North America’s grasslands and sagebrush shrub-steppe systems are some of the most threatened ecosystems in the world. More than 70 percent of America’s tallgrass, mixed grass, and shortgrass prairies have vanished. Additionally, on average, about 1.2 million acres of sagebrush burn each year due to invasive annual grasses that fuel catastrophic wildfire.

While the remaining fragments of our once vast prairies still have abundant wildlife, they are quickly fading, along with their many ecological benefits. Species from pheasants to pronghorn and elk struggle to navigate fragmented landscapes, and grassland bird populations have declined by more than 40 percent since 1966. Some of these birds, like the lesser prairie chicken, teeter at the edge of extinction. And then we have the northern bobwhite, which has seen a decline of nearly 85 percent in the last half century.

There is an urgency to act now to maintain grassland landscapes for agriculture, wildlife habitat, carbon sequestration, and for future generations. That’s why Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever and our partners are working to enact a North American Grasslands Conservation Act – a landowner-driven, voluntary, incentive-based program to conserve and restore threatened grassland ecosystems and keep working grasslands working. Through technical and financial assistance and leveraging non-Federal dollars and resources, the Grasslands Act would:

To learn more about the North American Grasslands Conservation Act, go to www.actforgrasslands.org and visit www.mapforgrasslands.org to better understand the habitat and species loss in your own backyard.