By Robert Parkhurst

Growers with grasslands on their property have a new reason to leave that land untouched.

On July 22, the Climate Action Reserve, a non-profit organization that creates offset standards and serves as one of the offset registries for California’s cap-and-trade program, approved a new protocol that rewards farmers for avoiding the conversion of grasslands to cropland.

The new “grasslands protocol” highlights a growing trend in agriculture: farmers being paid for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Earlier this summer, the California Air Resources Board approved a new protocol for rice growers, representing the first-ever crop-based carbon standards in a compliance market. That protocol allows rice farmers to earn extra revenue for reducing methane emissions in their operations. And just last year, the American Carbon Registry implemented a new standard that rewards farmers who reduce emissions by applying compost to their fields.

Preserving grasslands benefits air, land and water

Conversion of grasslands to croplands leads to the release of the carbon that is stored in the soil – carbon which, in many cases, has taken decades to accumulate. By keeping grasslands as grasslands, carbon stays in the soil and out of the atmosphere.

Learn more about EDF’s work to protect and restore habitat for at-risk species like the lesser prairie-chicken and greater sage-grouse.

But preserving grasslands doesn’t just reduce emissions, it also provides the opportunity to conserve wildlife habitats such as prairie grasslands, home to at-risk species like the lesser prairie-chicken and greater sage-grouse.

Other types of grasslands ripe for conservation contain steep terrain, so preserving it reduces erosion that could otherwise lead to water pollution.

New revenue potential for marginal lands

The grasslands protocol focuses on marginal lands, which are often the least productive areas of cropland. This includes steep lands, which are more erodible, and lands with less fertile soils, which would require larger fertilizer applications to be productive.

Even though farmers lose the opportunity to convert land for production, the protocol provides them with a guaranteed revenue source. To create this revenue stream, farmers typically work with carbon credit experts to monitor and report on the status of their lands, thereby earning a credit that can later be sold in a carbon market.

Government funding for conservation efforts has historically been unpredictable, so carbon markets provide new opportunities for farmers to earn extra income for conservation activities. The largest of these markets are the California and Quebec cap-and-trade markets, where credits are purchased by companies that are required to reduce their emissions, such as energy companies and electric utilities.

Opportunities to earn multiple credits

In addition to revenue from keeping carbon in the soil, this protocol allows farmers the ability to develop multiple credits on a single piece of land. In other words, a farmer who preserves his or her grasslands in a way that also creates habitat for a threatened or endangered species has the potential to generate two separate credits and thereby two sources of revenue.

My colleagues at EDF and I applaud the work of the Climate Action Reserve in leading the way and developing this protocol. We are excited to now be working to test the market in the field.

If you are interested in learning more about generating new revenue by preserving your grasslands, please contact me.

Related Links:

Learn more about EDF’s work to build greenhouse gas markets for agriculture >>

It’s official! Rice farmers now eligible for carbon offset payments >>

Operation Warbler: Fort Hood and local ranchers team up to save bird >>

By Sara Brodnax

Eric Peterson has been hired to fill a new position as pilot administrator of the Wyoming Conservation Exchange.

A landowner-led conservation effort in Wyoming has sparked a new market and has now created a new job.

The University of Wyoming recently announced the hiring of a new pilot administrator of the Wyoming Conservation Exchange, a voluntary, market-based program that seeks to enroll local landowners in landscape-scale conservation of greater sage-grouse, mule deer and hydrologic services.

Eric was formerly manager of the Sublette County Conservation District, where he played a critical role in developing the Wyoming Conservation Exchange with partners from the University of Wyoming, Environmental Defense Fund, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association and the Wyoming chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

In his new role, Eric will work with potential buyers and sellers of conservation credits to facilitate pilot transactions and market growth.

I asked Eric to share some thoughts on what drew him to this role and what he hopes to achieve over the next few months.

Can you tell us about your experience building the Wyoming Conservation Exchange?

I come to this position from my previous work as manager of the Sublette County Conservation District. Sublette County is at the confluence of grouse and gas. Hosting superior grouse habitat and populations in the same county as two of the top 10 natural gas fields in the nation, the conservation district's Board of Supervisors was very interested in working to help private landowners participate in the mitigation for the impact of the energy industry.

The conservation district partnered with the University of Wyoming, The Nature Conservancy, and others to begin the trail of exploration which has culminated in the development of the Conservation Exchange. As manager of the conservation district, I was involved in implementing the guidance of the board, directing district staff activities in support of the effort and working with the other members of the team in developing the concepts that have led to this point.

