what they should really be paying attention to are the family dynamics and how emotional factors are keeping them stuck. And all of this is impacting the future success of the farm and ranch.”

Froese will lead events in Malta and Glasgow on Tuesday, March 1 and Wednesday, March 2 titled “Land & Legacies: tools to navigate transitions and transfers,” hosted by the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance.

Each location’s event will begin at 10 a.m., will include a catered lunch, and conclude at 5 p.m. with a social to follow. Registration is $75 for the first individual in a family or farm/ranch business and $35 for each additional registrant. Families and business partners are encouraged to attend together. Every group receives one of Froese’s books, plus personal workbooks to keep each family member moving forward.

“In many farm kitchens there’s a bull in the middle of the room. It’s the ‘undiscussabull,’” Froese says. “It’s the things no one is willing to talk about, and most know they need to talk about these tough issues. They just don’t know how or where to get started.”

Some of these tough topics Froese will cover in her workshops will include:

• Income streams for each generation
• Housing and where each family unit is going to live
• Paying down debt
• More open communication
• Fairness to non-farm heirs
• Conflict avoidance
• Transfer of ownership
• Decreasing anxiety over the uncertainty of the future

Find a full agenda, more information, and registration at www.ranchstewards.org.

Froese’s workshops will also appeal to ranchers and farmers who desire to see their land and agricultural legacies move forward, but who don’t have an apparent family heir, and to young or beginning ranchers who do not have a family business to enter.

Regardless of where your agricultural business find itself in the process, Froese says she’s on a mission to help you get unstuck, communicate better, find harmony through understanding, and secure a profitable agricultural legacy.

Ranchers Stewardship Alliance is a rancher-led non-profit based in Malta, Montana. This event is planned and funded by the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance Education Committee with the help of numerous regional and local community sponsors.

Title sponsors include Northwest Farm Credit Services, First Community Bank of Glasgow, Montana Livestock Ag Credit, Inc., Independence Bank Malta and Glasgow branches, The Nature Conservancy of Montana, Bank of Bridger, N.A. Malta and Glasgow branches, and RCAN – Rural Communities and Agricultural Heritage.

Malta local sponsors include: Northwest Realty, Phillips County Title, Blaine County Conservation District, Louie Petrie Ranch, Pleiades Foundation, Phillips County Conservation District (local event co-host).

Glasgow local sponsors include: Edward Jones of Glasgow, United Insurance and Realty of Glasgow.

Sponsorships are still available. Please contact Angel at [email protected] to help sponsor and support bringing these events to your agricultural community! This event will qualify for the continuing professional education credits for the Montana State Board of Accountants.

For more information, visit www.ranchstewards.org or call 406-654-1405.

2020 Ranchers Stewardship Alliance Annual Report

In the midst of severe drought, we’re constantly reminded of the power of deep roots. The Ranchers Stewardship Alliance has been working to solve problems and create a brighter future for our ranches, our rural communities and the wildlife that depends on this land for more than 17 years.

Our organization has experienced some incredible growth in the past year. We’ve added new staff, we’ve added resources for more grazing improvement projects, and we’ve added big goals to our future plans. But we know we’ve only grown today because of the local, focused effort so many people have put in over the course of the past 17 years.

We believe this is how we help our own rural communities succeed. We start small, we focus on the positive outcomes we can control, and we recognize we must desire a clear solution more than we want to fixate on our problems.

Out here, we all want quality of life for ourselves and our livestock, we want a wonderful community to live in, we want these soils and water systems to work properly. As ranchers, we recognize we’re just a little piece of this big complex puzzle of life. Together, we can take good care of the pieces in our hands.

We’re excited to share this 2020 Annual Report with you, and to show you the pieces we’ve been working on. Our collective successes are only possible when we tap into the reserves of a deeply rooted community. We need each other to build a thriving future. I’m so thankful to live in the community we do, to work on the landscape we do, and to partner with the people we do. It’s a wonderful place to be.

Leo Barthelmess,

Ranchers Stewardship Alliance Board President

PS — View a full digital version of the 2020 Annual Report here. Want to receive a printed copy? Email Madison at [email protected] to request your copy!

Soil Health Tour with Nicole Masters ahead

Internationally recognized agroecologist, author and teacher Nicole Masters will facilitate five in-person soil health workshops across North-Central Montana this summer.

