This year cattle from 13 area ranchers are grazing their cattle in common on the Conservancy’s 60,000-acre Matador Ranch. In exchange for lower grazing fees, the ranchers agree to specific conservation measures on their home ranches.

The Nature Conservancy bought the Matador in 2000 to demonstrate how conservation and ranching could work hand in hand. The Conservancy’s partner at the time, the Tranel family, sold its half of the ranch back to the Conservancy in early 2002.

"As word of the sale spread, my phone rang off the hook with ranchers from three states looking for grass for their cattle," says Linda Poole, the Conservancy’s northern Montana prairies program manager based at the Matador. "But we decided that working cooperatively with our neighbors would be the best way to achieve our conservation goals."

The Northern Montana Prairies region, with the Matador at its center, boasts some of North America’s best remaining northern mixed-grass prairie, which supports strong populations of grassland birds that are in decline throughout their range. It is also home to black-tailed prairie dogs and is a site of ferret reintroduction efforts.

The ranchers involved in the Matador grazing program all have prairie dogs, sage grouse or grassland birds on their own ranches. "One of the criteria we used for allowing ranchers into the program was that they support biological diversity on their home ranches," Poole says.

The local ranchers are involved in the planning and management of the grassbanking arrangement. The result is that the 60,000 acres of the Matador is serving as a nucleus to allow participating ranchers to improve management across more than a quarter million acres in south Phillips County.

Specifically, the ranchers agree to the protection of around 2,000 acres of prairie dog colonies and over a dozen sage grouse leks. All of the ranchers have agreed to weed control, resulting in a 296,000-acre noxious weed-free zone. The ranchers have also agreed not to plow native prairie during the lease, and most of them are seeking "undaunted stewardship" certification from Montana State University Extension.

"These families have stood the test of time and proven that they can balance economics, community and ecology. We’re all learning a lot by talking and working together," says Poole.

"The Conservancy has built a lot of goodwill with this arrangement," says participating rancher Dale Veseth.