Grasslands can be hard to explain to people.

People understand trees and they understand mountains.

A lot of people would look at the southern high plains and call that flat.

They expect dust bowls.

It's easy to think it's nothing there.

The Southern High Plains is often seen as flyover country.

For a long time, even people in the scientific community didn't recognize how important these grasslands were.

I love working in grasslands because they're different every time that I go out.

There's always something new to see.

It's like being on a scavenger hunt every time I go out.

Grasslands are one of the most important and yet underappreciated ecosystems worldwide.

Grasslands are what feed us.

That's where most of our crops are grown.

It's also where most of our grazing animals are raised.

In some places, more than 90% of the grasslands have been converted to agriculture.

Grasslands that remain are also threatened by poor management and invasive species.

Climate change is really pushing these systems to their limits.

One of the reasons that we work in the Southern High Plains is because out here we still have time to save the grasslands.

In a lot of other places, we're saving grasslands 50 acres, five acres, one acre at a time.

And here we can still work at a scale of thousands of acres.

11% is not enough.

That is not going to protect the ecosystems, the wildlife, or the human economies that depend on this region.

Joy and I are the fourth generation.

Stewardship began then and went through my uncle and through us.

We have two daughters.

Our youngest daughter lives here on the ranch with us and with her husband, Brady.

And we have three grandchildren that live in our yard, which is such a blessing.

It's just great to have them work day to day with us and teaching them our life, our lifestyle.

Ranchers are some of our greatest allies in this landscape because they often have generations of living and caring about the land.

Ranchers and private landowners, I think, do care about conservation.

We have gotten a lot drier in the last 20 years.

In order to survive drought and whatever the length of this cycle, you've got to be fully aware of how you keep grass above ground.

The easement has allowed us to do that to fix those challenges in a ranch.

Conservation easement is a private property right contract between a landowner and a land trust that will become the holder of the conservation values of that land.

You're going to decide what elements you're willing to give up as conservation values in exchange for either tax credits or cash payment.

In our case it was it was a split of both tax credits and cash.

We dealt with droughts, flooding, blizzards, and our wildlife has stayed healthy through all the changes in the environment.

We've seen an introduction to bighorn sheep.

To this day, there are over 400 head.

We rest assured that this is going to be an intact landscape well beyond all of our family's time.

Grasslands are really adaptable, but they have their limits.

If we push them too far, we will run out of species that know how to survive in those particular conditions.

And a lot of times it's not a single threat or a single activity.

It's the combination of a lot of little things that just add up over time.

I think about the grasslands every day, every night.

But it's the work that I love.

It's upon us to be the stewards of the prairies.

We have shifted them enough to where we are now responsible for the continuation of those grasslands.

Smoky Valley Ranch is a working cattle and bison ranch.

We have a lot of native prairie left.

It's a place that you don't see much anymore.

It's a beautiful, beautiful place that I can't fathom living without.

Smoky Valley Ranch is a place where we've taken today's best science and we've implemented it on the ground.

We perform annual breeding bird surveys.

Grassland birds are the group of birds that have decreased the most.

Because birds need habitat and if there are no grasslands, there's nowhere for these birds to live.

There's certain species like the lesser prairie chicken that we consider a umbrella species.

If certain birds on the ranch are thriving, that's an indication that a lot of other organisms are going to be thriving as well.

We're currently doing a vegetation inventory grazing with a rotational system where the grasslands see 80% rest during the growing season.

built up over many years, it gives us a big picture.

We have not had a lot of rain this year.

We are sitting at about 50 percent of where we should be on the year for rain.

We've seen things get a lot more volatile.

We've been planning for this drought all along.

Through our moderate to light grazing, we've been able to stockpile grass.

Through that stockpiled grass, it creates what we would consider grassland resiliency.

This resiliency has allowed us to, you know, make it through these droughts.

It kind of gives a guy hope that there could be more places like these out there if we just start managing them properly.

I grew up an outside boy, I guess.

I was always outside all the time.

And when I got into fire, it allows me to reconnect back to me as a Native American.

And especially like when I'm out there by myself, walking around, looking at nature, I just feel at home.

The indigenous communities are part of what created the grasslands through their use of fire, through their interaction with grazing animals.