“In the midst of a drought, we’re all thinking, ‘What can we do to make our land and our ranches more resilient?” rancher and Musselshell Watershed Coalition coordinator Laura Nowlin said. “Anything we can do is worth considering, and we know that soil health is a critical part of that equation.”

The day-long, hands-on workshops will be held in Winnett, Malta, Glasgow and Circle, Montana starting June 28. Each location will have unique, site-specific topical focuses and targeted key take-aways, but all locations will cover an introduction to soil health principles. Attendees are welcome to choose one or several locations to attend. Registration is now open at www.ranchstewards.org.

Masters, the director of internationally recognized Integrity Soils, has a formal background in ecology, soil science and organizational learning. Her team at Integrity Soils works alongside producers in the U.S., Canada, and across the Australasia region consulting and coaching land managers in soil health principles. Her book, For the Love of Soil, is a land manager’s roadmap to healthy soil and revitalized food systems. The book equips producers with knowledge, skills, and insights to regenerate ecosystem health and grow farm profits.

The Soil Health Tour is hosted by a partnership between the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance, Winnett ACES, and the Garfield, McCone, and Petroleum County Conservation Districts.

“Our goal is to have more tools in the toolbox when it comes to knowing how we can help our soil hold more moisture, how we can add diversity to our soil, and how these skills will help us be more productive and profitable in the long term,” Petroleum County Conservation District administrator Carie Hess said. “Soil health is a landscape issue – it doesn’t know boundaries, and when we all work together, we can make big improvements across the landscape.”

Masters will kick off the Soil Health Tour at 10 a.m., Monday, June 28 at the Flatwillow Hall near Winnett, Montana for the “Ladies Day on the Range.”  Guests should plan to bring a sack lunch for the all-day event, which will focus on a basic understanding of soil health, explore how healthy soils are connected to healthy foods and ask, ‘What should we do first to improve nutrient density?” Registration for the Ladies’ Day is $20 per person.

The broader Soil Health Overview workshop will open at 1 p.m. the following day, Tuesday, June 29, for all participants. This session will begin at 1 p.m., also at Flatwillow Hall, with dinner provided and an optional BYOB social hour at 6 p.m. This session will offer a rangelands and grazing focus, identifying how to manage for grasshoppers, tame grass pastures, and address annual grasses like cheat grass and Japanese brome. Registration is $35 for the first registrant, then $20 for additional business or family members (up to six people).

The Soil Health Tour will reconvene at 1 p.m., Saturday, July 10 at the C Lazy J Ranch south of Malta, Montana. Craig and Conni French will host Master’s classroom and field instruction from 1-5:30 p.m. at the ranch, with a focus on grassland restoration and intensive livestock grazing for soil health. Dinner will be provided for all guests at 6 p.m. at the Milk River Pavilion in Malta; a no-host social hour will follow for anyone interested in learning more.

Beginning at 9 a.m., Monday, July 12, Jeff and Marisa Sather will host Master’s next event on their farm and ranch near Larslan in Valley County. This location will focus on soil health in cropland systems, including the use of traditional grains, forage and cover crops in rotation, inter-cropping, and livestock integration. Guests will discuss and view results from compost extract applications and other biological and mineral amendment protocols, along with an equipment demonstration, including a compost extractor, combine stripper header, and mobile electric fencing unit.

The final session of the tour begins at 9 a.m., Wednesday, July 14 at Josh and Amanda Murphy’s Circle, Montana ranch. Field work will be from 9 a.m. to noon, followed by lunch and an indoor classroom discussion at the Circle Fairgrounds. This workshop will focus on future uses for expired CRP land and regenerating old, crested wheatgrass stands. Registration for all sessions other than the Ladies Day on the Range is $35 for an initial registrant; $20 per additional business or family member (up to six people per group).

Earlier in the year, Masters was a featured speaker in a Ranchers Stewardship Alliance-hosted webinar, “Building resilient underground livestock: Principles for regenerative agriculture and soil health.” A recording of the webinar is available at https://youtu.be/9Lrn-sfWAv4.

Farmers, ranchers, grazers, and gardeners alike are welcome and encouraged to register early. Registration for each location will close one week before its respective event.  Youth are welcomed to attend; children under the age of 12 may join free of charge. Registration scholarships are available for young/beginning producers (under the age of 40). The scholarship application can be found on the event’s registration page and takes less than ten minutes to complete. Link to the registration page can be found at www.ranchstewards.org.

