FACING

In 2018, Hill, 81, a retired nuclear weapons scientist, filed a lawsuit asking the state to clarify its notoriously muddy stream-access laws vis-à-vis one of his favorite trout fishing grounds. To the ire of many landowners, who see it as a threat not only to their privacy but to their property values, that suit has been progressing through the state court system like a slow-moving missile.

A victory against the landowners would “have staggering implications for settled agreements governing the use of our state’s rivers,” according to a statement from the office of Colorado’s attorney general, Phil Weiser.

The Western Landowners Alliance sees things differently. The alliance’s mission is to sustain working lands, connected landscapes, and native species, and executive director Lesli Allison says this argument is misguided.

“What’s happened in this debate too often is that proponents of opening streams have cast the issue as greedy landowners trying to exclude the public and privatize streams for their own enjoyment, their own profit,” she says. “By saying that, you create an enemy to rally people around.”

Allison explains that this argument also overlooks the critical role that landowners play as environmental stewards of these streams. She says that some of these individuals bought land specifically to invest in conservation, and together they’ve made significant investments to restore the waterways that flow through their property.

A new report led by UC Merced researchers estimates California’s drought cost the state’s agriculture sector about $1.1 billion and nearly 8,750 full- and part-time jobs last year.

The U.S Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced that ranchers who have approved applications through the 2021 Livestock Forage Disaster Program (LFP) for forage losses due to severe drought or wildfire in 2021 will soon begin receiving emergency relief payments for increases in supplemental feed costs in 2021 through the Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) new Emergency Livestock Relief Program (ELRP).

It took a few years, but ag land values in California now reflect action taken by legislators eight years ago to pass the state’s landmark groundwater law. A growing chasm is evident as land values rise and fall significantly across the state.

Only a few months into 2022 and it’s already a dreadful year for wildfires. More than 14,781 separate wildfires have scorched over half a million acres as of this week, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, the largest number of fires year-to-date the agency has recorded in the past decade.

Colorado is taking a “hard pause” on investigating the viability of demand management, a program that would allow the state to pay water users to temporarily and voluntarily conserve water and store what’s saved in Lake Powell for future use. The Colorado Water Conservation Board wants to instead focus on what can be done to help Colorado water users this year.

Have you ever wondered where your drinking water comes from? To help land managers and the public understand where their water comes from and what affects it, the USDA Forest Service launched an enhanced interactive map called Forests to Faucets 2.0. The map shows that forests are a critical link in providing dependable water for drinking across the country.

Insects and drought are taking an increasing toll on Colorado’s forests, challenging the long-term sustainability and resiliency of the state’s roughly 24.5 million acres of forest, a new report says.

In Malheur County’s Cow Valley, state regulators have ignored known issues with overpumping groundwater, leaving the region at risk of economic and ecological damage that will be difficult to reverse.

More technical assistance and streamlined application processes for conservation programs would help farmers adopt practices to reduce greenhouse gases, lawmakers were told at a hearing on how the next farm bill should address climate change.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is extending the deadlines to apply for the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities funding opportunity after requests from many stakeholders.

More than 61% of the contiguous US is in some classification of drought this week, according to the US Drought Monitor.

Before a drop of treated water in California ever reaches a consumer’s faucet, about 8% of it has already been wasted due to leaks in the delivery system. Nationally, the waste is even higher, at 17%.

This represents an untapped opportunity for water savings, according to a study from the University of California, Davis.

Meet Andrea Stroeve-Sawa, a fourth-generation rancher whose herd saves fragile ecosystems and stores greenhouse gases in the soil. She helps to show how beef cattle raised at Shipwheel Cattle Feeders in adaptive multi-paddock grasslands in Alberta, Canada, are capturing emissions.

The Private Forest Accord passed the Oregon Senate on Wednesday, making its way to a final House vote before the end of the February short session. The bill would change the way more than 10 million acres of private forests in the state are managed to protect at-risk animals and water quality in rivers and streams.

The New Mexico Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed that a Game Commission rule that allows landowners to restrict access to water that flowed through private property is unconstitutional. The ruling opens can of worms for landowners and anglers, and puts stream restoration projects on private lands at risk. “As a result of development, recreation and intensive agriculture, we continue to lose wildlife habitat and wildlife species at an alarming rate,” WLA said in a statement. “Yet people continue to demand more and more access to places where wildlife have traditionally sought refuge, including on private land.”

Just how much carbon is in the soil? That’s a tough question to answer at large spatial scales, but understanding soil organic carbon at regional, national, or global scales could help scientists predict overall soil health, crop productivity, and even worldwide carbon cycles. University of Illinois researchers show new machine-learning methods based on laboratory soil hyperspectral data could supply equally accurate estimates of soil organic carbon.

Arizona Governor Ducey and a top leader in the state Legislature recently filled in a key part of a developing plan to boost the desert state’s increasingly strained water supply. They plan to create a state agency to acquire new supplies and develop and fund projects, with deep pockets and the authority to go out and find sources that can secure the state’s water future.

On your own land, you’ve probably seen evidence that climate change is happening — things like extreme weather events or changes in growing seasons over the years. America’s rural communities are on the frontlines of climate change, and now is the time for agriculture, forestry, and rural communities to act.

There are various ways to help mitigate the effects of climate change on your land and improve your bottom line at the same time. One very effective way is by planting cover crops.

A new report shines a light on the hard lessons California is learning — including what it’s getting right and what more needs to be done. In the fire-prone American West and around the world, too much focus remains on response instead of preparation.

A warming planet and changes to land use patterns mean more wildfires will scorch large parts of the globe in coming decades, causing spikes in unhealthy smoke pollution and other problems that governments are ill prepared to confront, according to a recent U.N. report.

Researchers over the next three years will analyze soil samples from several parcels of state land scattered around western North Dakota to better understand the potential for carbon storage in grasslands.

On February 7, 2022, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced a $1 billion competitive grant offering to fund pilot projects through its “Partnerships for Climate-Smart-Commodities” program. The program was developed at the USDA with input from stakeholders during a comment period in 2021. It is designed to encourage the voluntary development of markets for products of agriculture and forestry that are particularly beneficial from a climate change perspective.

Hispanic farmers and rural residents in New Mexico are concerned legislation that would allow small cannabis producers to boost their plant counts lacks a provision to ensure the producers have valid water rights.

A San Antonio start-up rewards regenerative agriculture with the help of companies looking to offset their greenhouse gas emissions.

National forests are more in danger of wildfires that spread from private lands than the other way around, researchers concluded in a study that turns a head on a common narrative in forest policy. The finding runs against a popular storyline among advocates for more intensive forest management: that overgrown national forests are a tinderbox waiting to light and need to be thinned and logged to reduce the risk to surrounding non-federal property. A better approach, researchers said, would be to put heavier emphasis on ways to make populated areas more resilient to wildfire, such as defensible space and fire-resistant construction.

Federally recognized tribes in the Colorado River Basin hold the combined rights to 3.6 million acre-feet of water — but at times, more than half of that resource might simply flow unused. That’s in large part because tribes with water rights on the Colorado River are prohibited from marketing those rights to off-reservation users without congressional authorization. This report argues for Congress to grant new blanket authority for tribal water rights holders to be allowed to market their water off-reservation.

Utah wildlife biologists fear there was another 10% drop in the statewide mule deer population in 2021 as mostly dry conditions reigned through the first half of the year.

The projection is based on below-normal adult and fawn survival rates, as well as fawn production in the second half of the year, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources officials told KSL.com.

Regenerative agriculture methods have helped one Western Slope farmer be more mindful of how much water he uses.

Grasshoppers had a devastating impact on Montana’s range and farmlands in 2020 and 2021. This year, farmers, ranchers, landowners, and federal agencies are cautiously awaiting to see what is in store for 2022. “There’s still some high risk,” said Hannah Lewis of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). “I think that’s the big takeaway.”

Most of the history of American conservation has focused on public lands, either their management or converting private property to public ownership. However, to stem the number of future extinctions in our country, we must focus increased energy on private lands. How these lands are managed will be the determining factor in whether many species of fish, wildlife, and plants thrive, survive, or fade into memory – even in a place as seemingly wild as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. 

Beaver dams mop up debris that would otherwise kill fish and other downstream wildlife, new observations suggest.

Researchers from Temple University have found that managed sheep grazing on an acre of recovering agricultural soil with native plants installed may sequester one ton of carbon per year, which may accumulate for 12 to 15 years before reaching saturation.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture will spend $1 billion on projects for farmers, ranchers and forest landowners to use practices that curb climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions or capture and store carbon, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced Monday.

For many U.S. farmers who have endured major losses from worsening floods, storms and droughts, addressing climate change has become a matter of survival. The United Nations’ scientific panel on climate change has warned that humans must change the way they produce food and use land to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.

California water officials warned on Tuesday that the state is set to face another dry year after experiencing a significant lack of snow in January, potentially marking its third consecutive year of dry conditions. The department’s warning comes as California grapples with worsening wildfire seasons, water shortages and historic drought conditions fueled by climate change.

New Mexico’s water-management agencies are having trouble keeping their rivers wet, and the problem will only get worse, according to a 50-year climate change and water study that was completed last year. So the agencies have begun planning for a future of dwindling water supplies in the San Juan and Rio Grande basins. For tribal nations, the big question is: Will they finally have input in water management decisions?

Gleason started Gleason Bison two years ago after a career shift from public relations and marketing and a return to the Durango area. Her operation has grown from a few pregnant bison to about 100 animals during its annual peak for meat production.

Through her work, Gleason aims to highlight the environmental benefits of grass-fed bison ranching and the role that holistic management can play in tackling environmental issues such as climate change, all while helping the Durango community and inspiring a new crowd of young people to pursue ranching.

