Conservation & Communities
Over the past several years, Earth Economics has partnered with USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) to produce two studies on rangeland ecosystem services, revealing a broad sense of the economic importance of NRCS conservation investments in providing non-market benefits to communities.
rangeland ECOSYSTEM SERVICE benefits
Nature provides a wide range of ecosystem services that individuals and communities value.
Healthy rangelands contain native grasses and shrubs whose roots can trap, slow, and filter rainwater and runoff. This filtration improves the water quality of nearby streams and rivers for downstream uses such as drinking water or irrigation, reduces risk of flood and protects human property, and can improve wildlife habitat that people care about, among many other benefits.
Some ecosystem services may be bought and sold in markets, but many others are not readily marketable and instead provide what we call non-market benefits. We often lack sufficient data or information to account for the contribution of these non-market benefits. As a result, the value of maintaining healthy, functioning natural systems may be underrepresented in policy and planning decision-making. Including ecosystem service value into normal conservation planning efforts better communicates the cost-effectiveness of these practices, ensuring ranchers adopt best management practices to sustain their livelihoods, while also maintaining healthy, productive ecosystems.
Rangeland CONSERVATION benefits Local Communities
More than 80 years ago, the Dust Bowl taught the U.S. what could happen without sustainable agricultural practices in the Great Plains. Since then, the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) has been working with landowners, local and state governments, and other federal agencies to design agricultural land use planning and resource management strategies that address environmental resource concerns and maintain healthy and productive working landscapes.
In the central Great Plains, from 2008 to 2016, NRCS invested an average of $63 million each year on financial assistance to implement conservation practices (for an average 5,000 conservation contracts with private landowners).
On the western range, from 2011 to 2022, NRCS assistance amounts to an average of 2,600 conservation contracts with $27 million in financial assistance each year.
Growing rangeland Solutions
Resource Concerns are “the degradation of soil, water, air, plant, or animal resources to an extent that the sustainability or intended use of the resource is impaired.”
Resource Concerns hinder the ability of working lands to provide goods and services to people—and not just agricultural products. Healthy land provides more than a sustained source of forage for livestock. Those ecosystems can provide services (called “ecosystem services”) not only to landowners, but to surrounding communities. The conservation investments made by NRCS and landowners are designed to solve resource concerns and improve ecosystem services. Explore the most prevalent resource concerns for non-federal grazing lands in the western United States in the dashboard below.
the value of ECOSYSTEM SERVICEs
Incorporating the value of non-market ecosystem services into conservation planning and resource management can better inform resource allocation and conservation decision-making. Including ecosystem services improves our understanding of how conservation benefits local communities and economies. Earth Economics has partnered with NRCS to produce two large-scale studies of rangeland ecosystem services in the central Great Plains and Western Range that revealed a broad sense of the economic importance of NRCS conservation investments.
Our study in the central Great Plains focused on how prescribed grazing and brush management improved the health of rangelands and, in turn, provided ecosystem services to ranchers and communities. In the Western Range, we also included the effects of herbaceous weed treatment.
Interact with the maps, below, to narrow in on how NRCS-certified conservation practices resulted in healthier rangelands while providing economic benefits from enhanced ecosystem services.
Overall, Brush Management and Prescribed Grazing improved ecosystem service values in the central Great Plains by $15 million to $33 million from 2008-2016, averaging $2 million to $4 million per year. That amounts to an average over $2 to $5 annually per treated acre.
In the western range, Brush Management, Prescribed Grazing, and Herbaceous Weed Treatment improved ecosystem service values by $78 million to $214 million from 2011 to 2020, averaging $8 million to $21 million per year. That amounts to an average over $5 to $15 annually per treated acre.
conservation practices help landOWNERS AND COMMUNITIES
These studies reveal the importance of rangeland conservation practices for both landowners and surrounding communities. Practices such as prescribed grazing and brush management improve rangeland health, which in turn enhances many benefits these lands provide to people. Rangeland conservation investments can add value to ranches, communities, and local ecosystems. Valuing the financial, community, and ecological outcomes of conservation efforts connects us all.
Grazing and rangelands must be managed to sustain livestock for years to come, but ranchers don’t have to solve their land management concerns alone. The NRCS has a robust network of experts focused on assessing grazing lands and helping producers to design management plans specific to each ranch and rangeland.
In response to congressional requests for broader program success measures, the Conservation Effects Assessment Project Grazing Lands component team partnered with Earth Economics to develop integrated economic measures that could be used to assess the economic benefits of grazing land conservation practices and outcomes. This webpage showcases why ecosystem services are important to consider in rangeland management and provides an example of the broad sense of the economic importance of conservation actions. The findings and conclusions in this publication are those of the author(s) and should not be construed to represent any official USDA or U.S. Government determination or policy. Mention of names or commercial products in this document does not imply recommendation or endorsement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. USDA is an equal opportunity employer and provider.