"My goal is for the Exchange to be recognized and employed as a win-win solution" – Eric Peterson, Administrator of the Wyoming Conservation Exchange

How will your previous work at the Conservation District and the university help you in your new role?

Prior to my tenure with the conservation district, I had worked in Southwest Wyoming for University Extension as a Rangeland Education Specialist. My 35 years of experience working with landowners in Sublette County and Southwest Wyoming, as well as my professional contacts from across the state, provide me with insight into the ranch and landowner community, as well as the ability to reach out to others as we discuss the win-win opportunity that the Conservation Exchange offers to landowners, land managers and industries who seek to mitigate their impacts.

What is your goal for the Wyoming Conservation Exchange?

My goal is for the Exchange to be recognized and employed as a win-win solution – a solution providing opportunity for industries to mitigate unavoidable impact and for landowners to enhance their conservation efforts as an additional enterprise in their business.

Why do you expect Wyoming landowners to be interested in participating in the Exchange?

Ranching is a business. While it is true that landowners in general have the highest conservation and stewardship ethic, the extra step is likely to require additional investment or opportunity cost. If we can show that participation in the Wyoming Conservation Exchange can become an enterprise that improves the sustainability of the business, then we will have their attention!

Greater sage-grouse and natural gas drilling rigs at dawn on the Pinedale Mesa in Sublette County, Wyoming. Photo credit: Gerrit Vyn Photography

What are you most looking forward to in your new role?

Those first trades which offset impacts with demonstrated increase in the quality and volume of habitat.

How will the Exchange help Wyoming and greater sage-grouse?

Wyoming, like Sublette County, is at the confluence of sage-grouse and energy production. Wyoming is second in the nation in energy production, and number one in grouse populations. The Wyoming sage grouse executive order provides enhanced protection for 80% of our grouse on about 20% of the state’s surface area. To accomplish that level of protection it is important that impacts be appropriately offset.

The Exchange credit is an avenue to accomplish the offset in a way that provides regulatory certainty and increased conservation outcomes. In the long run, it's just the sensible thing to do.

By Eric Holst

The greater sage-grouse

You may have seen a strange looking bird causing quite a stir in the news recently. That’s because there’s a lot at stake with the greater sage-grouse, especially now that a rider in the federal spending bill prevents the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from listing the species under the Endangered Species Act in 2015 (a decision was originally expected in September). But this delay isn’t stopping ranchers, conservationists and other key stakeholder from moving full speed ahead to find a solution.

You might not get this sense from the political dialog and the media, but out on the ground, there is a real spirit of cooperation when it comes to the greater sage-grouse. That’s because everyone realizes that – rider or no rider, listing or no listing – this bird needs help.

Greater sage-grouse once numbered in the millions, but in the past 30 years its population has shrunk 30 percent to no more than 500,000 birds, and it could be less than half that. We don’t have another year to sit back and watch populations decline further. Doing nothing will only increase the need for federal action in the future.

The best thing we can do is to use this time to build a conservation program that works – fast.

That’s exactly what state agencies, landowners, energy companies and conservation groups are trying to do through habitat exchanges, which will enable landowners such as ranchers and farmers to get paid for growing sage-grouse habitat.

“We are more determined than ever to work with the states, ranchers, energy developers and other stakeholders who are putting effective conservation measures in place with the shared goal of reaching a ‘not warranted’ determination.” — Interior Secretary Sally Jewell

Habitat exchanges are unique in that they’ve been designed to work whether or not a species is actually listed – providing incentives to get good conservation on the ground before any last minute Hail Mary federal protections are needed.

“Research has shown that society can better avoid significant costs with upfront actions, rather than reactive regulations,” said Terry Fankhauser, executive vice president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. “Everyone sees the opportunity; they realize that species like the greater sage-grouse can thrive as a managed component of a successful beef cattle ranch.”

Landowners can learn more about the Greater Sage-Grouse Habitat Exchange here.

What landowners can do now

There is a number of voluntary conservation activities that landowners can choose from to participate in an exchange, all of which are conducive to agricultural practices like cattle ranching. These activities include:

• Controlling the expansion of pinyon-juniper trees into sagebrush habitats;
• Permanently protecting the best sagebrush habitats from development;
• Restoring sagebrush on degraded lands;
• Managing livestock grazing to improve habitat;
• Controlling the expansion of invasive plants that degrade habitat.