“This landscape evolved with a relationship with ruminant animals,” she said. “To think that by not raising them or not managing them that’s going to solve our climate change problems, we’re missing the whole puzzle of how a healthy ecosystem works. A healthy ecosystem works in relationship with grazing animals.”

As control of the river water that allows desert farming shifts, a deep love of agriculture unites groups that have historically been at odds.

A group of Western lawmakers are asking the Biden administration to update the Forest Service’s long-term plan for wildfires and potentially scale back certain uses of fire for forest management.In a letter to President Biden yesterday, Reps. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) and Jim Costa (D-Calif.) said the agency’s National Fire Plan hasn’t been updated in more than a decade.

What does a “resilient” forest look like in the Sierra Nevada? A lot fewer trees than we’re used to, according to a study of frequent-fire forests from the University of California, Davis. More than a century ago, Sierra Nevada forests faced almost no competition from neighboring trees for resources. The tree densities of the late 1800s would astonish most Californians today. Because of fire suppression, trees in current forests live alongside six to seven times as many trees as their ancestors did — competing for less water amid drier and hotter conditions.

Two Idaho property owners can proceed in their challenge to a Washington, D.C., appeals court’s holding that their land contains wetlands subject to protection under federal water law, the U.S. Supreme Court said Monday. 

House Bill 1838, also known as the Lorraine Loomis Act — named after a Swinomish Tribe member who was a salmon recovery advocate in the state — would set up salmon protection zones known as “riparian management zones” along rivers, streams, and other similar bodies of water that are home to migrating salmon.

The bill states that public and private property owners with land along the designated riparian protective zones will be responsible for protecting those zones, including planting trees and shrubbery to cool down the water temperature. The zones would cover 100 feet on either side of a river or stream in non-forested areas, and different amounts based on tree height in forested areas.

A recent study published in Ecological Solutions and Evidence suggests that large, intense and controlled burns can halt and reverse the encroachment of woody plants into grasslands and help restore declining grassland bird populations.

Agriculture Secretary Vilsack and Forest Service Chief Randy Moore have launched a comprehensive response to the nation’s growing wildfire crisis. The strategy outlines the need to significantly increase fuels and forest health treatments to address the escalating crisis of wildfire danger that threatens millions of acres and numerous communities across the United States

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Forest Service Chief Randy Moore recently announced a comprehensive response to the nation’s growing wildfire crisis – “Confronting the Wildfire Crisis: A Strategy for Protecting Communities and Improving Resilience in America’s Forests.” The strategy outlines the need to significantly increase fuels and forest health treatments to address the escalating crisis of wildfire danger that threatens millions of acres and numerous communities across the United States.

The Forest Service will work with other federal agencies, including the Department of the Interior, and with Tribes, states, local communities, private landowners, and other partners to focus fuels and forest health treatments more strategically and at the scale of the problem, based on the best available science.

In Arizona, verdant fields of crops and a growing sprawl of suburban homes mean a sharp demand for water in the middle of the desert. Meeting that demand includes drawing from massive stores of underground water. But some experts say those aquifers are overtaxed and shouldn’t be seen as a long-term solution for a region where the water supply is expected to shrink in the decades to come.

In much of the West and Southwest, the climate crisis is projected to raise average temperatures while reducing snowpack for much of the foreseeable future. These trends will significantly increase the risk of drought in an area heavily dependent on irrigation for food production. So what’s the plan? For many farming communities, according to a new report on drought preparedness, there is none.

Ranchers are at the helm of a highly cost-effective tool to reduce fuel loads.
​That tool is called grazing.
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​More and more, government agencies, including fire departments, have realized the value of enlisting sheep or cattle producers that can truck their animals to locations where ground cover “ladder fuels” like grass and shrubs need mowing. The ranchers themselves could use the forage, and their animals, unlike mechanical mowers, don’t throw off sparks that could accidentally start a blaze.
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​Strategic deployment has yielded positive results, especially in the wildland-urban interface. Vineyard operators are increasingly partnering with livestock producers for the service. A valuable co-benefit is noxious weed control. In the wine country of Sonoma County, where the housing density, and thus the fire risk to property, has increased at a staggering pace in the past two decades, the University of California Ag Extension created a new online service called match.graze where landowners seeking fuel reduction can enlist ranchers.
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​That niche, called “target grazing,” is one that Jaime Irwin, her husband Robert and their family are filling. Their company, Kaos Sheep Outfit, based in Lake County, California, has been enlisted by local towns, fire departments, land trusts, watershed protection groups, vineyards, local airports and homeowners. Their flocks have been chomping grass and forbs primarily between Interstate 5 and US Highway 101 close to the Pacific Coast.

Earlier this month, the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) made a series of changes to its premier conservation programs to better support farmers’ ability to face climate change. First, NRCS improved the re-enrollment process within the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP). NRCS eliminated the requirement that farmers with expiring contracts who are not selected to renew those contracts must wait two full years to reapply to the program, a change for which the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) has long advocated.  

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is announcing several new and expanded opportunities for climate smart agriculture in 2022. Updates include nationwide availability of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) Conservation Incentive Contracts option, a new and streamlined EQIP Cover Crop Initiative, and added flexibilities for producers to easily re-enroll in the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP). These improvements to NRCS’ working lands conservation programs, combined with continued program opportunities in all states, are part of the Biden-Harris Administration’s broader effort to support climate-smart agriculture.

Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts announced a $500 million plan Monday to divert water out of Colorado under a 99-year-old compact between the states that allows Nebraska to seize access to Colorado land along the South Platte River and build canals.

Ricketts said Nebraska would invoke its rights under the South Platte River Compact amid concerns that Colorado’s plans for the river could reduce water flows into his state by as much as 90%, taking a potentially huge toll on Nebraska’s agricultural and power industries and likely affecting water supplies in the state’s two largest cities, Omaha and Lincoln

A new documentary, “The Fish & the Flame,” highlights the successful recovery of the San Juan cutthroat trout in the wake of Durango’s 416 Fire of 2018. The 14-minute film details how Colorado Parks and Wildlife aquatic biologist Jim White collaborated with Banded Peak Ranch Manager Tim Haarmann to save one of the last remaining populations of the recently rediscovered San Juan cutthroat trout as the 416 Fire threatened to decimate the fish that until 2018 was believed to be extinct.

Newly discovered San Juan cutthroat trout were saved during the 416 Fire in Durango. “The Fish & the Flame,” a new documentary film, tells the story of a Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologist and a ranch manager who teamed up to recover some of the last remaining populations of the fish species.

The successful recovery of the San Juan cutthroat trout in the face of Durango’s 416 Fire of 2018 is the subject of a new documentary film produced by Days Edge Productions and presented by Western Landowners Alliance and Chama Peak Land Alliance.

A free virtual film screening of “The Fish & the Flame” will be held at 5 p.m. Jan. 10. The 14-minute showing will be followed by a question and answer session with Colorado Parks and Wildlife aquatic biologist Jim White, Banded Peak Ranch manager Tim Haarmann, Western Landowners Alliance executive director Lesli Allison, Chama Peak Land Alliance executive director Caleb Stotts and producer Page Buono.

Guardians Of The Grasslands is a short documentary that explores the current state of one of the world’s most endangered ecosystems, the Great Plains grasslands, and the role that cattle play in its survival. As we reach new critical levels in the loss of these iconic landscapes, there are important truths we must face about humanity’s relationship with the land and our food. Watch the film for free on their website.

The United States should immediately move to create a collection of strategic forest reserves in the Western U.S. to fight climate change and safeguard biodiversity, asserts a scientific collaboration led by an Oregon State University ecologist.

With farms, ranches and rural communities facing unprecedented threats, a worrying trend leads to a critical question: Who owns the water?

New Mexico is among three Upper Basin states exceeding their agreed-upon allotment of Colorado River water, a trend that could lead to the possible curtailment of water use in the future, a conservation group said in a newly released report.

Consuming less water will become more imperative as a changing climate causes hotter, drier weather that further depletes the Colorado River — and yet the four Upper Basin states have made no formal plans to cut their water use and at least two propose more diversions from the river as if there’s no shortage, according to a report by the Utah Rivers Council.

United States Senators Jon Tester (D-Mont) and John Thune (R-S.D.) this week led a bipartisan group of senators in urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA) to address a gap in coverage under the Emergency Assistance for Livestock, Honeybees and Farm-Raised Fish Program (ELAP). In September, USDA announced it would provide ELAP assistance for the cost of transporting feed to livestock, but producers who are transporting their livestock to feed are not eligible for the program.

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack announced earlier this month the Department is investing $633 million to reduce the impacts of climate change on rural communities.

“Rural America is on the front lines of climate change, and our communities deserve investments that will strengthen all of our resilience,” Vilsack said.

The American West has entered a dangerous new era of hotter heat waves, ever-more-brutal droughts and a growing threat of violent extremism on public lands. There’s still hope for the future. But in a part of the country mythologized for its rugged individualism, going it alone will be a recipe for disaster, climate experts say. States and tribes, big cities and rural towns, liberals and conservatives alike will need to cooperate.

The vital Kansas ecosystem is rapidly shrinking. Its future depends on private landowners like Lorna Harder.

Before Harder and her husband bought their 100 acres, they rented their home and a couple of acres of the property. The rest was leased to a local farmer. “We watched the land those eight years before we bought the farm and we weren’t able to do anything,” Harder says. “It was overstocked with cattle. There was no tree removal. It was grazed down to the nub.”

Once they bought the entire acreage, they began building up the prairie. It was a time-consuming process: They cut trees and other nonnative plants from the never-cultivated ground, and used fire to clear spaces so that sunlight could reach the native plants that remained. With the open space and adequate sunlight that prairie demands, the plants grew from there.

Private conservation efforts like Harder’s are key, says Drew Bennett, a professor at the University of Wyoming who researches how conservation, private land ownership and agriculture can work together. The division of conservation and private lands creates “artificial silos,” says Bennett. “You can’t have conservation in Kansas without private lands.”

