On the high plains of northeastern Montana, Ducks Unlimited and a scrappy group of pragmatists are working to help farmers and ranchers stay in business while conserving some of the continent’s most important wildlife habitats
By Andrew McKean
Devin Brooks watches from under the bill of his camo Independence Bank cap as a four-pack of American wigeon tips into the prairie wind and gives our decoys a hard look. They’re too far out to shoot, but Brooks is coming unglued, and so is my restive Lab, as the birds cup and brake and nearly turn in.
“No way. No. Way. NO! WAY!”
He’s practically shouting now, as the birds climb into the azure Montana sky, look for a second like they’re going to recommit to the decoys, and then ride the northwest wind away, bound for any of a hundred identical prairie ponds in the surrounding ranchland. But Brooks, who owns this particular stock pond 10 miles south of the Canadian border, is enchanted.
“I’ve never actually seen ducks come to me,” he tells me under our shrubby cover of shoreline buffaloberry and Russian olive. “I’m always scaring them away.”
Devin Brooks works with DU and other conservation groups to provide habitat for wildlife on his Montana ranch.
On another day, we would have had them. The October sun is too bright this morning, and the decoys are shining like Christmas lights. Plus, they are getting knocked around by the prairie wind, which is starting to whitecap the little pond. It’s not the best day for a duck hunt, but it’s the only day Brooks has available.
Brooks is a self-described deer hunter, preferring whitetails over mule deer. But he’s also a producer, the fourth generation of his family to manage several thousand acres of native-grass pastures, long rows of spring wheat, and dryland hay that in a good year makes enough forage to feed his cows through the winter and in a bad year gets stunted by drought or eaten by grasshoppers before he can bale it. Farming doesn’t give Brooks much time to hunt, and unless another wad of ducks comes soon, he’s going to have to leave to work on his corrals, which need to be ready to sort, hold, and ship calves to the auction barn in another week.
But on this particular morning Brooks isn’t in a hurry to leave this pond. On the dry shortgrass prairie, it’s a literal oasis, created maybe 45 years ago when his grandfather graded an earthen dam across the intermittent prairie stream, a tributary of Whitewater Creek that’s named—visitors are surprised to learn—not for frothing rapids but rather for its lifeless alkali pools.
The author and DU Biologist Adam McDaniel hunt a pond that Brooks’s grandfather created by constructing an earthen dam across a prairie stream more than four decades ago.
His grandfather armored the dam face with field rocks from the surrounding prairie. There are plenty more rocks. This part of northeastern Montana—known as the Hi-Line—was scoured during the last ice age by what glaciologists call the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Pickup-sized boulders rode the glaciers that made their way south from Hudson Bay. About 20,000 years ago, when the climate warmed and the ice began melting, the large boulders remained. The glaciers also left depressions and kettles, football-field-sized ponds created by melting ice, and rocks churned to gravel by the weight and unrelenting pressure of mile-thick ice. These ponds are critical habitat for nesting ducks and are especially productive when they’re surrounded by grass.
Brooks and I are joined by Ducks Unlimited biologists Adam McDaniel and Cody Pugh. They’ve brought the decoys, and a much better dog than mine, making good on a promise to Brooks that they’d take him hunting on his own land.
After Brooks leaves to work on his corrals, the rest of us stay behind to see if we can coax some ducks out of the big Montana sky. We gather close under the scant cover, calling to intermittent high-fliers, and McDaniel tells me more about Brooks’s operation and the wider view of implementing conservation practices on Montana’s glaciated plains.
The landscape in this part of Montana was formed by glaciers that covered the region during the last ice age. When the glaciers retreated, they left rich soils, verdant grasslands, and shallow depressions that seasonally fill with water—perfect habitat for breeding ducks. A number of different programs provide incentives for landowners to incorporate wildlife-friendly practices into their operations.
Most farmers and ranchers in the area are open to contracting with DU, Pheasants Forever, the Nature Conservancy, US Fish and Wildlife Service, and various agencies that implement Farm Bill programs to incorporate wildlife-friendly practices into their operations, McDaniel says. That’s what makes this part of Montana so valuable for conservation; there’s a program or a partner behind just about every fence post because the area has been identified as a high-priority landscape for wetlands conservation, sagebrush protection, and migratory big game such as pronghorn and mule deer.