The sooner landowners can engage in activities like this, the sooner we will see sage-grouse populations grow and the better prepared we will be when the Fish and Wildlife Service makes a final determination.

We should all want to see populations grow so that a listing is not necessary. But crossing our fingers and hoping for the best is not a winning strategy. We must nurture the productive partnerships that have already been developed in sage-grouse country to promote solutions like habitat exchanges that benefit everyone: the oilman, the cattle rancher and the sage-grouse.

By David Wolfe

Terry Fankhauser, Executive Vice President of Colorado Cattelmen's Association

Terry Fankhauser is a rancher and executive vice president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. He is also a board member and executive director of Partners for Western Conservation, which seeks to implement market-based conservation services that benefit wildlife and the economy.

Terry joined me and other conservation colleagues last week in Washington, D.C., to discuss habitat exchanges at the National Workshop on Large Landscape Conservation. I asked him to give us a recap of the discussion and to tell us why he got involved in the development of exchanges.

Why were you in D.C. last week?

I took the opportunity to travel to Washington to convey the message that agriculture producers are investing time and resources into developing conservation markets like the Colorado Habitat Exchange.  We are just as interested as other parties in addressing conservation concerns, regulatory challenges and the ongoing need for viable businesses that drive our economies.

What do habitat markets have to do with Colorado cattlemen? 

Our members and beef producers throughout this country realize that current approaches are not being successful in addressing our biggest natural resource challenges, such as species listings and soil health. At the same time, there is a real desire for significant increases in conservation implementation and incentives, assurances and outcome-based actions.

Research has shown that society can better avoid significant costs with upfront actions, rather than reactive regulations. The very foundation of conservation through agriculture lies within this flexible implementation of conservation practices. Our members are asking for new tools and this approach shows great promise.

Why is this so important to you? 

Fankhauser (right) joins panelists from Environmental Defense Fund, Ecometrix Solutions Group and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the National Workshop on Large Landscape Conservation in Washington, D.C.

Developing robust conservation markets is important to me because it’s important to the longevity of the beef industry. It’s important to my parents, my children and the members of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. Everyone sees the opportunity; they realize that species like the greater sage-grouse can thrive as a managed component of a successful beef cattle ranch.

Habitat exchanges go the distance by assuring our industry’s future and honoring our past.

Why should other landowners in Colorado and across the West care about habitat conservation?

The question really should be why landowners and society at-large should care. In reality, it appears as a paradox! But it’s not. We should all care about how we conserve our natural resources. More rigid approaches – such as litigious action and regulations – do not enhance conservation of our natural resources. If landowners are not meaningfully engaged in conservation that works for the environment and the landowner, the result will be less available habitat and lower quality habitat for species. That’s not good for anyone.

You see in the end, private lands are the key.  They make up the majority of the geography and the critical wildlife habitats in this country. We should all be invested in assuring the long-term sustainability of our private lands, both for the economy and the environment.

What is your personal experience with conservation?

My family has holistically managed our Flint Hill ranching operations in Kansas for generations. I see the value of decisions that have been in the past and those being made now that go beyond the cattle we raise to impact the resources we depend on for our livelihood. At the same time, landowners can enhance their employment of technology and data-driven decision making at a higher level related to resource management to yield greater results.

Through my work with Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, I have come to understand the complimentary value of both resources – the cattle and the land. I believe we can do better by both elements through management strategies that offer a sustainable approach, delivering continuous improvement over time.

What was the biggest takeaway from this workshop for landowners? 

The biggest takeaway that I would like to communicate to landowners is that there is interest in engaging them in incentivized, outcome-based conservation through habitat exchanges. But we can’t do it alone. Landowners have to be persistently present to bring about the changes necessary to evolve this opportunity into a functioning reality.

Without engagement from the broader landowner community, the traditional norms for conservation will persist but are not likely to yield the enhancements landowners and conservationists are looking for. Now is the time for us to come together to change the business of conservation to benefit all.

By Sara Brodnax

Cattle ranching and greater sage-grouse can not only coexist, but thrive. 

Ranchers and other private landowners have a critical role to play in conserving wildlife like the greater sage-grouse, which could face listing under the Endangered Species Act in 2015.

Home to nearly half of the greater sage-grouse’s remaining habitat, Wyoming is a landscape critical to the recovery of the species. A full 40 percent of the bird’s habitat in the state is privately held. Therefore, common sense solutions are needed to reward ranchers and other private landowners for conservation actions that protect vital habitat.