How much and how long a severely burned Pacific Northwest mountain landscape stays blanketed in winter snow is a key factor in the return of vegetation according to new research. Findings are important because the severity and frequency of wildfires in the Northwest are increasing, the blazes carry many short- and long-term impacts, and the length of those impacts is linked with vegetation’s re-establishment and recovery.

The importance of keeping carbon out of the atmosphere is widely understood, but breaking down knowledge on how to protect carbon already stored in our ecosystems into actionable practices can be more difficult. Through the Storing Carbon in Sagebrush Rangelands report and companion resources, the Intermountain West Joint Venture (IWJV) aims to translate this science to an applicable scale for land managers and others across western rangelands.

Withered crops and puny livestock; dead fish and swarming insects; laid off workers, shriveling economies, and rural homes stranded without running water — these are just some of the calamities unleashed by a historic drought affecting all of Oregon and parts of Washington.

With a high-stakes case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court and more forecasts calling for hot and dry weather, New Mexico’s top water official says lawmakers can’t afford not to adequately fund the state agencies that oversee water resources.

The Ridgway town council has voted to give “rights of nature” to the Uncompahgre River that flows on the edge of its downtown, joining Nederland and a long list of international locations saying they want to be better stewards of their wild spaces.

The natural rights movement has gone as far afield as New Zealand and Nigeria, with some efforts focused on protecting revered tribal lands, others to stop dams from forever changing valued waterways. 

Legal critics of the strategy, though, contend that water can’t have rights unto itself, and that the people proposing to speak for Colorado’s rivers may have narrow views that don’t serve the state as a whole. 

A majority of U.S. farmers are at least somewhat concerned about climate change, and nearly half are using or considering practices to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new Agri-Pulse survey of U.S. farmers. But getting most farmers to participate in carbon markets will require payments of at least $40 an acre, far more than they currently earn.

In this piece, we are going to look at one example of the harmful impact of partial and misleading sustainability claims in the global north. It relates to wool; it provides pointers for the sustainability conversation around all farmed fibers; and it concerns the Navajo.

Migrant trees are finding new homes in forests across the Western U.S., as changing climate conditions — accelerated by wildfires — force them to seek out cooler, wetter locations, a new study has found. The research provides the first empirical evidence that fires are hastening the movement of trees, likely by diminishing competition from established species.

Millions of acres of U.S. forestland go up in smoke every year due to wildfires, in some cases leaving nature struggling to regenerate. CBS News’ Anthony Pura shows us how drones are now being used to restore those areas.

An estimated 40 million people rely on water that originates in the Colorado River Basin, but the river can no longer keep up with demand, and it’s raising serious questions about the future of water in the West.

Snow needs to be on the main menu for states like Utah, Idaho and others in the West to help them counter the effects of a vicious drought that shut down boat ramps across reservoirs, led to an early end of outdoor watering and yellowed lawns. Idaho’s drought remains a concern, as do conditions in Utah because it is so early in the

For farmers, ranchers, foresters and water managers in the West facing extreme and debilitating drought conditions, water supply forecasts have never been more critical to their operations and livelihoods. However, major forecasting improvements are needed because of narrowing margins between water supply and water demand in the ever-more-thirsty American West. NRCS has unveiled a new computer application to address this pressing need: the multi-model machine learning metasystem, or M4. This first-of-its-kind model will be the largest migration of artificial intelligence, also known as AI, into real-world river prediction programs.

In the mid-2000s, seven states, the federal government and Mexico negotiated critical rules for the Colorado River that established how to divvy up its water in a severe drought like it is now facing.
Thirty Native American tribes — with rights to roughly a quarter of all the water in the river — were shut out of those talks. Tribes want to make sure that doesn’t happen again. The effort offers new challenges for the seven Colorado River basin states and the Biden administration, which has repeatedly pledged to be more inclusive in regulatory efforts that affect Native Americans.

Livestock grazing can serve several purposes. It feeds the livestock, regenerates plant and soil health, and—when animals are grazed in orchards or woodlands—lessens wildfire severity by reducing fuel loads. Mark Batcheler, a Washington State University PhD student, is studying how silvopasture managed grazing compares to unmanaged grazing of forested areas, ungrazed woodlands, and grazed pastures with no trees.

Ranchers and conservationists, once unlikely allies, are teaming up to preserve grasslands, which act as a carbon dioxide sink that could support climate goals.

The drought stretching through much of the Great Plains is pushing cattle ranchers and dairy farmers to the breaking point – and sometimes past it – as producers scramble to feed their animals.

Over the span of two days, dramatic scenes of dried landscapes and wildfires that have defined California’s summer were replaced with surging rivers, floods and mudflows as a historic rainstorm – deemed a category 5 atmospheric river – pummeled the state. For scientists, the storm – though shocking in its magnitude – was not a surprise. It’s been clear that the climate crisis would intensify the extremes between wet and dry seasons, but many wonder whether this weather whiplash is a preview of catastrophes to come.

USDA Secretary Vilsack announced that more than 50 organizations and countries have officially declared their support for the Sustainable Productivity Growth for Food Security and Resource Conservation (SPG) Coalition, which the United States launched at the UN Food Systems Summit. The goal of the coalition is to accelerate the transition to more sustainable food systems through productivity growth that optimizes agricultural sustainability across social, economic, and environmental dimensions.

In the face of climate change and persistent droughts, a growing number of people from Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico and elsewhere are adopting the traditional farming practice called waffle gardens, sunken garden beds enclosed by clay-heavy walls. This practice is well-suited for the semi-arid, high-altitude desert.

Indigo Agriculture, a company leveraging nature and technology to unlock economic and environmental progress in agriculture, today announced a deepened commitment to advancing discovery in soil carbon science, enabled by the acquisition of Soil Metrics — a leading technology for comprehensive soil carbon and greenhouse gas (ghg) assessment in agricultural soils.

If Jim Howell, a fourth-generation rancher in western Colorado, has a guru, he’s Allan Savory, the champion of intensive cattle grazing even on semi-arid land.

Howell, 52, says Savory’s methods, which require moving cattle quickly from pasture to pasture, enable him to keep adding thousands more animals as the ground recovers. He says the method is so efficient he can even foresee leasing out irrigation water that he doesn’t need.

If all this sounds unbelievable, Howell, who is ranch manager for Eli Feldman in Ridgway, Colo., understands the skepticism. But he says the ranch speaks for itself.

The biggest global agriculture companies are competing on a new front: enticing farmers to join programs that keep atmosphere-warming carbon dioxide in the soil.

Federal water managers warn that like other basins across the western U.S., the Pecos River Basin in New Mexico is likely to experience growing water shortages as temperatures continue to rise over the next century. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation discussed the findings of a recently completed study on the basin, saying the goal of the work was to better understand the threats to water supplies in the region due to climate change. Officials also looked at what tools could be used to stretch resources to help sustain viable agriculture over the coming century as challenges grow.

Researchers from the University of California, Davis, have been awarded a $10 million grant by USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to find ways to sustain irrigated agriculture while improving groundwater quantity and quality in the Southwest under a changing climate.

Over the past few years, as California has endured record-breaking wildfires, a legion of fire scientists is delivering a blunt message to those who oppose forest thinning: Get out of the way. In a series of articles published in scientific journals, fire scientists are attacking claims that the woods need to be left alone and saying activists are bogging down vital work needed to protect wildlife, communities and make California’s forests more resilient to wildfire, namely through fuels reduction and thinning.

Early fall wildfires in the western states and the smoke they generate pose a risk to birds migrating in the Pacific Flyway, according to a new study by the U.S. Geological Survey. GPS data from the 2020 wildfire season indicate that at least some migratory birds may take longer and use more energy to avoid wildfire smoke.

Utah’s iconic Great Salt Lake, long neglected by regulators, is collapsing due to a historic drought and climate change. And, in a cruel twist, the demise of the lake — which shriveled to a record low level in July — may threaten Utah’s posh ski towns and even the state’s water supply. At issue: the “lake effect.”

The USDA is investing $10 million in a new initiative to sample, measure and monitor soil carbon on Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) acres to better quantify the climate outcomes of the program.

The farmers are paid to leave a portion of their lands dry and fallow, and the water saved over the next three years is expected to translate into three feet of additional water in Lake Mead, which has declined to its lowest levels since it was filled in the 1930s following the construction of Hoover Dam.

U.S. Senator Steve Daines, chair of the Senate Western Caucus, today unveiled a blueprint for responsible, effective conservation supporting Montana and the West. Daines’ “Western Conservation Principles” serves as an alternative to the Biden administration’s “30 by 30 initiative” and America the Beautiful report.

Better wildfire resilience in America’s forests is a top priority for the U.S. Forest Service, but so is the Biden administration’s America the Beautiful Initiative to set aside more land for parks and other uses, an agency official says. The initiative’s goal is to conserve 30% of U.S. lands and water by 2030 with focuses on collaborative conservation and restoration of lands and fish and wildlife habitat, voluntary conservation, creating more parks, increasing access for outdoor recreation and creating jobs.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently announced a comprehensive set of investments to address challenges facing America’s agricultural producers. These include assistance to address challenges and costs associated with drought, animal health, market disruptions for agricultural commodities, and school food supply chain issues. He also outlined and requested public comments on a new climate partnership initiative designed to create new revenue streams for producers via market opportunities for commodities produced using climate-smart practices.

Heat stress negatively affects animals’ performance, including their milk production, growth rate, and fertility. Producers often select their breeding livestock for productivity gains. As many Western regions experience hotter and longer heat waves, both genetic and behavioral traits of heat tolerance increasingly are becoming culling criteria.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service is ready to declare the ivory-billed woodpecker — and 22 others — gone for good, tripling the number of species delisted due to extinction. Government scientists warn climate change, on top of other pressures, could make such disappearances more common as a warming planet adds to the dangers facing imperiled plants and wildlife.