Stewardship projects here can take the form of water development in pastures that pull cows off fragile prairie streams. Or cross-fencing pastures to enable a rest-rotation grazing system. Or maybe converting an underperforming wheat field into grass that can be grazed and hayed, indirectly benefiting nesting ducks and prairie grouse.
These projects offer wildlife and environmental benefits and help producers make physical improvements on their property. They also often include an annual payment to keep the land in its wildlife-friendly state for a contracted length of time. Conservation programs can help diversify income for farmers and ranchers, but it’s not free money; these programs also prohibit certain agricultural practices such as plowing native prairie.
Northeastern Montana’s wetlands and grasslands are a key component of the larger Prairie Pothole Region, which contains the continent’s most important and most threatened waterfowl habitats.
“Most producers who participate in conservation programs are enrolled in multiple contracts with multiple partners, but they usually start small, with a program that has short-term benefits without a big commitment,” says McDaniel, who administers dozens of these conservation programs with various Montana landowners.
“We reached out to Devin with a cover-crop proposal. It seemed like a good program to help cost-share some expenses in creating an alternative to traditional tillage systems,” which include winter and spring wheat and dryland alfalfa. The idea is that cover crops can reduce erosion, increase organic matter, invigorate soil health, minimize soil compaction, and provide bonus grazing for livestock. Cover cropping is also beneficial to nesting ducks and upland birds.
“But we didn’t get the germinating rain,” McDaniel says, and the cover crop didn’t grow in the density or variety intended. Brooks was on the hook for half the cost of the seed, plus the fuel and time to plant it.
This is one of the realities of doing conservation work in a part of the continent that has demonstrated potential to benefit entire flyways and wider wildlife populations. Every acre of the northern prairie that remains in grass, every slough that isn’t drained, and every pasture that isn’t plowed benefits not only waterfowl and upland birds, but a whole mosaic of native plants, nongame birds, beneficial insects, and even hidden hydrology. But those conserved acres aren’t producing high-value cash crops, and for the producers who depend on their land (and generous weather) for their livelihood, deciding to enroll in conservation programs doesn’t come without risk.
Conservation projects on the prairies are designed to restore habitats that have been lost and, through perpetual conservation easements, protect existing habitats that are threatened by development.
Brooks is among a subset of agricultural producers who are trying to avoid risk at all costs, says Martin Townsend, who works with dozens of local producers in his role with the Ranchers Stewardship Alliance. The group is a local affiliation of ranchers, farmers, conservation groups, and state and federal agencies who have teamed up to direct grants and wildlife projects to private land in order to make the local economy—and environment—more resilient.
“I’d say the most difficult cooperator to engage in conservation programs is a mid-30s farmer—a beginning producer,” Townsend says. “That’s because so many things have to go right for them. They are generally carrying a high debt load, and they have almost no room in their business model to
absorb risk.”
Rural lenders, too, are reluctant to shift from what they know—production agriculture—to consider programs that might offer cash flow for their borrowers but can limit some activity, generally row-cropping. Add the vagaries of weather, from crippling drought to crop-killing floods, plus uncertainties of the market, and embracing conservation can be a tall order for producers in this part of the country.
“The reality is that there is almost no scenario where conservation isn’t seen as financial risk,” Townsend tells me. “In a completely functional agricultural system, wildlife habitat is considered an inefficiency. So if you are 100 percent efficient, which is what some lenders would like to see, then every acre is producing agricultural output. So doing less of that in the name of wildlife is considered a ‘taking.’ What we’re trying to do is find things that benefit both, finding the overlap between agricultural production and wildlife values.”
(From left) Landowner Brian Fox meets with Adam McDaniel and DU Conservation Specialist Cody Pugh
Fox worked with conservation agencies to install dozens of beaver-dam analogs along an intermittent stream on his property (above). These simple structures complement the work of beavers by slowing the water current, trapping sediment, and eventually creating a valuable wetland in this semiarid part of the state.
Except that when you add the uncertainties of the weather and partnering with the government, rural Americans get nervous no matter where they live. That’s why conservation partnerships generally start small, usually with low-risk cover-crop projects, or reseeding a small field to grass, or cross-fencing just one pasture on a larger ranch.
“The key part is that it needs to work for the producer for it to be durable,” Townsend says. “It’s a lot of relationship-building. The producer has to know that you want what’s best for them, not necessarily what’s best for wildlife or for the [granting] agency. Those of us who have been in this business for a while look for three legs of a stool. A project is durable when it is good for agriculture, plus it’s good for wildlife, plus it makes money. If it does only two of those things, then it’s not going to be stable. Finding where all those three things come together is the hard part, but it’s also sustainable and can grow into bigger projects.”
