Adopt A Wildlife Acre

Beginning in 2002, the National Wildlife Federation has worked to eliminate conflicts between wildlife and livestock on public lands. The primary approach taken is to work with interested landowners, public land managers and conservation partners to retire grazing allotments identified as providing the greatest opportunity to reduce chronic and persistent conflicts with wildlife. These transactions provide compensation to willing ranchers, a non-regulatory market-based solution that is a win-win for private landowners, public land agencies and wildlife.  As noted in a past reports, our Adopt a Wildlife Acre program has protected well over 1.1 million acres of habitat primarily in the northern Rockies. Motivated by the success of this innovative conservation approach, in mid-2017 the National Wildlife Federation expanded the program to Colorado and Nevada where are exclusively focusing our efforts on reducing areas of conflict between Bighorn Sheep and domestic sheep. 

In Colorado and Nevada, the iconic Bighorn dwindled to a small fraction of their original range largely due to impacts associated with domestic sheep herds. Specifically, Bighorn sheep are highly susceptible to a number of diseases (primarily several forms of pneumonia) carried domestic sheep. Over the next ten years Our Adopt a Wildlife Acre program in Colorado and Nevada seeks to restore Bighorn sheep populations in these two states.

Since bringing on board a new employee to staff the program expansion, we have a number of ongoing and very promising conversations with several ranchers in both Colorado and Nevada. In fact, we are very close to finalizing agreements to retire five sheep allotments in San Juan Mountains of Southwestern Colorado. These allotments are located in the middle of a very high priority Bighorn herd. Removing sheep from this area will go a long way towards reducing the risk of disease transmission and stabilizing a herd that has already been seriously impacted by disease. Together, these five grazing allotments comprise an area of 27,000 acres of critical Bighorn habitat and will cost an estimated $130,000. We are beginning fundraising efforts to pay these two ranchers. At less than $5 per acre, we believe this is an incredible value for protecting one of Colorado’s highest priority Bighorn Sheep herds. This will be the first of what we expect to be many such grazing retirements in Colorado and Nevada to protect Bighorns and we are grateful to our supporters for investing in this innovative conservation solution.