The northern great plains cover 180 million acres in Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Alberta, and Saskatchewan. It’s one of only four large expanses of temperate grasslands remaining on the planet.
The prairies of the NGP evolved as home to grazing animals such as bison, which pruned the stems and aerated and fertilized the soil. With these animals gone, something else has to fill that niche, says Labbe, or else erosion will increase, and invasive plants will take over. “Cattle aren’t the answer everywhere—the Amazon, for example—but here in the NGP, cattle fill that niche and help keep the grasslands healthy,” she says.
The cattle industry does have an environmental impact, Labbe says, including the climate impacts of the methane that cows emit as they digest food. But in the NGP, cattle are better than the alternative: A 2019 WWF analysis found that per acre, emissions associated with cattle production in the NGP are significantly lower than those associated with row-crop agriculture (corn, soy, and wheat) in the same region. Converting the grasslands of the NGP to crops—which happened at an average rate of over 1.5 million acres per year from 2010 to 2017, comparable to the rate at which forests were being felled in the Brazilian Amazon—would be equivalent to putting more than 65 million vehicles on the road for a year. Done right, ranching can help preserve biodiversity while minimizing its own environmental footprint.
For the Sexsons and others, ranching done right means concentrating grazing in carefully prescribed areas and moving cattle frequently to give grasslands time to regrow, increasing water absorption into the soil. It’s a labor-intensive process; the aim is to optimize the condition of the land, not simply maximize beef production. “Our goal is denser, more diverse grasslands,” says Ryan Sexson. “It’s not just about grazing. This land has got to last for generations.”
Sexson serves on the board of the Nebraska Grazing Lands Coalition, which WWF has been working with since 2012 through its Sustainable Ranching Initiative. Throughout the NGP, WWF has provided funding and advice for programs such as range monitoring, developing software for grazing management, and teaching techniques like rotational grazing. Efforts also include fighting invasive plants like leafy spurge.
Ranchers implement a wide variety of management strategies across the NGP, says Labbe: “It’s really a spectrum. At one end, it’s so well managed, you have full ecological function. Then we have a lot of people in the middle. They’re still doing great things.” But even with bad management, she says, when it comes to wildlife, grass is still better than cornfields, and the fact is that different species prefer different habitats—from bare ground to tallgrass. WWF’s goal is to help encourage progress toward the optimal end of the management spectrum, without ignoring the value of even modest improvements.