ACR

We’re thrilled to share the official trailer for an upcoming short film about Audubon Conservation Ranching in Montana and North Bridger Bison, the very first bison ranch in Montana to earn the Audubon Certified bird-friendly designation!

Audubon Conservation Ranching is working to help ranchers alleviate water constraints on their ranches.

The Montana Audubon Conservation Ranching Program (ACR) supports ranchers with good land stewardship (in the market and on the ranch) so that they continue to support bird habitat.

Thanks to the overwhelming initial success and boundless opportunities of Audubon Conservation Ranching (ACR), Montana Audubon is pleased to announce that we have established the permanent Conservation Ranching department internally.

The National Audubon Society has certified all 21 family ranches in the Panorama Organic Grass-Fed Meats® network – spanning 690,902 acres of grassland habitat – as bird-friendly–groundwork resulting from the largest market-based conservation partnership in the country.

In late April National Audubon updated their website and re-tooled their guide to the ranches and retailers that sell products raised on Audubon-certified bird-friendly lands.  In Montana, this is a small but quickly growing list.  Montana has traditionally been a “cow-calf” state, where livestock producers ship calves to feed-lots in the Midwest and the South, where they are finished on corn and grain, and then sold to processors and onward to retail.  But not Audubon Conservation Ranching (ACR) animals!  To become ACR certified, ranchers need to finish cattle on grass, just one of the high standards required for certification.  In Montana, where population, and thus markets, are small, ACR ranchers primarily sell their products online, direct to consumer, or at farmers markets.  Check out the interactive map on the National Audubon site under the heading “Where to Buy Products Raised on Audubon Certified Lands.”

A handful of Mountain Bluebirds and Western Meadowlarks are working local fence lines, a Tree Swallow twitters high in the sky, the neighborhood House Finches are singing while the Northern Flickers rattle off calls.  We can feel the anticipation growing as the grass greens and the days grow longer.  It is Spring again!  Soon we will strap on our binoculars and clipboards to survey breeding birds in the pastures, grasslands, and sagebrush steppe of ranches enrolled in the MT Audubon Conservation Ranching (ACR) program.

To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re introducing you to the incredible Women in Ranching enrolled in Audubon’s Conservation Ranching Initiative in a weekly content series. We asked questions, and they responded with fun, insightful, and birdy answers. We’ll share a new Q&A from a different region and group of women ranchers each week! 

In 2019 Montana Audubon partnered with the National Audubon Society (NAS) to launch the Audubon Conservation Ranching Program (ACR) in Montana.

In 2019 Montana Audubon partnered with the National Audubon Society (NAS) to launch the Audubon Conservation Ranching Program (ACR) in Montana.  To date, we’ve enrolled approximately 92,000 acres across nine bird-friendly ranches in diverse regions of the state.  These ranches partner with Montana Audubon to implement adaptive Habitat Management Plans–to maintain, create, and enhance bird habitat.  This is critical work, due to the fact that grassland birds are imperiled.