In southeast New Mexico, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is working to preserve grassland habitat and improve rangeland health on public lands by treating and removing invasive mesquite. This is part of a larger effort through Restore New Mexico to remove mesquite on both public and private lands. Since 2005, the partnership has treated [...]
Migratory Bird Joint Ventures, using key funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, have capacity to foster value-added approaches in leveraging the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds to accomplish their missions.
The Sonoran Joint Venture has been supporting long-term ecological monitoring for decades. This spring we partnered with the Tucson Audubon Society (TAS) and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to revive a Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship (MAPS) bird banding station in the Las Cienegas National Conservation Area in southeast Arizona. This station was previously [...]
While “Motus” may seem like the latest bird conservation buzzword, the Motus Wildlife Tracking System (Motus) is a program of Birds Canada that was launched in 2014. It has continued to gain popularity as a tool to study the ecology and conservation of migratory animals. Radio telemetry has been used since the 1960’s to track [...]
Looking at an interactive playa map developed by Playa Lakes Joint Venture (PLJV), it’s easy to see how playas and renewable energy infrastructure are often found in the same locations — blue shapes marking playas and orange and green circles representing wind turbines often dot the same areas of the region. But why does this [...]
The State Acres for Wildlife Enhancement (SAFE) practice within the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is an innovative approach which allows state fish and wildlife agencies, along with their federal and NGO partners, to define priority species and landscapes for practice delivery. North Dakota has several designated SAFE projects, but among the most relevant to the [...]
A key aspect to successful conservation delivery is listening to the needs of partners and shaping strategy around those conversations. That is what Playa Lakes Joint Venture (PLJV) is doing with two recently funded projects that address declining aquifer levels in Kansas. Groundwater Recharge and Sustainability Project This past year, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service [...]
As an “all bird” Joint Venture, the Prairie Pothole Joint Venture (PPJV) is committed to addressing the conservation needs of all avian species that use the region. This is a daunting task given the diversity of bird species, landscapes, and variability in our understanding of limiting factors for many species. However, grassland and wetland habitat [...]
Flood irrigation on private rangelands maintains many wetland systems, which were historically dependent on natural flooding. Flood irrigation sustains valuable wildlife habitat on working lands such as foraging habitat for migrating and breeding waterbirds and late summer brood-rearing habitat for sage grouse. In this "Intermountain Insights" we distill the science behind how ranchers describe the [...]
In the fall of 2018, the North Olympic Land Trust added a few more acres to the 3,300 it had already conserved on Washington’s North Olympic Peninsula. A 34.5 acre parcel was donated to the Land Trust and includes footage along the Calawah River where it runs through Forks, Washington. The Olympic Peninsula is within [...]