The leaders of numerous conservancy groups have endorsed bipartisan legislation proposed by Rep. Blake Moore (R-UT) to bolster U.S. Forest Service staffing to mitigate wildfire risks. The Save Our Forest Act would allocate $46 million to allow the Secretary of Agriculture to fill longstanding personnel vacancies in the U.S. Forest Service.

Bianca and Andrée Soares transport their herd to wildfire-prone areas where the animals eat dry vegetation that can fuel flames near homes and businesses.

With severe drought strangling the West, the country’s largest water provider has embarked on a multibillion-dollar project that could help it cope with increasingly frequent shortages exacerbated by climate change. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California wants to recycle Los Angeles’ wastewater, creating a new supply stream that would significantly reduce the city’s reliance on imported water from Northern California and the Colorado River.

Mechanical thinning alone can calm the intensity of future wildfires for many years, and prescribed burns lengthen thinning’s effectiveness, according to Oregon State University research involving a seasonally dry ponderosa pine forest in northeastern Oregon.

As California’s drought stretches into 2022, state and federal water agencies are working on a plan for the worst-case scenario. This comes as the state cut water use by less than 2% in July.

Ranchers in the Great Plains are under increasing stress due to changing environmental conditions and subsequent losses of rangelands to woody plants, but a relatively new management approach shows promise in turning the tide against encroaching brush and shrubs.

“Accepting aridity, and rejecting shortsighted and maladaptive responses, is central to managing drought risks for the more than 60 million people reliant on the West’s dwindling water — and for the generations to come. An era of drought in the Western United States has begun. Our focus should be on adapting to this dry run, rather than hoping for it to end.”

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan says a proposal to restore regulations defining “waters of the U.S.” to those that were in place before the Obama administration’s 2015 rule could be issued by November, with another proposal redefining WOTUS to follow a year after that.

When we think about limited resources in agriculture, water is normally the first that springs to mind. The bad news is that just like water, soil is a finite resource that is fast deteriorating as a result of human activity. The good news: Research is providing farmers, landowners and policymakers with new tools to turn the tide.

Paul Bruchez, a fifth generation farmer and rancher, acknowledges the fight farmers and ranchers are in could determine not just the future of his family’s ranch, but the future of agriculture in Colorado and beyond. The hotter, drier weather is threatening water supplies and crop yields, and is driving ranchers to cut herd sizes or find greener pastures elsewhere for the animals.

The U.S. Forest Service has put the brakes on an effort to thin hundreds of square miles of land in Arizona to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires, drawing sharp rebukes from elected officials.

How are farmers, ranchers and restaurateurs navigating climate change and the pandemic? CPR reporter Stina Sieg and Harrison Topp, fruit grower and membership director for Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, took a road trip down the Western Slope to find out.

Reducing your cow herd’s environmental “hoofprints” in the pasture can often lead to money savings and increased efficiencies for the producer.

This was the key takeaway from beef sustainability research headed up by National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and presented during a session at the 2021 Cattlemen’s College Aug. 9-10, in Nashville, Tenn. Overall, U.S. cattle producers are doing a better job at managing their cattle herds not only for economic sustainability, but also environmental sustainability.

A glimpse into the history of the Colorado River Basin system, how it was designed and the impacts of climate change shed light on why it was destined to fail.

Across the Southern Plains, groundwater that sustained generations is drying up, creating another problem: Without enough rain or groundwater for crops, soil can blow away — as it did during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Farmers are facing tough choices. Some are growing less-thirsty crops or improving irrigation. Others are replacing some cash crops with cattle and pastureland.

Wildfires are killing people around the world — even those with limited exposure to wildfire-related pollution, an international team of researchers reports. The new research revealed that short-term exposure to wildfire-related fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in the air is increasing deaths worldwide from any cause as well as from respiratory and heart-related causes.

Both torrent and trickle have afflicted storied trout streams in the American West in recent years amid the havoc of climate change, which has made the region hotter and drier and fueled severe weather events. Blistering heat waves and extended drought have raised water temperatures and imperiled fish species in several states.

Lightning-caused wildfires can help renew forest ecosystems, but with warmer, drier landscapes, the risk of allowing them to burn is increasing. Without natural fire as a management tool, agencies would be left to rely on forest thinning and prescribed burns to mitigate future wildfires, which come with social and economic constraints.

As with conversations about natural resource management more broadly, public discourse about whether forests can be managed to effectively reduce wildfire risk is incredibly heated. U.S. Sen. Steve Daines frequently calls for active forest management and reform of the environmental review process to address “catastrophic” and “deadly” wildfires. During a recent wildfire briefing Sen. Daines said “frivolous litigation” has tied up thinning projects in courts and caused the U.S. Forest Service to fall short of its timber harvest targets in Montana.

The Resilient Federal Forests Act seeks to restore forest health on over 80 million acres of national forests through active management, increase resiliency to wildfire and support rural communities. The bill would expedite thinning and logging projects up to 30,000 acres by “ending frivolous ligation” and remove interagency consultation requirements that delay forest management activities. Additionally, it would accelerate salvage operation and reforest activities, improve existing authority on insect and disease infestations and codify the principles of the Good Neighbor Authority.

As western states contend with increasingly catastrophic wildfires, some are looking to the Southeastern U.S., where prescribed fire is widespread thanks to policies put in place decades ago. From 1998 to 2018, 70% of all controlled burning in the country was in the Southeast.

The Trump administration’s Navigable Waters Protection Rule has been vacated by a federal judge in Arizona who said allowing it to remain in place risks “serious environmental harm,” particularly in the arid Southwest.

Nicolette Hahn Niman was an environmental lawyer who became a cattle rancher, and didn’t eat meat for 33 years. For both the ecosystem and human health, she argues, it’s how animals are farmed that matters.

As the West suffers another summer of drought and fire, fishing holes there and elsewhere are feeling the heat.

A new study finds smoke could be making it harder for clouds to drop rain and alleviate drought, potentially kicking of a “very scary” feedback loop.

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham signed an executive order that calls for 30 percent of New Mexico’s public lands to be protected by 2030, putting the state in line with a larger federal conservation effort.

The order directs a half-dozen state agencies to coalesce behind the “30 by 30” plan by establishing programs that conserve, protect and enhance public lands for a variety of uses. An additional 20 percent will be designated as climate stabilization areas.

More than 60 groups are urging Democratic congressional leaders to prioritize climate-friendly agriculture, food systems and equity in their $3.5 trillion domestic spending package. About $89 billion in the budget reconciliation measure will be designated for agriculture and forestry in the package, and groups want to see $30 billion of that allocated to conservation programs.

A lack of snow last winter and almost no spring rain have created the driest conditions in generations. Ranchers are being forced to sell off portions of herds they have built up for years, often at fire-sale prices, to stay in business.

Buffeted by drought, court orders, climate change, and Front Range diversion plans, the water supply of the San Luis Valley faces pressure as never before.

The Colorado River irrigates farms, powers electric grids and provides drinking water to 40 million people. But as its supply dwindles, a crisis looms.

USDA Agricultural Research Service (ARS) researchers are conducting a study evaluating the use of targeted cattle grazing to create fuel breaks in order to contain wildfires. The results are in, and so far, cattle have provided extremely positive impacts.

The research is taking place in the Great Basin, where cattle grazing has successfully helped contain three rangeland fires in four years. The latest wildfire to be contained was the Welch Fire near Elko, NV, on July 18.

Targeted grazing uses cattle in the early spring to eat strips of highly flammable cheatgrass down to 2- or 3-inch stubble, which reduces the fuel load that can quickly turn small rangeland fires into megafires.

This year’s drought has impacted Montana’s treasured cold-water fisheries, and the outfitters and anglers who rely on them. Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks fully or partially closed close to twenty rivers to fishing this summer due to high water temperatures, low flows, or concerns about angling pressure.

Most scientists agree climate change has a profound impact on U.S. agricultural production. But estimates vary widely, making it hard to develop mitigation strategies. Two agricultural economists at the University of Illinois take a closer look at how choice of statistical methodology influences climate study results. They also propose a more accurate and place-specific approach to data analysis.

A Utah judge waded deep into Mormon pioneer history to settle a long-simmering fight over stream access, this time in favor of riverside property owners concluding the public has no right to walk or touch the bottoms of streams crossing private land.

Study to examine the interconnectedness of the inhabitants of western rangelands, including humans, plants and animals, in the face of a changing climate and other stressors.

With climate change and long-term drought continuing to take a toll on the Colorado River, the federal government or the first time declared a water shortage at Lake Mead, one of the river’s main reservoirs. The declaration triggers cuts in water supply that, for now, mostly will affect Arizona farmers.

One year after wildfires ravaged Dave Daley’s herd, the California rancher is on a mission to save his family’s ranch legacy. But as his area is still scattered with scars, searching for solutions and calls for change.

Insect populations are declining worldwide, and monarch butterflies are no exception. Efforts to reverse the trends are underway across the United States and Canada. Even with these efforts, many national insect conservation groups are advocating for the USFWS to list the monarch butterfly as “threatened” under the ESA. But a recent op-ed from scientists says that listing the monarch as endangered would trigger regulatory protections that could actually harm monarch populations and current conservation efforts.

On Thursday, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association announced a plan to address beef sustainability and solidify their commitment to environmental, economic and social sustainability for the U.S. Cattle Industry.

Conflicting agricultural and residential interests are coming to a head in Park County with the recent Buck Creek Estates major subdivision seeking approval before the county commissioners.

A newly published study by Colorado State University and partners found that Adaptive Multi-Paddock (AMP) grazing – which involves grazing small areas with a high density of livestock for a short period of time, followed by long rest periods – can help capture carbon and boost nitrogen soil retention.