For questions or more information, please contact Ranchers Stewardship Alliance Project Leader Laura Nelson at [email protected], or call the RSA office at 406-654-1405.

NextGen Fencing: The Future of Pasture Management

Montana rancher shares lessons learned with virtual cow collar technology in free May 18 webinar.

By Laura Nelson,
Ranchers Stewardship Alliance

He never thought he’d see it in his lifetime.

“This started with a conversation with a friend in the wildlife community,” Montana rancher Leo Barthelmess said. They discussed the challenges old, barbed—wire fencing posed to wildlife migration, and the cost and labor involved for a rancher to maintain and build new fencing. The expenses for both continued to mount.

“She said, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to have fences?’ I said, ‘Yes, but we won’t see it in you or I’s lifetime,’” Barthelmess recalled.

Just a couple years later, a conversation with a fellow Ranching For Profit graduate piqued his interest and connected him to company working to implement virtual fencing collars for livestock. He’s now in his second full year testing the technology on his family’s south Phillips County ranch.

Barthelmess and Vence, Inc., engineer Todd Parker will present “Ranching for a Resilient Future: Virtual Fencing for Land, Livestock and Landscape Health” in a free webinar at 7 p.m., Tuesday, May 18. Registration for the webinar is at www.ranchstewards.org. This is the final session in the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance’s Rural Resilience webinar series.

The Ranchers Stewardship Alliance, with support from the Montana Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative (GLCI) also released a short film called “NextGen Fencing” on the topic this week.

The virtual fencing collars use satellite positioning technology to contain livestock without the need for a physical barrier. The distribution of the collared livestock can be carefully and precisely controlled through Vence’s software interface, where grazing cells can be quickly moved or modified according to conditions and vegetation growth.

“We are more prepared to weather adverse situations because we have the tools and the opportunities and the options to change course rather quickly,” Barthelmess said in the video.

The Barthelmess family piloted the use of the virtual cow collars on 400 mature cows in October 2019. After a full year utilizing the technology in 2020, they continue to adjust their grazing strategy and learn alongside their cattle.

“A lot of what good ranching and stockmanship is, is taking good care of the land, and we’re bringing another tool to the table to help ranchers do that,” Parker said.

Barthelmess said he noted a very distinct change in animal behavior over the course of the past two grazing seasons with the collars in place.

“They have historic memory of where they graze and how they graze,” Barthelmess said. “We’ve made them graze places they’ve never grazed before.”

The ability to adaptably rest favored areas and force cattle to graze historically under-utilized pasture with the collars helps stockpile forages to move the ranch closer to its ultimate goal of year-round grazing. While Barthelmess says he recognizes a yard full of hay is a necessary insurance policy for a North-Central Montana winter, “Our long-term goal is to graze cattle out on improved forage 11-12 months a year. The cost of equipment is just too high to keep haying – we have to change our business model if we want to sustain the ranch.”

Barthelmess can adjust his grazing barriers on his home computer or iPad. The barriers upload to Vence servers in California and the new fence lines are live within 12 hours.

“Virtual fencing is going to be a game-changer in terms of cost and labor,” Parker said. “You’re able to do more fencing, and more flexible fencing. Stock density can go up, ranching efficiency can go up and all of this is going to improve the bottom line.”

While the virtual collars mean less time spent building or moving temporary electric fence, or repairing and building perimeter fence, Barthelmess says it doesn’t mean less time in the field – just different time. He now spends more time observing the cattle, noting the conditions of the grass and soil, strategizing how to improve the next pasture design and enjoying the land and lifestyle that he loves.

“We want quality of life for ourselves and our livestock, we want a wonderful community to live in, we want these soils and water systems to work properly,” Barthelmess said. “We’re just one piece of this big, complex web of life, and we’re just trying to manage the pieces we can manage.”

# # #

About Ranchers Stewardship Alliance, Inc.: In 2003, 30 ranching families in northern Montana came together to resolve common problems they faced. Now known as the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance, this rancher-led non-profit organization continues to work to strengthen our rural communities, economy and ranching culture. RSA exists to help multi-generational and beginning ranchers build the collaborative, trusting relationships and community-based solutions we need to create healthy, working landscapes and vibrant rural communities. Ranching, Conservation, Communities – a Winning Team!