Brooks is discovering that a number of smaller programs can yield cumulative benefits. He’s enrolled in the state’s hunting-
access program, called Block Management, and he’s working on a water-development and fencing project as he considers larger conservation options to diversify his income stream and make his place less reliant on weather and markets.
On the prairie all around Brooks’s farm are the remnants of abandoned homesteads, overgrown fields that once raised families as well as crops, and place names of people who are otherwise forgotten. “Decisions would be a lot easier if I owned the place outright, but when you have debt and you’re leasing ground, then you have to be pretty conservative,” Brooks says. “Some days I wonder how my grandparents and great-grandparents managed to keep this place together, and I feel pressure to not be the generation that lost the home place.”
Ultimately, says Townsend, applying conservation to private land isn’t about the conservation benefit; it’s about getting stoic farmers and ranchers to consider the squishier parts of their operation. “We succeed when we understand the human dimensions of farming,” he says. “What do families want for the future? What’s their legacy? Conservation projects work when they make not only the land more resilient, but also the families who operate them.”
The Hi-Line is named for Highway 2, which traverses 650 miles across northern Montana, and the railway that runs parallel to it—the northernmost transcontinental railway in the country.
About 50 miles to the west of Brooks, Brian Fox drives like a banshee across miles of same-looking wheat fields until the gravel road drops into a draw and winds through eroded badlands. It’s almost sunset, and Fox is in a hurry to show me his pasture while there’s still light to see it. As he drives, he prepares me for what’s ahead.
“I bought this place in 2012 to expand my operation,” says Fox, who farms wheat on the benches and grazes cattle along prairie streams that eventually make their way south to the Milk River. “I have to make a paycheck, and I rely on cattle to make that payment. I rely on grass to grow my cattle, but in drought years these pastures can’t grow enough grass. When it was dry, I had to cut my stocking rate and was wondering if I had made a bad financial decision [with the pasture acquisition].”
A couple summers ago, in an especially dry season, Fox was on his ATV, following a dry stream through his pasture in search of a lost cow, when he rounded a bend and, he recalls, “the whole valley exploded in ducks. There was a hidden oasis of water and cattails and birds.”
Beavers had dammed the stream, and in the course of a single season had transformed the parched pasture into a wet meadow.
“I asked around, and none of my neighbors could remember beavers on this creek in their lifetimes, and probably their parents’ lifetimes,” Fox says. “I don’t know where they came from.”
Prairie beavers were hit hard during the fur-trading era. Later, landowners shot or trapped them because of their tendency to cut down precious trees or because they turned pastures into sloughs. But those very tendencies are forcing a reconsideration of the ecosystem benefits of having beavers on the landscape.
We reach his pasture and stop at a dry stream that I could jump across with a running start. This is the creek that beavers dammed a mile downstream. Fox points to a lattice of willow branches woven around what look like wooden surveyors’ stakes pounded in the eroded bank of the creek. It’s frankly underwhelming, but Fox is gushing about what it represents.
“That’s one of about 75 structures that are called beaver-dam analogs (BDAs), and thanks to them, in a couple years you won’t be able to stand here,” says Fox, who says the BDA project was funded by conservation agencies after Fox told them about the presence of beavers here. If the structures work to slow current during runoff season, trap sediment, and restore meanders to the stream, then this should become a boggy, verdant spot in the otherwise parched prairie. There’s further hope that once the stream slows and retains water, beavers will move in and further improve the hydrology, which includes raising the water table along the creek to grow more grass, willows, and shrubs.
“When they work right, BDAs help creeks like this remember how to be a creek,” says McDaniel, who has joined us.
For McDaniel, Townsend, and other conservation professionals, the cost of materials and labor and permits, which are required to install the beaver-dam analogs, is a smart investment that will provide years of return. And they’re encouraged that Fox wants to investigate further infrastructure investments, including a well that would allow him to graze more cattle but would also keep his cows away from the sensitive riparian corridor, where biologists have discovered one of the most northerly leks, or breeding grounds, for sage grouse.
But the presence of ducks obviously excites Fox, who is an avid waterfowler. “I’m not saying that I’d hunt them on my creek, but it’s nice to know that I could,” he says.
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