Greater Yellowstone

We ensure that the Greater Yellowstone’s iconic wildlife thrive by keeping landscapes whole and protecting both summer and winter ranges. We do this by:

• Offering ranchers practical alternatives to barbed-wire fences, so they can keep their livestock contained on pasture lands while keeping elk, moose and other wildlife safe from entanglements. We teach landowners how to modify existing fences to make them safer and implement innovative new solutions such as virtual fencing.
• Providing crucial science to policymakers and developers so they can plan new roads, construction and energy infrastructure with wildlife corridors in mind. Our smart siting work can avoid development in crucial wildlife habitat and save lives by reducing wildlife-vehicle collisions.
• Supporting Indigenous Peoples’ efforts to return buffalo and other wildlife populations to their reservation lands as well as ancestral territories. We also support their efforts to reclaim traditional hunting practices and reclaim food sovereignty for their communities.
• Strategically and permanently protecting ecologically significant lands within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. We do this by acquiring lands that are under intense pressure from development, such as Idaho’s H Bar L Ranch—a crucial migration corridor for Yellowstone’s wildlife and vital habitat that supports peregrine falcons, pronghorn, eagles, grizzly bears and cutthroat trout.

As the region’s once-heavy snows become less reliable and melt more quickly, The Nature Conservancy is working to ensure that people and nature have sufficient water. We do this by:

• Advancing water conservation science and policy to help the region’s water users adapt to a drier future with uncertain water supplies.
• Restoring degraded streams and wetlands by building cost-effective stream structures, with natural materials, to reduce runoff and erosion. We also restore natural catchments like wet meadows that help water sink into the earth, replenishing groundwater supplies.

The Greater Yellowstone’s rolling hills of silvery sage, punctuated by the shapes of pronghorn, sage-grouse, cattle and cowboys, are emblematic of the West. This “Sagebrush Sea” is as iconic to our continent as the Serengeti is to Africa or the Amazon is to South America. And it is also one of our planet’s most threatened natural habitats, under attack by a devastating combination of development pressure, wildfire and climate change. The Nature Conservancy is fighting for the future of the Sagebrush Sea. We do this by:

• Halting the expansion of fir and juniper trees into sagebrush habitat. After a century of fire suppression, trees are crowding out sagebrush and threatening vital wildlife habitat. In Montana, for example, a special employment program hires crews from local communities to remove encroaching trees.
• Protecting the healthiest remaining sagebrush habitats from encroaching development by supporting land protection agreements on private lands. These legal agreements offer willing landowners a way to ensure that their land remains protected for nature and agriculture forever.
• Building a supply of native wildflower seeds and developing the knowledge and technological advances to get seeds to grow. Our scientists in Wyoming are developing strategies to supply native plants to agencies and landowners who are working to restore degraded land.

As climate change fuels hotter, drier summers, The Nature Conservancy is working to reduce the risk of severe wildfire in forests, keep carbon sequestered in living trees and protect forests’ ability to hold snow and supply freshwater for all of us downstream. We do this by:

• Conducting controlled burns and forest thinning projects to reduce the dry tinder that can trigger catastrophic wildfires. Our fire professionals conduct controlled burns in collaboration with the U.S. Forest Service, Tribes and other partners who are committed to rehabilitating our forests.
• Revitalizing forests so they can capture more snowmelt and deliver it as a consistent water supply for people and nature downstream. In Wyoming, for instance, we are conducting cutting-edge snow research to understand how forest management can help forests retain snow and release it more gradually into streams and rivers.