The NextGen Fencing film, produced by AgriStudios, is available at https://youtu.be/0NSWoWCROus. Please contact Laura Nelson at [email protected] for to inquire about sharing an original version of the film with your audience.

Bring landowner voices to Dec. 1 Private Lands/Public Wildlife meeting

In 2018, Department of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke issued Secretarial Order 3362 to improve habitat quality and big game winter range and migration corridors for antelope, elk and mule deer. The order provides funding for research and restoration projects to improve habitat within important migration corridors across the West. In response, Montana’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks more recently identified five priority areas in our state with the most relevance to big game winter range and migration.

From my family ranch’s view in the heart of ‘Priority Area D: from the Canadian border to the Musselshell Plains’ in south Phillips County, this is no surprise. We’ve long been aware of these big game movements, although we may not have been able to articulate our working knowledge with the precision of the research that has more recently tracked and measured the extent of this land’s importance to big game movements. Still, we watch wildlife move through our pastures and fields with the same seasonal ebbs and flows that dictate our ranch’s calendar and daily work. We see when and where antelope pace alongside a fence line they fail to navigate, we recognize the impact a wildlife herd can have on our livestock grazing plans, and we mend the fences where their movements burst through.

On Dec. 1, the Governor-appointed Private Lands Public Wildlife Council will host a panel discussion to hear from landowners across Montana concerning how the state may better support working lands that support wildlife movements and migrations. The Council ultimately offers recommendations to the Governor and to the state legislature on issues concerning private lands and public wildlife. As the stewards of our working lands, ranchers can and must offer valuable working knowledge to this conversation. It’s important that we offer our insights and ideas early in the process and remain engaged in the conversation.

The Ranchers Stewardship Alliance hosted a local discussion in October with our Fish, Wildlife and Parks representatives to learn more about their research and understanding of big game migrations and to share our working knowledge of the land and wildlife they’re studying. The local ranching leaders who serve on our Ranchers Stewardship Alliance Board of Directors appreciate that FWP has made concerted and conscientious efforts to seek out local landowner perspectives in these wildlife migration issues.

The Private Lands Public Wildlife Council’s Dec. 1 virtual meeting will continue that conversation by asking: How does the state of Montana better support the working lands that support wildlife movement and migration? What is working? What do landowners need more help with, and what recommendations would landowners give? Information on the meeting, including call-in information, can be found at http://fwp.mt.gov/hunting/hunterAccess/plpw/.

The technical knowledge and research provided by FWP, other agencies and wildlife experts helps me make decisions that can benefit my ranch, the public’s wildlife and my rural community. In turn, our ranching experiences and observational wisdom can help agencies make plans that are realistic, agile and meaningful. This kind of collaboration doesn’t happen by accident. It takes resources and relationships and constant communication. The door is open on Dec. 1, and I’m urging fellow ranchers and private landowners to tune in to the live stream, offer their input and be a part of the conversation.

– Leo Barthelmess, President, Ranchers Stewardship Alliance
Barthelmess Ranch, Malta, MT. 

Ranchers Stewardship Alliance is a rancher-led, conservation-focused non-profit in north-central Montana. We help multigenerational and beginning ranchers build the collaborative, trusting relationships and community-based solutions they need to create healthy working landscapes and vibrant rural communities. We believe that ranching, conservation, and communities build the ultimate winning team.

Ranch Stewards November 2020 Meeting Agenda

We’re looking forward to having you join us at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 10 via Zoom for our November Ranchers Stewardship Alliance meeting. The meeting information is below.

Been curious about RSA but not sure how to get involved? This would be a great time to get started by joining a committee! This is where you can really make a difference in guiding the application of our mission: Ranching, Conservation, Communities — A Winning Team!

• Workshop/education committee – Bring a speaker or topic idea you want to learn more about and help share it with the community.
• Phillips County Proud Committee – Plan the social event of the season to celebrate ranching, conservation and communities!
• Conservation Committee – Review and monitor the on-the-ground conservation work of RSA and our partners.
• Communication/outreach Committee – Help share the story of how ranching, conservation and communities make a winning team!
• Expansion Committee – Work with Winnett ACES leaders to find mutually beneficial relationships and grow RSA’s impact in rural communities.
• Fundraising Committee – Develop and execute fundraising plans to ensure a sustainable future for ranching, conservation and rural communities!

