|
(Photo: © Robin Poole)
Welcome to the NRPRC!
The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) has nine field offices, all of which are charged with advancing regional issues and funding their own regional projects. The Northern Rockies & Prairies Regional Center (NRPRC) opened in Missoula, Montana in 1981. The NRPRC includes Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Please feel free to explore the issues we work on and to contact us with any questions or comments. Thank you for visiting our regional website!
The mission of the National Wildlife Federation is to inspire Americans to protect wildlife for our children's future.
What's new! - KUFM Radio Commentary - Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development (PDF - 09/09)
Climate Change
 Folks in the NRPRC region are already feeling the effects of climate change. Science tells us these effects will only increase in the coming years. Hunters, anglers, farmers, ranchers, business owners and citizens need to know what to expect from these effects; what steps they can take to help mitigate some of the impacts; and what policies we can adopt at a state level that will help address these issues.
GENERAL INFORMATION (reverse chronological order)
CONFERENCES and WORKSHOPS (reverse chronological order)
Restoring Wildlife Habitats
 We have been working in the Yellowstone ecosystem since 2002 on a program to retire livestock grazing allotments that experience chronic conflict with wildlife, especially grizzly bears and wolves. Ranchers receive fair payment for retiring their allotments, and typically use these funds to secure grazing in locations without wildlife conflicts. Learn more about this program by visiting our Wildlife Conflict Resolution microsite below.
(Photo: © Robin Poole)
Western Forests
 Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership
Since early 2006, timber company leaders and conservation organization representatives (including the National Wildlife Federation) have been working together, with the Forest Service's support, to create a new land and resource management plan for the Beaverhead Deerlodge National Forest in southwestern Montana. In January 2007, the Partners began circulating draft legislation that would give the Forest Service additional authorities to implement the Partnership Strategy. Learn more about this program by visiting our Beaverhead-Deerlodge Partnership microsite below.
-
-
-
PRESS RELEASE: Montana Forest Jobs and Recreation Act
(PDF - 07/09)
Grizzly Bears
Wolves
Sagebrush Steppe
 Sage steppe habitats are scattered across 165 million acres in eleven western states and two Canadian provinces. The loss of sage steppe habitat is having a profoundly detrimental effect on wildlife and ecological functions across the West. Sage-steppe grasslands, in their native condition, support a remarkable richness and diversity of wildlife including more than 170 other species of birds and mammals. The dominate plant in most of the sage-steppe grasslands is big sagebrush (Artemesia spp.). There are many other plant species, shrubs, flowering plants, forbs, and grasses of high ecological importance to the rich web of life found here. There are also creek and river habitats, spring systems, and seeps where scarce water boosts productivity and serves parts of many species’ life cycles. This rich vast landscape has been called “America’s Serengeti.”
The Greater Sage-Grouse, a large black and white bird of the arid lands of the American West, is in peril. They are unusual in many respects, and declining for many reasons. Flocks gather each spring at communal breeding “leks” where they select mates, one of the great avian spectacles of the continent. They are also unusual in that for a chicken-like bird they are also a “landscape level” species with individual home range approaching 600 square miles. Finally, sage-grouse populations require vast areas of essentially undisturbed high-quality habitat to survive, making them an “umbrella” species, the conservation of which will lead to the protection of many other plants and animals inhabiting the same habitat.
During the past century, human development, coupled with the invasion of nonnative species, have effectively degraded or fragmented upwards of 70 percent of the sage steppe ecosystem and sage-grouse habitat (see map). Sage grasslands have been plowed under for farms, ravaged by excessive livestock grazing, converted to urban and suburban developments, impacted by roads and power-line rights of way, and robbed of their clean water. Grazing “improvement” programs have impacted hundreds of thousands of acres where native sage lands has been poisoned, burned, chained or seeded to promote non-native grass production for livestock forage. Today, the most conspicuous degradation of sage-steppe habitats are the industrialization of Western landscapes via intensive energy development, and the dual forces of wildfire and exotic plant invasions fueled by a changing climate.
Sportsmen for Responsible Energy Development
Sportsmen United for Sensible Mining
(Photo: © Robin Poole)
America’s cherished public lands - including irreplaceable natural resources such as fish, wildlife and drinking water - are struggling to cope with the far-reaching effects of more than a century of hardrock mining. Now, in a groundbreaking effort, American sportsmen are uniting to conserve these resources by advocating for sensible reform of the 1872 General Mining Law, our country’s most outdated and destructive legislation.
Sportsmen United for Sensible Mining, a coalition of organizations and individual grassroots partners spearheaded by the National Wildlife Federation, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and Trout Unlimited, formed to preserve America’s legacy of hunting and fishing through sensible mining practices. SUSM represents millions of hunters and anglers, fish and wildlife professionals, and citizens who recreate on and enjoy our public lands. We believe that a more sensible approach to hardrock mining in the West will allow for better management of our fish and wildlife resources.
|