Climate change, drought and high demand are expected to force the first-ever mandatory cuts to a water supply that 40 million people across the American West depend on — the Colorado River.

The East Yellowstone Collaborative Working Group works to restore, protect, and steward the lands of the Absaroka Front to support healthy wildlife populations and sustain private working lands. Funding will support continued facilitation of the Working Group, including monthly partner meetings. Funding will also support targeted work with landowners to explore and prioritize potential conservation projects as the Working Group moves into implementation of its Vision Plan. Targeted investments in sustaining the collaborative capacity of the Working Group will accelerate its ability to achieve landscape-scale conservation outcomes in a landscape of global significance while maintaining the economic viability of ranches and private working lands.

Ruminant animals like cattle contribute to the maintenance of healthy soils and grasslands, and proper grazing management can reduce the industry’s carbon emissions and overall footprint, according to Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientist, Richard Teague.

Is harnessing the storage power of soils the global carbon solution we have been searching for? Understanding soil-formation and function is a first step to finding out.

Researchers are concerned that the Dixie fire’s record won’t hold for long. The parched landscapes and increased temperatures that set the stage for bigger blazes this year are not anomalies – they are trends. And the conditions are going to get worse.

Companies like Land O’ Lakes have created carbon trading programs, which can benefit farmers who’ve yet to get started on conservation practices. But farmers who’ve practiced conservation for years are feeling like the time isn’t right to jump in. 

Time is growing short to address global climate change, whose impacts are being seen in more extreme weather events such as drought and heavier precipitation, and changes to agricultural practices could take decades to have an impact on carbon emissions, according to a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Shelton Douthit and his team at the Feather River Land Trust in Northern California have been working to restore the lush natural habitat and protect Indigenous artifacts around Lake Almanor.

Agricultural runoff from farms and livestock operations creates oxygen-depleted areas inhospitable to animal and plant life. Scientists recently surveyed the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico around Louisiana and Texas and what they discovered was a larger-than-average area of oxygen-depleted water – a “dead zone” where nothing can live.

The effects from the Cameron Peak Fire can still be felt 12 months after the wildfire burned more than 208,000 acres.

Congressional Democrats are pushing for a historic increase in conservation program funding that would help pay farmers to address climate change, but the money also could create some challenges for the House and Senate Agriculture committees as they write the new farm bill.

Greater buffer zones around bodies of water and more consistent enforcement of water protection regulations are needed to reduce agriculture-based pollution in the Western U.S., a recent review from Oregon State University found.

Prior research has shown that agricultural pollution, both from croplands and rangelands, is the cause of 48% of water-quality impairment in U.S. surface waters, which in turn disrupts habitat for fish and insects and reduces biodiversity in aquatic environments.

A centuries-old concept in soil science has recently been thrown out. Yet it remains a key ingredient in everything from climate models to advanced carbon-capture projects.

One of California’s biggest hydroelectric plants was taken offline Thursday after water levels at the Lake Oroville reservoir plummeted to historic lows, which authorities blamed on drought caused by climate change.

The U.S. District Court in South Carolina dismissed a challenge to the Navigable Waters Protection Rule written during the Trump administration and granted a remand without vacatur, ensuring the rule remains in effect until the Biden administration finalizes a new rule.

It has dropped water levels perilously low at two of the nation’s largest reservoirs, forced ranchers to sell off herds and helped propel scorching wildfires. It’s lasted longer than the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. And worst of all, the drought blanketing the western United States is not going away.

As producers wade through the ever-deepening amount of carbon information available in the marketplace, they are asking for answers to key questions including which program makes sense for their operation, what’s the value in participating, is it all just hype and how can one avoid being taken advantage of.

Colorado lifted some fishing restrictions along a stretch of the Colorado River, but biologists warn that historically low water flows caused by a drought in the West, high water temperatures and wildfire sediment that all starve trout of oxygen could force future bans.

The monstrous wildfire burning in Oregon has grown to a third the size of Rhode Island and spreads miles each day, but evacuations and property losses have been minimal compared with much smaller blazes in densely populated areas of California. The fire’s jaw-dropping size contrasted with its relatively small impact on people underscores the vastness of the American West.

A USDA Conservation Innovation Grant (CIG) project is trying to reimagine how carbon markets can work with and for small landholders. The Family Forest Carbon Program (FFCP) bases carbon payments on specific forest management practices. The project’s goal is to facilitate the participation of nearly 300 million acres of family-owned American forests in carbon markets.

Four Western members of Congress have issued a bipartisan call for their colleagues to prioritize funding for wildfire resiliency and prevention in this year’s appropriations bill. The four are members of the Bipartisan Wildfire Caucus, which sent a letter to House Appropriations Committee leaders in April asking for the funding.

Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Colo., Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, Rep. John Garamendi, D-Calif., and Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., held a press call recently detailing the need for more urgent, coordinated responses to wildfires in the West, which have become routine rather than rare.

This year is proving to be a serious challenge for many cattle producers in the western states, with prolonged drought and high temperatures. Pasture and hay supplies are well below average and some producers are running out of forage.

While watering lawns less can be done to conserve water during a drought, using less water isn’t always possible in agricultural operations. As water availability dwindles, some farmers are noticing decreases in their agricultural outputs. Troy Forest is the Director of Grazing Improvement at the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food and said the drought has been negatively impacting animal agriculture in Utah for over a year now.

Some of New Mexico’s top climate and water experts warned state lawmakers Tuesday that the effects of the drought on water supplies have been worsened by climate change, specifically an ongoing, long-term warming trend.

Extremely dry conditions like the region is experiencing in 2021 make clear that the Colorado River is unable to meet all the demands communities in the Western U.S. have placed on it, and it’s up to its biggest users to decide who has to rely on it less.

This week, Think Out Loud has traveled to the Klamath Basin to have conversations with people affected by the severe drought in the region. The Bootleg fire is currently the largest burning in the U.S. Rancher Becky Hyde is a mile and a half from the fire. She says, “If you take the drought, and then you add the fire on top of it … you have ranchers in this area who are in a horrible situation.”

As fires propagate throughout the US west on the heels of record heatwaves, experts are warning that the region is caught in a vicious feedback cycle of extreme heat, drought and fire, all amplified by the climate crisis.

Building on a successful peer-to-peer network of Texas ranchers who are implementing innovative grazing techniques to improve soil health and increase profitability, the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT) is scaling up its Soil for Water project to support livestock producers and farmers across seven southern states and Montana.

Reservoir levels are dropping throughout the West, as the drought tightens its grip on the region and intense summer heat further stresses both water supply and the surrounding landscape.

In California and across the drought-parched West, programs are springing up to help goats, sheep, and cattle eat down the plants that would otherwise become fuel for wildfires.

Colorado Congressmembers like Reps. Lauren Boebert and Joe Neguse can’t make it rain or control a massive wildfire. What they can do is focus attention — and money — on the issue.

The Colorado River Indian Tribes and another tribe in Arizona have played an outsized role in the recent drought contingency plans that had Arizona voluntarily give up water. As the state faces mandatory cuts next year in its Colorado River supply, the tribes see themselves as major players in the future of water.

A California farmer decides it makes better business sense to sell his water than to grow rice. An almond farmer considers uprooting his trees to put up solar panels. Drought is transforming the state, with broad consequences for the food supply.

Water levels in major bodies of water in the Southwest — both natural and manmade — are approaching historic lows as the drought is exacerbated by heatwave after heatwave during a dry season that started earlier this year.

The Senate on Thursday passed bipartisan legislation aimed at granting farms access to carbon offset markets by a 92-8 vote.

The Growing Climate Solutions Act, introduced by Sens. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), next heads to the House. The measure would establish a Department of Agriculture certification process through which producers can generate and sell carbon credits.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is providing $10 million to support climate-smart agriculture and forestry through voluntary conservation practices in 10 targeted states. This assistance, available through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), will help agricultural producers plan and implement voluntary conservation practices that sequester carbon, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change on working lands.

As the federal government prepares to declare a first-ever water shortage at Lake Mead, Arizona state leaders, Native American tribes, and philanthropic and corporate foundations are stepping up to help conserve water.

This week, these entities committed to funding an $8 million gap to complete a landmark water conservation project with the Colorado River Indian Tribes and the state of Arizona.

Current drought conditions across the West and Southwest are more widespread and severe than they’ve ever been in the 20 years the US Drought Monitor has been mapping them. Key water reservoirs were already alarmingly dry when a heat wave blanketed the western US, straining power grids and raising wildfire risk.

High-elevation forests in Colorado and Wyoming are now burning more than at any other point in the last two millennia. According to new research, climate change is making subalpine forests in the Rocky Mountains more flammable now than at any time in the past 2,000 years. 

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory participated in a study that shows innovation in technologies and agricultural practices could reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from grain production by up to 70 percent within the next 15 years.

A recent study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows how the health of a California grassland might be affected in a future with less biodiversity and a changing climate, particularly in the case of more frequent droughts.

Almost half of the U.S. has been in a drought since the start of 2021.

Compounding factors, including low rainfall and snowpack, climate change and persisting droughts from previous years, have escalated into extreme dryness.

The prolonged dryness means low water levels are endangering fish species in Oregon and Colorado, 30% of California’s population is in a drought emergency, and the nation’s two biggest reservoirs on the Colorado River — Lake Powell and Lake Mead — are two-thirds empty.

Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Friday signed a bill rushed through in a special legislative session that provides $100 million in funding this year to battle wildfires, react to the damage they cause and to create a new force of more than 700 state inmates to clear brush.

In a recent editorial, The New Mexican declared rivers and streams belong to the public, but this simplistic declaration masks a crucially important story that is not being told (“Rivers, streams belong to public — period,” Our View, June 13). If we care about New Mexico’s land, water, people and wildlife, it’s time to take a much harder, more honest look at the issue and what is at stake. WLA’s Lesli Allison writes “it’s time to move past the rhetoric and to a much more critical examination of the “public access at all costs” movement.”