If one of those sparks an interest, but you’re unable to join us on Nov. 10, just email Laura at [email protected] and let us know you’d like to be notified of the committee’s work and meetings.

5 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2020

Ranchers’ Stewardship Alliance November 2020 Meeting Agenda

Connect with VIDEO:
Join Zoom Meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85639528990

Connect with AUDIO ONLY:
One tap mobile: +16699009128,,85639528990#
Dial in: 1-669-900-9128
Meeting ID: 856 3952 8990

Mission Statement: Ranching, Conservation,
Communities – a Winning Team!

Introductions/Roll Call

• Agenda additions/changes
• Outreach: Has anyone presented to any groups pertaining to RSA this last month?
• Review and approve October minutes
• Review and approve financials

Standing Committee Reports:

• Conservation Committee: Sheila Walsh
• Phillips County Proud Committee (now focused on annual meeting): Kelli French
• Workshop/Education Committee: Conni French
• Communication Committee: Dale Veseth
• Fundraising Committee: Aaron Oxarart and Vicki Olsen
• Expansion Committee: Sheila Was
• Membership Committee: Conni (with Fundraising Committee)
• Beginning Ranchers Committee: Casey

Old Business

• NFWF NGP Phase V grant application submitted – Laura/Angel
  (Submitted narrative and letters of support attached)

New Business

• Welcome new staff – Linda Poole, office administrator
• ACES updates – Brent Smith
• Conservation Committee requests – Sheila

Announcements/Upcoming Events:

• Oct. 25 – Nov. 20: REGENERATE Quivera Coalition Conference, https://quiviracoalition.org/regenerate/register/
• Nov. 12: 5 p.m., Grass Bank Planning Committee meeting
• Nov. 19: 1 p.m., Communications Committee meeting
• Nov. 30: 6 p.m., Fundraising Committee meeting
• Dec. 1: Expansion Committee meeting
• Dec. 3: Conservation Committee meeting
• Dec. 8: RSA Monthly meeting
• Jan. 12: RSA Annual Meeting

Adjourn meeting

Executive board session to follow

One Montana’s Master Hunter Program accepting applications

One Montana’s Master Hunter Program is accepting applications October 1, 2020 – November 30, 2020 for the 2021 classes.

The program includes classroom and online instruction, and field work. The course covers wildlife management, history of conservation, hunting culture and ethics, private land stewardship, shooting accuracy and precision, lead-free ammunition, and hunting skills to name a few.  Master Hunter instructors have a wide diversity of knowledge and perspectives and in include ranchers, farmers, university faculty, professional shooting instructors, wildlife managers, and wildlife biologists, and MT Fish Wildlife and Parks personnel, among others.

This year, Ranchers Stewardship Alliance board vice president Conni French and her husband, Craig, hosted three Master Hunter students on their C Lazy J Ranch. Learn about their experience with the hunters and the program here.

“Our biggest take-away from the day was how important it is to keep communication open between hunters and landowners as they share the same resource. As we visited throughout the day we came to understand that these hunters were curious, ethical, hard-working, and enthusiastic. We were lucky to have them come out and work with us for a day and we look forward to another work day with the Master Hunter program down the road.” — Conni French

One of the primary goals of the program is to build trust and working relationships between landowners and sportsmen and women. The program provides hunters the opportunity to learn from landowners about the challenges they face on a daily bases and specifically how wildlife impacts them. Secondly, the program seeks to help landowners and the state with their wildlife management goals. By working with landowners Master Hunters also help to change false perceptions about both hunting and agriculture, and ultimately work to increase access opportunities for future generations.

Locations for classes in 2021 will be offered in Bozeman (February), Great Falls (March), Kalispell (April), and Miles City (May).  Each class will consist of three 2-day weekends, except Miles City will have a two 3-Day weekend format. A weekend rendezvous in June is also required for qualifications, field exercises, and the final exam.

The program cost is $375.  A limited number of scholarships are available through a separate application process. The program is led by One Montana (1MT), a nonprofit located in Bozeman, MT that works to sustain a vibrant Montana by connecting our urban and rural communities.  1MT implements creative programs that maintain agriculture and working lands, support private land stewardship, and preserve our cultural heritage.

