Washington's Sage Grouse Initiative

It’s good for grouse, grazers and your grazing business!

If you’re a rancher in sage grouse habitat areas in Washington, you may be eligible to receive financial assistance to help protect sage grouse habitat and improve range conditions for your livestock. Through the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s (NRCS) Sage Grouse Initiative, ranchers can receive as much as $1.90 per acre for rotational grazing and $8.68 an acre for “resting” rangeland an entire year.

By deferring grazing, or not grazing certain areas at all for a year, sage grouse habitat can be protected during the critical mating and nesting period. The payments made possible through the Sage Grouse Initiative are designed to offset the costs associated with deferring grazing on that land.
 

Consider these payment scenarios:

• Implement a rotational grazing system on a 3,000-acre ranch, as part of this initiative, and receive $5,700 per year for three years. PLUS, you get to use the forage after the deferment period.
• Rest 20 percent of a 3,000-acre ranch, and receive up to $5200 per year. Over a three year contract, that comes to $15,600!

Other business benefits

• Example: If you need 5 acres to support a mother cow for a month, then at the $1.90/acre payment NRCS is providing $9.50 to support that cow for a month while you learn rotational grazing.
• Improved range health and much higher productivity for cattle, wildlife and your business.
 

Other conservation options

In addition, other practices to improve sage grouse habitat may be applied with funding through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) or the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP).

Such practices include: Retrofitting existing fences to increase their visibility and reduce sage-grouse mortality; installing escape ramps for wildlife in watering facilities; deferring grazing in nesting areas to increase residual cover and increase brood survival rates.

More information on the EQIP options.
More information on the WHIP options.

The initiative is limited to sage grouse habitat areas of central and eastern Washington. View the Sage Grouse Focus Area map.
Contact your local USDA-NRCS Service Center Office.

Sage Grouse Initiative factsheet.  (PDF; 860KB)

< Back to ... Programs