Between 51-60% of the 64 million kilometres of rivers and streams on Earth, investigated in a new study, stop flowing periodically, or run dry for part of the year. The research calls for a paradigm shift in river science and management by revising foundational concepts which traditionally assumed year-round water flow in rivers and streams.

A group of researchers at Northern Arizona University recently studied the effects of thinning and burning in small areas throughout the state. Their research shows that treatments might last for at least two decades.

The Western Slope has suffered a drought three of the last four years, and by now, it’s taken a toll on farmers and ranchers that is both financial and emotional. VanWinkle choked up as she spoke of the “crunch” she hears with every step through the pasture. “It’s truly the grass and the flora crumbling into a million pieces with every step you take,” she said. “It’s brutal.”

In response to historic drought conditions, the USDA is offering $41.8 million through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) to help agricultural producers in Arizona, California, Colorado and Oregon alleviate the immediate impacts of drought and other natural resource challenges on working lands. NRCS will accept applications through July 12, 2021.

In response to historic drought conditions, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is offering $41.8 million through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) to help agricultural producers in Arizona, California, Colorado and Oregon alleviate the immediate impacts of drought and other natural resource challenges on working lands.

USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) will make available this funding through Conservation Incentive Contracts, a new option available through EQIP. Signup for this targeted funding begins today, and NRCS will accept applications through July 12, 2021.

Most growers in the drought-plagued Klamath Basin don’t appear to want the kind of water confrontations that brought national attention to the region 20 summers ago, a local newspaper is reporting.

In this monthly recorded series, Dr. Matt Reeves – an RMRS Research Ecologist specializing in remote sensing and ecological modeling –  will analyze current rangeland fuel conditions across the west, with emphasis on emerging hotspots. New episodes will be posted on the first Monday of every month and more frequently as the summer progresses.

Ordinarily this time of year, the Colorado River would be raging on its way through Mesa County, swollen with runoff from melting mountain snow.

Said Russ Schumacher, state climatologist at the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University, “The streamflows throughout western Colorado are not looking good at this point and there’s not that much snow up there left to melt.”

A new report from the National Audubon Society shows that habitats that are important for birds now and in the future are also critical to reducing greenhouse emissions given their ability to naturally store and sequester carbon. This means that maintaining and restoring these landscapes through incentives for management and conservation are important strategies in our collective challenge to stabilize climate change.

A drought crisis has erupted in the Klamath Basin along the California-Oregon border, with fish dying en masse and farmers infuriated that they have been cut off from their main water source. The brewing battle over the century-old Klamath Project is an early window into the water shortfalls that are likely to spread across the West as a widespread drought, associated with a warming climate, parches watersheds throughout the region.

Kent Reeves is part of a movement to fight climate change by repairing California’s native grasslands, provided he can rope his fellow ranchers and their cattle into the plan. Reeves and Alta Journal contributor Meredith Lawrence join Alta Live for a look at the cowboys trying to sustain the state. This live event will be held on Wednesday, June 23, at 12:30 p.m. Pacific time.

As bad as last year’s record-shattering fire season was, the western U.S. starts this year’s in even worse shape. The soil in the West is record dry for this time of year. In much of the region, plants that fuel fires are also the driest scientists have seen.

A new study conducted by researchers from The University of New Mexico has found that wildfires—which have been increasing in frequency, severity and extent around the globe—are one of the largest drivers of aquatic impairment in the western United States, threatening our water supply.

(Subscription) Will 2021 be the year that biochar finally catches fire? Proponents of the charcoal-like material that’s made from trees and other plants say they hope so, as research continues to point to its ability to enrich the soil while storing large amounts of carbon.

Research can inform people to take appropriate action to solve problems, but effectively communicating is key.

Faith Kearns, who works on emotional and contentious water-related issues such as climate change, drought and wildfire, has learned firsthand that the way scientists communicate can deeply affect people and communities.

In the face of ongoing drought, western ranchers are restoring diverse, grassland ecosystem practices that can improve the land’s capacity to hold water—and help them hold onto more cattle. Will it be enough to survive harder years ahead? Article features WLA members Julie Sullivan and George Whitten.

Severe drought during the winter is leading to matchbox conditions in the West. Drought conditions from California to Nevada, Arizona, Utah and New Mexico have been so bad that officials began preparing for the fire season in April. For some states, the staggering drought could be the worst in centuries.

A study has found that increased drought and wildfire risk make grasslands and rangelands a more reliable carbon sink than trees in 21st century California. As such, the study indicates they should be given opportunities in the state’s cap-and-and trade market, which is designed to reduce California’s greenhouse gas emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

Despite being called a “federal land grab” by at least one legislator on the far right, landowners from across the West gathered with leaders in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Department of Interior in a webinar hosted by the Western Landowners Alliance Thursday to discuss the Biden Administration’s “America the Beautiful” 30×30 conservation plan.

“I think the thing that has everybody worried that we just have to tackle head-on is this question about federal lands, this idea that has been pushed out there quite a bit that this is a federal land grab, or that there could be uses of eminent domain and massive federal land expansions and taking of private properties,” WLA Executive Director Lesli Allison said during the live online session.

Lesli Allison, executive director of the Western Landowners Alliance, called the report “an overdue national conversation” that should occur from those closest to the matter and not from the top down.

“We are pleased to see that the administration is taking seriously that conservation is more than just setting land aside. It is really about how we steward the land,” Allison said in a statement. “The report suggests they understand that economics matter. Farmers and ranchers need to be able to earn a reasonable livelihood providing the many goods and services that society needs, such as food and fiber, but also things like wildlife habitat and healthy forests.”

Drought conditions are so bad, fish hatcheries are trucking their salmon to the ocean and ranchers are worried about having enough water for their livestock.

Due to extreme drought, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced May 12 it will reduce the Klamath Irrigation Project’s already minuscule initial allocation of 33,000 acre-feet to zero. The project’s “A” canal, which normally carries water to some 200,000 acres of farms in Southern Oregon and Northern California, will remain closed for the 2021 season.

(Subscription) Some conservation and environmentalists say the new Civilian Climate Corps should create private landowner partnerships with the Agriculture Department to protect soil, both to reduce greenhouse emissions and protect water quality.

The EPA last week announced the relaunch of its website tracking climate change indicators in the U.S. for the first time since the beginning of the Trump administration. The assessment, delayed under the Trump presidency, includes information on 54 phenomena associated with climate change, including temperature increases, flooding, droughts, rising sea levels and ocean acidity.

President Biden’s pick for EPA’s water office said today that the agency is planning “robust stakeholder engagement” and “regional roundtables” this summer to discuss its review of which waterways and wetlands qualify for federal protections. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom expanded a drought emergency to a large swath of the nation’s most populous state while seeking more than $6 billion in multiyear water spending as one of the warmest, driest springs on record threatens another severe wildfire season across the American West.

(Subscription) A House Agriculture subcommittee this week will explore the impact of farmland conservation programs on climate change, potentially giving clues on how the next farm bill will address the issue in 2023.

Colorado restaurants are funding regenerative agriculture projects that suck carbon from the atmosphere through Restore Colorado. Some see regenerative agriculture as a key way to reduce the amount of CO2 in the air worsening climate change.

A broad coalition of farm and conservation groups says a USDA-run carbon bank should be used to test ways to establish carbon accounting guidelines, expand the use of climate-friendly farming practices and enable small-scale farms and minority producers to benefit from carbon markets.

As of May 6, 67 percent of the region was in a state of “severe” drought or worse; a stunning 21 percent is already in “exceptional” drought.
Dry conditions are nothing new in the U.S. West, which has cycled through water booms and busts for millennia. But the region has been in a state of drought nearly every year since 2000, when the Drought Monitor was established. That 20-year-long stretch rivals any drought in the last 1,200 years, a team of scientists reported last year.

The Biden administration outlined ideas in achieving the nationwide conservation goal to conserve 30% of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. As the report was identified as “big on ideas, short on details,” by the American Farm Bureau Federation, several groups weighed in on how this administration will proceed in accomplishing its lofty conservation goals.

The preliminary report – Conserving and Restoring America the Beautiful – is a joint effort from the United States Department of Agriculture, Department of Interior, Department of Commerce and Council on Environmental Quality. It is the Administration’s initial effort toward developing the executive order signed in President Biden’s first days of office.

In a hearing in the House of Representatives, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan said he doesn’t intend to go back to the Obama-era waters of the U.S. – WOTUS – rule and again made that claim before members of the Senate.

(Subscription) A vision the Biden administration laid out this month for preserving 30% of the nation’s land and water by 2030 is already fueling calls for EPA to reverse a controversial Trump-era water rule that rolled back federal protection for wetlands and streams.

The Biden administration today released a long-anticipated report detailing their proposal to conserve 30 percent of US lands and waters by 2030 (known as 30×30). While the initiative has generated significant speculation and controversy, today’s report appears to indicate a determination on the part of the administration to chart solid middle ground. 

Months after President Biden set a goal of conserving 30 percent of the nation’s land and waters by 2030, the administration Thursday laid out broad principles — but few details — for achieving that vision.

The “America the Beautiful” report outlines steps the U.S. could take to safeguard key areas on land and in the sea to restore biodiversity, tackle climate change and make natural spaces more accessible to all Americans.

The USDA is investing nearly $22 million into research initiatives aimed at helping improve soil health and climate smart agriculture. USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) is investing in several important programs to assist ag producers navigate the effects of climate change and its impact on production.

Farm and environmental groups that often disagree on ag policy are urging the Agriculture Department to prioritize climate change in conservation programs and to consider changes to crop insurance that would promote the use of cover crops and other carbon-conserving practices.