Landowners interested in partnering with the program to manage wildlife, build relationships with ethical, educated, and effective hunters, and tell their stewardship story to an audience of sportsmen can fully customize their hunting program with Master Hunter to meet their specific needs.

To learn more about taking the class, email Everett Headley, Lead Instructor, at [email protected]. To inquiry about becoming a land partner of the program, contact Kelly Beevers, at [email protected].

Learn more about the Master Hunter Program at https://www.mtmasterhunter.com/ and  1MT at https://onemontana.org/.

Building a herd and hope

Beginning rancher revitalizes retired CRP to grow her herd and wildlife habitat

By Laura C. Nelson, Ranchers Stewardship Alliance

The old homestead still stands sentinel on the hill.

Weathered, worn and abandoned long ago, Heather Martin has often looked at the relic and wondered just how the brother-sister duo who claimed this parcel more than a century ago thought they could make a living off such a small sliver of sandy soil.

“There’s no well, no running water, and when this reservoir dries up, there’s nothing,” the Phillips County rancher says, nodding to the still pool nestled in the natural basin. “Maybe they got more rain back then, maybe it held more snow – I just don’t know. It had to have been a tough living.”

As decades wore on, making a living on that land didn’t get any easier. It was plowed, then entered into the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in the 1990s, indicating it was considered marginal cropland, at best. Planted to crested wheatgrass, a non-native but prolific species, it was left to weather the elements like the homestead decades before. The crested wheatgrass took root and covered the bare ground as intended, but wildlife search for tender, native grasses to graze. Dead growth became a barrier to new life.

Still, like many before her, Heather Martin saw opportunity.

“I was trying to grow; we were running out of ground. I was just trying to make it work, this ranching deal,” she says. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I’ve known that since I was eight years old.”

Cattle, like the wildlife before, would likely turn their noses up at the brittle, nutrient-poor overgrown and dead vegetation, and Martin feared it was a tinder box of bad luck waiting for a lightning strike and an uncontrollable blaze.

She knocked down what she could with a swather and baled the worst stands the year she bought it. With a land payment pressing, there was no time for further renovations. The dilapidated fence line was ragged at best – “That first year, I was getting heifers in every day. Every day! But what could I do? I had to use it.”

A previous owner had interspersed some alfalfa seed, and native vegetation began inching its way back in. With the first stand knocked back, she bought 600-pound heifers to develop and sold them at 1,000 pounds.

“It’s a producing little pasture,” she says, sure of its potential to grow the nourishment needed to expand her Red Angus breeding program. It’s the perfect spot for developing heifers or for her A.I. and embryo transfer cattle.

“I love yearlings; I love calving heifers, too. I know a lot of people don’t like to bother with it – it’s hard!—but I like the challenge,” Martin says. “I like that you get to be the one who see her ‘get it’ for the first time. You get to teach them, in a way.”

But the land was ready to teach her the same lesson it doled out to generations of westerners before: dreams, ambition, hard work and know-how doesn’t mean much without water.

“In 2017, I hauled water every day to this pasture. The reservoir dried all the way up. If you’ve ever had to haul water, you know – I’m haying, trying to get everything else done, and it’s up at 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning to haul water, then off to work or to help someone else on their place and back at 11 o’clock at night to fill the trough,” she recalls. “My heart is here – these cows, they’re my heart – but I don’t know. Sometimes you wonder if it makes sense, if it’s really worth it, you know?”

Hope in a hard time

“In 2017, the panic was on – everyone in Phillips County was out of water,” Sage Grouse Initiative Rangeland Conservationist Martin Townsend says. “That summer was a record-setting drought, so it really highlighted where people were low on water. At that point, available water became the most limiting resource for agricultural production.”

When Heather Martin approached the local Farm Service Agency office for potential water development funding, she learned that due to high demand, it would be at least a year before cost-share funding would be available. Instead, she was directed to the Natural Resources Conservation Service to inquire about new conservation funding available through the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance (RSA). There, she was introduced to Martin Townsend, who is hired by the Soil and Water Conservation District of Montana to work in the Malta Natural Resource Conservation Service office doing conservation planning and contracting.  Townsend also serves as RSA’s volunteer Conservation Committee Coordinator.

