A western meadowlark sings a song of spring on Tuesday, April 10, 2018, near Lake Tschida in North Dakota.
After engaging and enlisting partners and stakeholders last spring and summer, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department initiated the Meadowlark Initiative, a new statewide strategy to combine the efforts of conservation, agriculture and industry partners to enhance, restore and sustain native grasslands in North Dakota.
Last November, the Game and Fish Department and 13 contributing partners submitted a USDA Regional Conservation Partnership Program grant proposal (MI-RCPP), seeking to leverage over $12 million partner contributions with $10 million of USDA-NRCS funding to kick-start collaborative work toward goals and objectives, encompassed in the Meadowlark Initiative.
In late April, USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service announced that North Dakota’s Meadowlark Initiative RCPP was selected as one of 85 successful projects nationwide.
Together the collaborative effort intends to convert 20,000 acres of marginal cropland to diverse native perennial vegetation; enhance 50,000 acres of existing and reconstructed native grasslands; and restore and enhance 10,000 acres of wetlands within reconstructed grassland complexes.
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