Voluntary conservation efforts by farmers and ranchers play a central role in the Biden administration’s strategy for conserving 30% of the nation’s land and marine waters by 2030.

Drier weather helped aid major planting progress for U.S. farmers last week, but it didn’t help the topsoil moisture situation. USDA shows 14 states have no topsoil moisture considered ‘surplus,’ and more than half of the topsoil in California, North Dakota and New Mexico is considered ‘very short,’ which is the driest category. 

As the adoption of no-till practices has spread widely across parts of the U.S. over the past few decades, the approach has been touted as an important means of storing carbon in soil—and a key solution to solving the climate crisis.

But despite its recent growth in popularity, “no-till” has no single, agreed-upon meaning. In fact, the phrase is often a misnomer. Most no-till farmers have not cut out tillage altogether and do not engage in other beneficial practices such as planting cover crops. As a result, these “seldom-till” farmers aren’t able to permanently store carbon in their soil.

As wildfires across the United States grow in size, intensity and duration each summer, members of Congress from the West are pushing for massive new investments in ecosystem management and wildfire mitigation.

A panel organized by the National Farmers Union hopes to address climate change while reflecting the diversity of American farmers and ranchers.

“The diversity is a really big strength of the panel,” Fullmer tells Food Tank. “That is the goal of the panel: to make sure that the diversity of producers are at the table collaborating together and making sure that the proposals and the bills and the solutions actually being put forward make sense on the ground.”

According to the U.S. drought monitor, almost 80% of the state is in an extreme drought. This is affecting farmers, decreasing water allotments and increasing fire danger.

Agriculture has not been a central part of U.S. climate policy in the past, even though climate change is altering weather patterns that farmers rely on. Now, however, President Biden has directed the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to develop a climate-smart agriculture and forestry strategy.

Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow says President Joe Biden’s $2.7 trillion infrastructure plan is “woefully inadequate” when it comes to funding for climate-friendly farming practices, and she’s pushing for a major increase in funding for conservation programs.

Photos reveal how Lake Oroville is at 42 percent of its capacity while about 85% of California suffers ‘exceptional’ drought and Lake Mead may face a federal shortage.

An unprecedented combination of strong easterly winds and low humidity coupled with prolonged drought conditions drove the spread of catastrophic wildfires in Oregon last September, a new study has found.

Along the Oregon-California border, the Klamath River Basin is a crucial water source for Indigenous tribes, endangered species, and farmers. This year, though, there is simply not enough to go around.

The Biden-Harris Administration recently announced the formation of an interagency working group to address worsening drought conditions in the West and support farmers, tribes, and communities impacted by ongoing water shortages. The working group will be co-chaired by the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture to build upon existing resources to help coordinate across the federal government.

Patches of forest cleared and tended by Indigenous communities but lost to time still show more food bounty for humans and animals than surrounding forests.

U.S. Forest Service officials report significant die-off of juniper trees due to drought conditions affecting the evergreens across large areas of central and northern Arizona.

California’s wildfire problem, fueled by a concurrence of climate change and a heightened risk of human-caused ignitions in once uninhabited areas, has been getting worse with each passing year of the 21st century.

40% of US farmland is rented or leased, the majority from ’non-operator landowners’ — we only need do the math to understand the importance of these lands to stewardship.

A new study found that shade provided by solar panels increased the abundance of flowers under the panels and delayed the timing of their bloom, both findings that could aid the agricultural community.

The study, believed to be the first that looked at the impact of solar panels on flowering plants and insects, has important implications for solar developers who manage the land under solar panels, as well as agriculture and pollinator health advocates who are seeking land for pollinator habitat restoration.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced today that USDA will open enrollment in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) with higher payment rates, new incentives, and a more targeted focus on the program’s role in climate change mitigation. Additionally, USDA is announcing investments in partnerships to increase climate-smart agriculture, including $330 million in 85 Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) projects and $25 million for On-Farm Conservation Innovation Trials. Secretary Vilsack made the announcement today at the White House National Climate Task Force meeting to demonstrate USDA’s commitment to putting American agriculture and forestry at the center of climate-smart solutions to address climate change.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan told Congress Wednesday he does not intend to go back to the Obama administration’s definition of Waters of the U.S.

A new report from the AGree coalition recommends alternatives for the Agriculture Department to consider in setting up a carbon bank that could be used to develop private credit markets and to assist producers who may be left out of them.

The National Audubon Society today announced the largest market-based regenerative grasslands partnership in the U.S. with Panorama Organic Grass-Fed Meats. The commitment will impact one million acres of certified organic U.S. grasslands and create individual habitat management plans with every family rancher in the Panorama Organic network through Audubon’s Conservation Ranching Initiative.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently announced that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is seeking comments on a Department-wide effort to improve and reimagine the supply chains for the production, processing and distribution of agricultural commodities and food products.

The comments received will help USDA assess the critical factors, risks, and strategies needed to support resilient, diverse, and secure supply chains and ensure U.S. economic prosperity, national security, and nutrition security for all Americans. 

Colorado Senator Michael Bennet introduces legislation that would put billions into restoring and maintaining forests, watersheds and rangelands in the West.

More than 10.2 million acres of the United States burned last year from wildfires, killing 46 people and causing $16.6 billion in damages. Senator Michael Bennet said the country needs to be more proactive with fire prevention by putting people to work maintaining forests.

The bipartisan Growing Climate Solutions Act, which will break down barriers for farmers and foresters interested in participating in carbon markets so they can be rewarded for climate-smart practices, was reintroduced today. The bill has broad, bipartisan support from over 60 leading agricultural and environmental organizations.

Extreme drought now encompasses almost 10% of the country. In Texas, only 8% of the state is considered drought-free. The entirety of North Dakota is in a drought state while 78% of its southern neighbor is considered in drought, with conditions rated from moderate (D1) to extreme drought (D3). In fact, pretty much all of the western half of the United States is parched to say the least.

New research shows that land use by human societies has reshaped ecology across most of Earth’s land for at least 12,000 years. Researchers assessed biodiversity in relation to global land use history, revealing that the appropriation, colonization, and intensified use of lands previously managed sustainably is the main cause of the current biodiversity crisis.

The man-made lakes that store water supplying millions of people in the U.S. West and Mexico are projected to shrink to historic lows in the coming months, dropping to levels that could trigger the federal government’s first-ever official shortage declaration and prompt cuts in Arizona and Nevada.

Eric Snodgrass, principal atmospheric scientist for Nutrien Ag Solutions, said he is very concerned about widespread drought in the U.S. this summer. He said parts of California and much of the southwest including Colorado, Utah, Arizona and most of Texas are exceptionally dry.

As drought deepens across the West, California’s decision to limit State Water Project (SWP) deliveries to 5% forced Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) to increase pumping from the Colorado River near Lake Havasu. The good news: there’s water behind Hoover Dam for them to use. The bad news: As MWD draws on what they call “intentionally created surplus” under a previous agreement, Lake Mead will fall below the threshold for Tier 1 restrictions, leading to a curtailment of water deliveries to Arizona farmers.

It has been 30 years or so since residents in New Mexico’s largest city last saw their stretch of the Rio Grande go dry. There’s a possibility it could happen again this summer. Federal water managers released their annual operating plan for the Rio Grande on Thursday, and it doesn’t look good.

The USDA today announced the availability of up to $10 million in assistance from their Wildfire and Hurricane Indemnity Program Plus to assist agricultural producers impacted by the worsening drought conditions in the Klamath River Basin of California and Oregon.

Restoring forests, using fire as a management tool and getting more buy-in from private landowners are among the strategies outlined in New Mexico’s latest forest action plan.

“This collaboration is essential in moving forward with a solid foundation to address both human-caused and natural threats to our lands in a continually changing climate,” New Mexico Forester Laura McCarthy said in a statement.

What are the impacts of fire on the plant community and forage production, soil erosion and animal health? North Dakota State University provides some answers.

“Let’s start with the plant community,” says Kevin Sedivec, North Dakota State University Extension rangeland management specialist and director of NDSU’s Central Grasslands Research Extension Center. “Because the wildfires to date have been classified as dormant-season fires (prior to the growing season), there should be no impact on the plant community in terms of species change on rangelands, plant density on grass hay stands or forage production of new growth.”

The chase to capture carbon continues. It’s a possible new source of income for farmers and ranchers, but it’s also bringing a set of challenges and questions. The answer could be both public and private programs.

Rangelands make up a large proportion of the Earth’s surface, and the soils hold a significant amount of sequestered carbon (Schuman G.E et al. 2001). Rangelands are estimated to contain more than one-third of the world’s above and below ground carbon reserves (Ingram L.J. et al. 2008).

Therefore, there is interest in determining the potential for soil carbon sequestration in rangeland soils, and whether livestock grazing helps or hinders this sequestration (McSherry, M., and Mark Richie. 2013).

Scientists have been predicting for years that the Colorado River would continue to deplete due to global warming and increased water demands, but according to new studies it’s looking worse than they thought.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is unveiling new action-based frameworks to increase conservation work to address threats facing America’s working rangelands. These frameworks are designed to benefit both agriculture and wildlife in sagebrush and grassland landscapes of the western United States.

A comprehensive assessment of 12 different strategies for reducing beef production emissions worldwide found that industry can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 50% in certain regions, with the most potential in the United States and Brazil.

As drought worsens in the West, a coalition of more than 200 farm and water organizations from 15 states that has been pushing to fix the region’s crumbling canals and reservoirs is complaining that President Joe Biden’s new infrastructure proposal doesn’t provide enough funding for above- or below-ground storage.

Researchers at UC Riverside are making progress in their understanding of how plants respond to heat, a step that could eventually lead to crops that can withstand higher temperatures as the climate continues changing.

Dry periods between rainstorms have become longer and annual rainfall has become more erratic across most of the western United States during the past 50 years, according to a study published by the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the University of Arizona.