A rural, working landscape

Private lands in the West are often found near water, as ranches and other homesteaders put down stakes where they had ready access to water. For similar reasons, these areas are also critically important to wildlife.

A recent study from the Sage Grouse Initiative found a strong link between greater sage-grouse breeding areas, known as leks, and wet areas that serve as summer habitat for sage-grouse to raise their broods. The study also found that more than 80 percent of these essential wet habitats are located on private lands.

Fortunately, landowners in Wyoming and across the bird’s 11-state range recognize the central role they can play in recovering the sage-grouse. Their business, customs and culture are built on stewardship, so they were ready for the challenge.

Map displaying the scope of the Upper Green River Conservation Exchange. Click to enlarge.

Wyoming ranchers lead the way

A few years back, landowners in the Upper Green River Basin of Wyoming – an area located at the headwaters of the Colorado River, blessed with healthy streams and abundant wildlife habitat – started to look for new economic opportunities for conservation.

Alongside agriculture, the Upper Green also contains some of the most significant natural gas fields in the country (the Jonah Field and the Pinedale Anticline). Understanding that the sagebrush landscape of the Upper Green not only supports important habitat but also robust energy, tourism and agriculture economies, these landowners knew that conservation solutions needed to promote both economic development and healthy ecosystems.

Through the Sublette County Conservation District, the interest of ranchers and other local landowners evolved into a collaboration with the University of Wyoming, The Nature Conservancy and Environmental Defense Fund. Together, we’ve been exploring the potential for a market-based solution – the Upper Green River Conservation Exchange – that can sustain both the ranch and the important riparian and wildlife habitat located on these rural working lands.

With a listing decision for greater sage-grouse on the horizon, we are now working together to develop the tools and framework  needed to get the exchange up and running as soon as possible.

Developing the tools for success

Recognizing the need to protect high-value habitat for the greater sage-grouse, the Conservation Exchange uses a set of tools to measure and quantify habitat, placing the highest value on healthy, unfragmented habitat. Energy companies and other developers that need to mitigate the unavoidable[1] impacts of their projects can use these values to calculate “debits” and purchase "credits," which support projects that improve greater sage-grouse habitat. Landowners would be compensated by industry to offset their impacts and create additional benefit for the bird. It’s a win-win for people and sage-grouse – the economy and the environment.

As this effort has evolved and built up support from partners like Wyoming Association of Stock Growers and Wyoming Association of Conservation Districts, we are looking to expand the Conservation Exchange statewide. Happening simultaneously in other states are similar incentive-based efforts to protect the greater sage-grouse across its range and specifically on private lands. These exchanges work in concert with state and federal policies and other initiatives that protect and conserve sage-grouse habitat.

It’s this cooperation between parties that will ensure long-term prosperity of ranching communities and nature.

[1] Developers in Wyoming must follow the mitigation hierarchy established by the state's Greater Sage-Grouse Core Area Strategy; in other words, after avoiding and minimizing impacts, they could use the Conservation Exchange to mitigate for any unavoidable impacts.

By Eric Holst

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service faces a difficult decision on the listing of the greater sage-grouse. On the one hand, populations are in steady decline across the range and the Service has already indicated that the bird’s condition will likely warrant protection under the Endangered Species Act. On the other hand, a listing would pit the Service against powerful economic interests – including energy and agriculture – and against most of the political apparatus of the 11 Western states that harbor the imperiled bird.

But the Service just did itself and all sage-grouse stakeholders a big favor.

Earlier this month, the Service released the Greater Sage-Grouse Range-Wide Mitigation Framework – a guidance document intended to help states and private sector interests design solutions for the bird that, if implemented quickly and effectively, would be taken into account when the Service makes its final listing determination in 2016.

Service sends a clear message

The Service’s framework sends a clear message: if you don’t want the greater sage-grouse to get listed in 2016, you will need to provide mitigation solutions with strong science, transparency, consistency and, ultimately, net conservation gains for the grouse.

My EDF colleagues and I heard this message loud and clear. We read the guidance document with keen interest because, along with a wide range of state agency, conservation, energy and agricultural partners, we are working to launch a Greater Sage-Grouse Habitat Exchange to provide a scientifically robust mechanism for farmers and ranchers to conserve or restore bird habitat and sell mitigation credits to industry seeking to offset their impacts.

A rancher near Malta, Montana walks across the sagebrush landscape – quality habitat for greater sage-grouse.

