Jonathan Haufler, Carolyn Mehl, Amy Ganguli, and Scott Yeats. Ecosystem Management Research Institute, P.O. Box 717, Seeley Lake, MT 59868
The Thunder Basin Grasslands Prairie Ecosystem Association is a collaborative group of local landowners who have initiated a voluntary conservation plan for their lands within a mixed ownership landscape in Eastern Wyoming. Based on past work that completed an ecological assessment and developed a conservation plan emphasizing ecosystem diversity, they set an objective of maintaining and restoring 15% representation of the historical ecosystem diversity for their lands within a 945,000 acre planning landscape. Restoration goals seek to produce appropriate compositions, structures, and processes that represent historical grazing and fire regimes across the various ecological sites in the area. Initial treatments have restored fire, controlled cheatgrass and other exotics, reseeded desired native species, and adjusted grazing regimes to produce the desired conditions using an adaptive management approach. Monitoring of both vegetation and wildlife responses to treatments is documenting project success. Sampling in 2006 and 2007 revealed pretreatment conditions and initial vegetation and wildlife responses to 4 pasture treatments for grassland restoration and 2 sagebrush treatments to improve sagebrush ecosystems. The initial results, while preliminary, show promising responses.