When invasive shrubs and grasses win, wildlife lose.
Deep-rooted exotic grasses like Medusahead wildrye and Ventenata are a significant threat to America’s sagebrush rangelands.
They have the nutritional value of cardboard and can quickly spread across the landscape, degrading wildlife habitat by crowding out native grass and overtaking just about everything in their path.
This battle is playing out in southwest Idaho.
That’s where the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation joined a united front to take action with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Idaho Department of Lands, Idaho Governor’s Office of Species Conservation, Idaho Fish and Game private landowners and hunters – thanks in part to dollars generated from the Pittman-Robertson Act.
In this particular endeavor, workers applied herbicide across more than 5,800 acres of wildlife habitat to knock down those invasive grasses.
The treatment is part of a much greater landscape-scale habitat restoration effort with even more partners across a 617,000-acre footprint of federal, state and private lands known as the Bruneau-Owyhee Sage-grouse Habitat Project.
Those ongoing efforts increase forage, reduce erosion, lessen wildfire risk, improve water infiltration and enhance habitat – all good news for elk, sage grouse, mule deer, pronghorn antelope and other wildlife species – and even pollinators.
Restoring elk country is core to RMEF’s mission of ensuring the future of elk, other wildlife, their habitat and our hunting heritage.
Since 1984, RMEF helped conserve or enhance more than 9.1 million acres of wildlife habitat.