The exchange allows farmers and ranchers to profit from the creation of habitat in the same way they do from the sale of beef cattle or grain. It is exactly the kind of incentive structure that can work quickly to not only improve greater sage-grouse habitat conditions, but also provide a new revenue stream for landowners that will ultimately boost local economies.

As each of the 11 sage-grouse states (Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, North and South Dakota) prepares its case to avoid a listing determination, it should keep the Service’s message in mind.

Getting to 2015

A year from now, the Service will announce the intent of their decision to list or not list the greater sage-grouse as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act in 2016. That gives us 12 months to prove that there is a viable mitigation tool to recover the bird, precluding the need for federal protection.

How do we do this?

The framework provides a road map:

1. Observe an appropriate mitigation sequence. The Service highlights that compensatory mitigation or offsets should only be used on a project after authorities determine that all avoidable impacts have been avoided and residual impacts are minimized. EDF shares the view that avoidance and minimization are essential preconditions to the use of compensatory mitigation.
2. Attain net conservation gain. Avoidance and minimization are not adequate on their own to help recover populations of greater sage-grouse. For populations to grow, residual impacts must be offset at a greater than even ratio to ensure that new habitat is developed or enhanced. Only then will a mitigation program result in net benefit for the bird.
3. Use a landscape-scale approach to inform mitigation. The greater sage-grouse is a wide ranging species that requires different resources annually and throughout its life cycle. The bird needs to move across the landscape and to be relatively free from major disturbances.
4. Ensure transparency, consistency and participation. Any mitigation program needs to have clear rules, a high degree of transparency, and motivate a high degree of participation by both industry and agriculture.
5. Base mitigation decisions in science. Recovering greater sage-grouse populations requires that we make decisions in the context of the best knowledge possible about habitat requirements and threats to greater sage-grouse populations.

With this guiding framework, I am more hopeful than ever that together we can achieve results for the greater sage-grouse that protect both ecosystem health and economic prosperity. We have a clear path forward. It’s time we take it.

By David Festa

Greater sage grouse. Photo credit: Steven Nehl

This post was co-written by Terry Fankhauser, executive vice president of the Colorado Cattlemen's Association and executive director of Partners for Western Conservation.

Stop us if you've heard this one before: A rancher, an environmentalist, and an oil company exec walk into a bar. The bartender looks up and asks, "Is this a joke?"

On the surface we may seem like an odd group, but ranchers, energy companies and environmentalists are finding each other willing partners in solving big conservation problems.

Colorado is one of 11 Western states where an iconic rangeland bird, the greater sage grouse, nests in high desert topography that's also perfect ground for cattle ranching. And in recent years, Colorado's booming oil and gas industry has encroached on the bird's habitat.

That puts the bird's future on a collision course with the state's two largest economic drivers: agriculture and energy. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service faces a 2015 deadline to decide if the greater sage grouse should be protected by an Endangered Species Act listing. Listing could severely crimp both energy production and ranching across a vast territory.

Luckily, in Colorado we have the opportunity to prevent species protection from hindering our economy. The solution lies in Colorado's 31.3 million acres of privately held working lands, many of them prime grouse habitat. Armed with a new way of thinking about species conservation, we've been able to engage those private lands in the solution.

What's needed now is the right plan, one that includes the good work being done at the state level while incorporating a suite of tools that protect wildlife at landscape scale and allow our economy to flourish.

One tool that shows promise in addressing both the conservation and economic sides of the issue is a habitat exchange. In an exchange, landowners and ranchers across Colorado can earn revenue by generating habitat credits that oil companies can buy to offset the impact of their operations. And by adding another revenue stream to ranchers' operations, it allows them to keep ranches in family hands while allowing continued flexibility to engage in a variety of agricultural practices.

As an added benefit in an era of tight budgets, habitat exchanges operate with no cost to the taxpayer, and government does not set the price for credits sold on the exchange — the buyers and sellers do. Plus, habitat exchanges — and the related, complementary approach of mitigation banking — use rigorous science to monitor and verify credit transactions and reports on progress to ensure species protection. Every credit sale makes species and habitat better off, which means bird populations can get healthier after an oil or gas well is drilled.

But to us, the best feature of a habitat exchange is its collaborative nature. In order to use the vast potential of privately owned lands to protect habitat in a way that strikes the right balance between species protection and economic growth, all stakeholders — farmers, ranchers, regulators, energy producers and conservationists — can come together to generate positive environmental outcomes.

By using tools that encourage collaboration and forward thinking like habitat exchanges, everyone — including the greater sage grouse — wins. That's something we all can toast.