Beef

Sustainable Ranching Initiative

Two women stand on prairie with cattle herd

WWF’s Sustainable Ranching Initiative (SRI) was established in 2011 to develop long-term partnerships with ranchers, rural communities, and landowner-led organizations in the Northern Great Plains to benefit the grassland ecosystem. This sweeping landscape spans over 180 million acres across five US states—Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska—and two Canadian provinces—Alberta and Saskatchewan. About twice the area of California, the Northern Great Plans is one of only four remaining relatively intact temperate grasslands in the world. In 2025, our program expanded and now seeks opportunities across the entire Great Plains—700 million acres across Indigenous Nations, Canada, the United States, and Mexico.

About one-fifth of all US beef cows originate from ranches in the five US states in the Northern Great Plains. Many privately owned livestock ranches overlap with the areas that have been identified as supporting the region’s highest levels of plant and wildlife biodiversity. In other words, both the ranching community and wildlife depend on well-managed, intact grasslands.

Grasslands are one of the least protected and most at-risk biomes on the planet, and as they disappear, so does the wildlife habitat and critical ecosystem services they provide. The grasslands of the Great Plains provide essential habitat for a diversity of endemic and migratory wildlife species, including hundreds of grassland-nesting birds, migratory ungulates such as elk, mule deer and pronghorn, and pollinators.

Savannah Sparrow and Cow, South Dakota

However, every year millions of acres of grassland are being plowed-up and converted to row crop agriculture or lost to woody plant encroachment, with the majority occurring across the Great Plains. At times, this rate of habitat destruction has outpaced deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. Because most of the Great Plains are privately owned and managed, primarily by ranching families, ranching operations provide one of the best lines of defense against grassland loss. Sustainably managed grazing systems are often beneficial to wildlife species, providing a variety of plant communities and habitat structure throughout the year.

Grasslands evolved to be grazed. The feeding activities of herbivores provide patches of vegetation across the landscape which wildlife uses, break dry ground allowing water to be absorbed into the soil, and return nutrients and organic matter to the soil through manure. Without an abundance of grazing animals to manage plant growth, grasslands become threatened by the spread of invasive plants and can trend towards monocultures of more aggressive and non-native plant species. Intact grasslands not only conserve biodiversity, but ensure cleaner streams, and more carbon stored in the soil. More sustainable beef production also provides many social benefits by supporting rural communities that can provide people with ecologically conscious and nutrient dense food.

Livestock producers in the Great Plains face many natural and economic challenges. Climate change, which has resulted in increased periods of sustained drought and other extreme weather events, causes many financial challenges for ranching families. Livestock producers also face limited options on where to sell their beef, as the meat packing industry becomes more consolidated. In addition, US agricultural policies, additional market pressures, and new technologies that incentivize grassland plow-up for cropland, have led to accelerated grassland destruction.

What WWF is Doing

Ranching With Wildlife video series. See more videos in the series >
Ranching With Wildlife video series. See more videos in the series >
Ranching With Wildlife video series. See more videos in the series >
Ranching With Wildlife video series. See more videos in the series >
Ranching With Wildlife video series. See more videos in the series >
Ranching With Wildlife video series. See more videos in the series >
Ranching With Wildlife video series. See more videos in the series >
Ranching With Wildlife video series. See more videos in the series >

SRI works with landowners, rancher-led local organizations, corporations, industry groups, non-governmental organizationss, and government agencies to prevent grassland from being converted to cropland, increase adoption of regenerative grazing practices, support forward-thinking land managers, restore cropland or degraded lands back to native grasslands, and restore wetlands.

Historically, WWF’s SRI geographic focal region is north-central and eastern Montana, northwestern South Dakota, the Nebraska Sandhills, and northeastern Wyoming due to the intact grassland ecosystem, high biodiversity, and strong relationships with rancher-led organizations. However, the program is now exploring new partnerships and opportunities across the full Great Plains.

Purple coneflowers on working rangeland, 33 Ranch, South Dakota, USA

RSVP – Ranch Systems Viability Planning

The Ranch Systems and Viability Planning (RSVP) network supports ranchers in the Northern Great Plains who want to improve their grazing management practices, increase education and skills related to ranch and grass management, monitor ecological changes over time, and network with other producers on similar paths. Currently, ranches must be in WWF’s SRI focal area of central and eastern Montana, western South Dakota, northeastern Wyoming, and the sandhills of Nebraska.

RSVP was started in 2020 and aims to make lasting positive ecological and community impacts across the Northern Great Plains by preventing grassland destruction and supporting improved grazing management. During the first five years, which were considered a pilot, the goal was to impact 1 million acres by 2025. We reached our million-acre goal one year ahead of schedule, and currently, there are 112 ranches enrolled in the program covering nearly 1.3 million acres. Through RSVP , WWF is not only supporting individual livestock producers but also supporting community resilience in rural areas by strengthening the grass-based economy.

Ranches enrolled in RSVP are provided with educational scholarships, access to financial assistance to support grazing infrastructure improvements, grazing and management technical assistance, and in-depth rangeland and ecological monitoring. The ecological monitoring project is the largest of its kind that is conducted on privately owned grasslands in the US. Monitoring crews measure soil organic carbon, soil stability, ground cover, vegetation characteristics, water infiltration, and grassland bird species.

Learn more about the RSVP program and how to apply here.

Cattle on the Brady Ranch, Winnett, Montana

Native grassland reseeding program

SRI is also leading several Northern Great Plains grassland restoration programs, with the goal of restoring once-plowed lands back to native plant communities to benefit wildlife and people. In the last three years, SRI has reseeded over 30,000 acres of degraded cropland back to native grass in partnership with ranchers. We work directly with landowners to create a native seed mix that is suitable for their location and soil type. We then purchase the native seed mix for planting and provide technical support for successful establishment.

If you are in north-central and eastern Montana, northwestern South Dakota or the Nebraska Sandhills and are interested in reseeding cropland back to native grass and forbs, please email [email protected].

Learning the Range

Learn how past events shaped the current state of Nebraska rangelands, the history of Indigenous People, the impact of settlers, and the actions that negatively affected the land.

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