The Ranchers Stewardship Alliance was formed in 2003 as a rancher-led conservation organization based in Malta, Montana. The organization’s mission is to help multi-generational and beginning ranchers build the collaborative, trusting relationships and community-based solutions they need to create healthy working landscapes and vibrant rural communities.

In 2017, RSA was awarded a $300,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Northern Great Plains Program for local rangeland improvements to benefit grassland birds, rangeland health and working landscape through livestock grazing.

The grant money would be administered through the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance’s newly formed Conservation Committee, a collaboration of ranchers, state and federal agencies and conservation organizations. Matching funds from Conservation Committee partners brought the total available funds to $410,000.

“The first phase of that grant money was specifically focused on expiring CRP land that could be put into a grazing system,” Townsend says. “The goal is to reduce the risk of cultivation and keep grasslands for grassland birds, while supporting working lands, ranching and the rural community.”

Heather Martin’s project was the perfect fit, smack in the middle of priority habitat for grassland birds like the chestnut-collared and McCown’s longspur. The pasture also falls just outside the core area near a sage grouse migratory corridor and has several active leks (breeding grounds) within a five-mile radius.

It marked all the boxes in promoting biodiversity and healthy wildlife habitat, but most rewarding, Townsend says, is that it offered resilience to a  rancher working to grow her herd.

“We want her operation to be functional, because when it is, it’s functional for wildlife, too,” Townsend says.

To do that, the RSA Conservation Committee proposed to drill a new well, install 6,000 feet of livestock pipeline, install two fiberglass water tanks with bird ramps and construct 1.2 miles of perimeter and internal fencing. With a nearly one-to-one match, Martin purchased the tanks and labor to construct the fencing and in turn, the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance would pay to install the well, pipeline and purchase fencing supplies.

“It’s a godsend,” Martin says. “In less than eight months, I had water on this place. I couldn’t believe it.”

Resilience for a first-time rancher

The pickup bounces across what may have once been farming tracks in the hip-high, new growth.

“I’m still getting to know this little pasture,” Martin says. “It takes time to really get to know a piece of land; to know what grows, what does well, the lay of the land.”

The new water system has allowed her to look at this land differently. When she relied on the reservoir for water, it could only be grazed in early spring when water ran. In the first year after the well was drilled and pipeline installed, she was able to experiment with winter grazing with cattle foraging into December. Now, she can rest the pasture through the spring and summer to allow fresh regrowth.

She’s not the only one reaping the benefits of the reinvigorated landscape.

She’s mid-sentence when she stops the pickup abruptly and points: “Grouse.”

There, nestled in the swaying sweet clover, the female sage grouse finds cover. Earlier in the spring, the shorter, new grass would be ideal for songbirds, and throughout the year, antelope move through the landscape. In recent years, Martin has seen more elk making their way through her pastures, and one year, she spotted a rogue moose.

“That’s the beauty of a grazing system,” rancher and RSA Conservation Committee chair Sheila Walsh says. “It creates diversity on the landscape that a variety of wildlife needs to thrive. But what’s just as important to us is that it can allow a young rancher to thrive, too.”

Martin still has more fencing work to complete her end of the RSA conservation match. The cross-fencing will help her create an even more detailed grazing plan and add more options to her breeding program. As she develops her herd, she’s working toward more purebred breeding stock to sell. She’s in her second year offering registered Red Angus bulls in collaboration with the Rough Country Breeders sale and sees opportunity to offer more.

“I just love what I do,” she says. Sticking with it involves a lot of stubbornness, she laughs, but it also requires a bigger team. “Starting out on my own and building my own program has been hard,” she says. “But I’ve had a lot of people pulling for me in places I needed them. And for that, I’m thankful.”

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About Ranchers Stewardship Alliance, Inc.: In 2003, about 30 ranching families in northern Montana came together to resolve common problems they faced. Now known as RSA, this rancher-led conservation organization works to strengthen our rural community, economy and culture. Our mission is to help multi-generational and beginning ranchers build the collaborative, trusting relationships and community-based solutions they need to create healthy, working landscapes and vibrant rural communities.

About the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation: Chartered by Congress in 1984, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) protects and restores the nation’s fish, wildlife, plants and habitats. Working with federal, corporate, and individual partners, NFWF has funded more than 5,000 organizations and generated a total conservation impact of $6.1 billion. Learn more at www.nfwf.org.