u.s. fish and wildlife service

Cattle ranchers in the Texas Panhandle are interested in raising more than just cattle and grass. They also want to raise chickens—lesser prairie-chickens, to be exact!

The lesser prairie-chicken is a ground-nesting bird native to the mixed-grass prairies of the Texas panhandle, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Lesser prairie-chickens are known for the unique mating dance performed by the colorful males.

Gopher tortoises are fairly elusive creatures. Usually the only sign you see of them is their burrows or ravaged foliage.

But recently a Mobile, Ala., tortoise allowed Marshall Colburn, a Soil Conservation Technician with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), a rare, up-close-and-personal moment as she laid her eggs in a freshly cultivated field.

For Texas rancher Dallas Ford and other Gulf Coast landowners, the Gulf of Mexico Initiative means an opportunity to make a positive difference not only on their lands, but also in the inland waters that flow into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Gulf of Mexico Initiative (GoMI) is a new program of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and many partners. It is designed to help producers in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas improve water quality and ensure sustainable agriculture production.

This spring, Earth Team volunteers with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) surveyed approximately 300 hundred acres of remote Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and private lands north of Villa Grove, Colo., looking for Gunnison sage-grouse, a ground-dwelling bird considered a keystone species in this habitat.

“What’s good for the birds is good for the cows,” says Duane Coombs, ranch manager for Smith Creek Ranch in central Nevada. That’s why Coombs and his neighbor on the other side of the Desatoya Mountain Range are working to restore habitat for the western sage-grouse, a chicken-sized bird that is being considered for endangered species listing by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Sage-grouse are a keystone species for the sagebrush ecosystem.