We wouldn't have the grasslands we have today without their stewardship.

I've been a wildland firefighter for 26 years.

Cultural burning we do for specific reasons, whether it be for bringing back a certain plant.

We use a lot of sage in our ceremonies.

Sage is very important to the Arapaho Cheyenne people.

It's a healing herb for us.

Fire has actually brought it back by opening up some spaces and and allowing it to grow.

We're able to get rid of some of this thatch in there that This stuff is able to come back and we'll have more sage.

So the more of a rotation that we put fire in on this the more I feel that the sage is going to come back.

For us as the tribes, fire was pretty important to us all.

especially the wildlife too.

If fire wasn't here, we would have catastrophic wildfires.

Sometimes fire allows the grass to come back.

Maybe some flowers in there that no one's ever seen in there before.

We're trying to use good fire to counter the bad fire.

Prescribed burning.

Let you look at the land in a totally different way.

You're bringing it back to the way it was.

Where they can understand the land.

I think that's a lost trait amongst a lot of us.

That's my goal for the tribes.

You know, taking pride back into who we are as a people.

Losing grasslands would be like losing a huge part of our heritage.

They're part of our identity.

Our goal is to create more than six million acres of grassland strongholds.

Almost all of this landscape is privately owned.

We have deep relationships with communities and ranchers and partners across the five states of the Southern High Plains Initiative.

I really started working with the Nature Conservancy in the 90s.

That led to a long, long working experience with members of the Colorado Nature Conservancy.

You know, there's only so much I can do.

The Southern High Plains Initiative is a really good initiative for a lot of different reasons, connecting the land, making areas whole again.

And I think that's that's important.

having these wildlife corridors where these animals could feel safe.

We don't have to make a choice between protecting grasslands and protecting livelihoods.

If we protect the grasslands, we also protect the livelihoods, and we also protect the people and the communities and the economies that depend on this ecosystem.

It's been very exciting for the local economy to think about how this park can be a catalyst for their own businesses.

Fisher's Peak has always been an iconic backdrop of the city of Trinidad.

In southern Colorado, it has sort of been the people's peak, but has always been off limits to the public.

In 2018, the City of Trinidad was looking for additional space for parks.

reached out to the Nature Conservancy and Trust Republic Lands in interest of the Crazy French Ranch.

The idea came to purchase more than just 4,000 acres.

Fisher's Peak State Park is the second largest state park in Colorado at 19,200 acres.

There was also early conversations about connecting Sugarite Canyon State Park in New Mexico.

Although the boundaries for the two state parks did not line up at the time, they were reasonably close.

So there was concern that this park would be overrun with recreation.

There's also concerns from the other side because there is a lot to protect, there wouldn't be space for recreation.

These were the two things that we're balancing at the same time.

Our goal from the beginning was to not put one in front of the other.

I think one of the best things that people can do to learn about grasslands, to come to love grasslands, is to spend time in them.

It's important that people can reach out and touch nature, that it's not just something that they see on their TV screen.

I don't believe that people will work to protect places like this unless they can experience them.

It adds to the quality of life, you know, for places like this that maybe have experienced a lot of boom and bust.

And as I understand it, the city of Raton in New Mexico, and Sugarite Canyon State Park were paying very close attention to what was going to happen with Crazy French Ranch and Fisher's Peak State Park.

I think that the communities out here, they really know what they have, you know, and they appreciate what they have.

They know they have natural beauty.

And whether you're talking about Raton, New Mexico, or Trinidad, Colorado, folks on both sides of the state line really wanted a new economic driver, a healthy economic driver.

They wanted to be able to protect and conserve their natural spaces.

My hope is that we've been able to show that we can do that at Fisher's Peak State Park.

That has been inspiring to the folks in New Mexico that maybe they could do the same thing.

Restoration.

teaches you patience.

Almost nothing that we do has instantaneous results.

And yet it's amazing to go to a place and remember what we did.

Grasslands are amazing.

Grasslands have taught me the power of being adaptable to whatever circumstances life throws at you.

They have to grow under the conditions where they find themselves.

They can pick up and move and go somewhere that's nicer for them.

They're stomped on and eaten by all kinds of animals, big and small, and yet they persist.

if we take care of grasslands.

They will also take care of us.