There are about 600 million acres of grasslands left in the U.S. They occur throughout the country and are among our most threatened landscapes. We have been losing acres at an alarming rate for a long time. One disastrous result of those sustained losses is that we now have about half as many birds in our grasslands that we did in 1970. And the decline continues.
More needs to be done to conserve grasslands and their birds, such as the Lesser Prairie-Chicken. One possible way of doing this is by creating a federally-funded program or amending existing ones that incentivize private landowners to conserve grasslands.
In this webinar co-hosted by American Bird Conservancy (ABC) and the North American Grouse Partnership (NAGP), Dr. Terry Riley, Policy Director for the NAGP, and Steve Riley, Director of Farm Bill Policy for ABC, discuss:
– What a new federally funded grasslands conservation program would do.
– How the program would work and its cost.
– How the program could help recover the Lesser Prairie-Chicken.
These brothers recently published A Strategy to Recover Lesser Prairie-Chickens Through A New or Modified Farm Bill Conservation Program (https://dariuszzdziebk.wpenginepowered.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/A-Strategy-to-Recover-Lesser-Prairie-Chickens-Through-A-New-or-Modified-Farm-Bill-Conservation-Program-small.pdf) which is the backdrop and primer for this webinar.