(Subscription) Climate change and plant science are pulling agriculture in opposite directions, and in some ways, the damage from the warming climate may be winning, a new study suggests.

More snow is melting during winter across the West, a concerning trend that could impact everything from ski conditions to fire danger and agriculture, according to a new University of Colorado Boulder analysis of 40 years of data.

Rural water users are panicking over a proposal to create a market for the sale and purchase of water rights in Nevada, unconvinced by arguments that the concept would encourage conservation. A legislative hearing about two proposals to allow water rights holders to sell their entitlements pitted state water bureaucrats against a coalition of farmers, conservationists and rural officials.

The resolution says, in part, that 30 by 30 “would set (private property) aside through conservation, preventing the productive use of these lands and their resources.”

Not so much, according to one of Colorado’s leading land conservationists. Erik Glenn, executive director of Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust, told the Journal-Advocate that, while he has concerns about Section 216, there is a lot of misinformation being put out about what it would do.

“We are working to try to influence the administration to adopt a set of guiding principles that honors private property, rural communities, and production agriculture,” Glenn said. “Other western-focused and agriculture-focused organizations like Western Landowners Alliance and the American Farmland Trust are working on similar statements.”

As several states in the American West face intense drought, it’s shaping up to be a very difficult year for New Mexico farmers because of limited irrigation supplies, with some saying conditions haven’t been this dire since the 1950s.

There has been significant debate over what exactly causes interannual variability in land carbon uptake. A new study published in Nature resolves this debate, showing that soil moisture is indeed in the driver’s seat in terms of how much carbon dioxide is taken up by land ecosystems. The study also concludes that the amount of moisture in the soil affects temperatures and humidity near the surface, which in turn affect plants’ ability to fix carbon.

Wildlife advocates recently sued federal officials in a bid for greater protections for monarch butterflies, northern spotted owls and eight other species. The lawsuit comes after federal officials said the species named in the lawsuit need protections, but that other imperiled plants and animals have higher priority.

Two Indigenous communities in New Mexico are suing the U.S. EPA over a revised federal rule that narrowed the types of waterways that qualify for federal protection under the half-century-old Clean Water Act, saying the federal government is violating its trust responsibility to Native American tribes.

When it comes to water in the West, a lot of it is visible. But another important factor is much harder to see. Beneath the surface, the amount of moisture held in the ground can play a big role in how much water makes it down to rivers and reservoirs – and eventually into the pipes that feed homes and businesses.

Billions more people could have difficulty accessing water if the world opts for a massive expansion in growing energy crops to fight climate change, research has found. Harvesting energy crops and capturing the carbon released when they are burned is seen as central to fighting climate change – but could leave 4.5 billion people facing water shortages.

If you stand in the remains of a forest fire in a drizzle, even years after the burn, you can smell woodsmoke rising from the downed logs and charred stumps. The blackened remains might be hiding other things, too.

According to research published Friday in Nature Communications, Earth and Environment, that charred wood contains compounds that have recently been recognized to pose a serious health risk to humans. The environmental implications of those findings are unclear, since wildfires are key to so many ecosystems. But they could be important for understanding the environmental and health consequences of more frequent, intense fires on a warming planet.

Historic heavy usage of Rio Grande water has left New Mexico in a particularly difficult position ahead of the impending drought. Right now, a New Mexico Interstate Stream Commission hydrogeologist says, the state is unable to store any more water from the river due to restrictions under the Rio Grande Compact, and owes a debt of 100,000 acre feet downstream to Texas. This piece questions whether farming can continue in much of the state in the future.

Dry conditions in the Southwest largely associated with La Nina have intensified what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is calling the most significant U.S. spring drought since 2013, affecting an estimated 74 million people.

The U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook map shows a giant swath of brown – meaning “drought persists” – extending from the Pacific Coast to parts of the Great Plains and Upper Midwest after a second straight drier-than-normal winter in the region.

The Biden administration’s ambitious plan to create a multibillion-dollar bank to help pay farmers to capture carbon from the atmosphere is running into surprising skepticism, challenging Agriculture Department officials to persuade the industry to get behind the massive climate proposal.

Building simple structures with sticks and stones — and inviting in dam-building beavers — can keep water where it’s needed to fight drought and wildfires. Backed by science, these beaver dam analogs can help set a new course for many ailing streams in the American West.

With three-quarters of the West gripped by a seemingly ceaseless drought, several states are increasingly embracing a drastic intervention – the modification of the weather to spur more rainfall.

The latest reports from the US Drought Monitor have provided sobering reading, with 40% of the U.S. west of the continental divide classed as being in “exceptional drought,” the most severe of four levels of drought. This is down only marginally from 47% in January, a record in the monitor’s 20-year history, and barring the arrival of a barrage of late winter storms will almost guarantee a severely parched year for Western states.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere fuels plant growth. As carbon levels rise, it’s appealing to think of supercharged plant growth and massive tree-planting campaigns drawing down the CO2 produced by fossil fuel burning, agriculture and other human activities.

The U.S. government should be prepared to support prices farmers receive for carbon credits but avoid setting up a federally run carbon market that would compete with nascent private markets, a senior Agriculture Department official said Tuesday.

A priority for the USDA in the coming years will be judging the feasibility of setting up, executing and paying for a federal carbon bank to help farmers reduce greenhouse gas emissions and reward them for their actions, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Monday.

Duke Phillips, a third generation rancher and the CEO & Founder of Ranchlands, has spent his life on working lands. When people learn this, they generally have one of two notions—a romantic and glamorized one where he spends his days surveying the landscape while chewing on a piece of grass or that he works in an extractive industry that takes from the land and is anti-ecological.  Both are false. Phillips aims for his ranching business to regenerate ecosystems, improve the quality of life for people living near and working on ranches, and to help the public better understand the American ranching legacy.

During Regenerative Travel’s webinar How Regenerative Ranching is Revitalizing Rangelands, the panelists, including Western Landowners Alliance’s Executive Directer Lesli Allison, aimed to demystify ranching, and to share how this tradition can help to conserve our most biodiverse landscapes, reverse climate change, and deepen a connection between people, animals, and land. 

Water scarcity is baking cropland and ramping up wildfire risk from California to Texas. Much of the U.S. West is facing the driest spring in seven years, setting up a climate disaster that could strangle agriculture, fuel deadly wildfires and even hurt power production.

The West Coast’s land-grant universities are holding webinars, conducting community meetings and publishing booklets to urge urban and rural residents to start preparing now for what could be another devastating wildfire season. Fire experts say this year’s wet, warm winter could contribute to yet another round of destruction this summer and fall.

The western U.S. is no stranger to drought. But this isn’t any dry spell. More than 70% of the West is exceptionally parched. Could it be a permanent change?

Agriculture makes up about 10 percent of emissions in the U.S., with about half of that portion coming from cattle that belch and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Researchers suggest in a recent study that feeding cattle just a tiny bit of seaweed each day could help the agriculture industry significantly cut back on greenhouse gas emissions.

Staring down the barrel of a dangerous fire season, the Arizona Legislature approved a $24 million boost in state funding to protect forested communities through thinning projects.

Populations show a jump of more than a third in some areas. The National Audubon Society created the Conservation Ranching Initiative (ACR) in order to support ranchers while protecting and renewing grassland habitats and increasing populations of grassland birds. Audubon range ecologists partner with ranchers to develop habitat management plans customized to make their land more bird-friendly through practices including rotational grazing and minimizing the use of chemicals.

Audubon’s science team has developed a Bird-Friendliness Index to quantify ACR’s impact on vulnerable grassland and aridland birds. It measures the abundance, diversity, and resilience of the bird community on ACR-certified ranchland, and compares them to conventionally managed lands.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) announced the availability of up to $317 million for Forest Health, Fire Prevention, Forest Legacy and Forest Health Research grant projects. CAL FIRE is soliciting applications for projects that prevent catastrophic wildfires, protect communities, and restore forests to healthy, functioning ecosystems while also sequestering carbon and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Massive wildfires have shattered records across the world in recent years, including in the western United States, where deadly blazes forced mass evacuations in 2020 and filled the sky across entire regions with smoke. Globally, wildfires are becoming more frequent, destructive and burning more land — and this trend is set to continue.

A new study in the journal Science documents declines across hundreds of species over recent decades, and finds years featuring warmer, drier autumns are particularly deadly.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture will invest $285 million to help the Forest Service address critical deferred maintenance and improve transportation and recreation infrastructure on national forests and grasslands.

This $285 million investment is made possible by the newly created National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund, established in 2020 by the Great American Outdoors Act. These funds will allow the Forest Service to implement more than 500 infrastructure improvement projects essential to the continued use and enjoyment of national forests and grasslands.

Knowing the extent of human influence on the global hydrological cycle is essential for understanding the sustainability of freshwater resources on Earth. However, a lack of water level observations for the world’s ponds, lakes, and reservoirs has limited the quantification of human-managed (reservoir) changes in surface water storage compared to its natural variability.

As economic development, population growth, and climate change continue to pressure global water resources, this recent study, published in Nature, aims to provide a baseline for understanding human-managed surface water storage.

A growing number of fire scientists and land managers argue that “prescribed fire” used in conjunction with mechanized thinning of trees, limbs and brush, is one of the most effective tools available to tame the West’s worsening wildfire crisis. Yet there’s also widespread agreement that the West doesn’t make nearly enough use of prescribed fire.

More fierce and frequent fires are reducing forest density and tree size and may damage forests’ ability to capture carbon in the future, according to a global study.

Although forest fires are naturally occurring phenomena and natural forests regenerate, global heating and human activity have caused the frequency and intensity of fires to rise. Wildfires burn 5% of the planet’s surface every year, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere equivalent to a fifth of our annual fossil fuel emissions.