Audubon Great Plains continues to administer the Conservation Forage Program (CFP), funded through the Outdoor Heritage Fund. This program works with landowners to establish grasslands on marginal cropland. These new grasslands benefit landowners, livestock, and wildlife, including grasslands birds such as the Bobolink whose population has dropped by 80% between 1966 and 1989. The CFP provides habitat and allows for flexibility of acres to be incorporated into a working lands system once established.  

Since the program started enrolling projects in 2022, 9,865 acres across 88 sites have been restored in North Dakota. Many of these projects have been done in partnership with other conservation organizations to increase the forb diversity of the seed mixes benefiting pollinators and the threatened Dakota Skipper Butterfly. We select several of these higher diversity seedings to complete surveys for the Integrated Monarch Monitoring Protocol Program (IMMP). These initial surveys record baseline data on blooming plants to record pollinator friendliness of the seed mixes. We hope to continue monitoring these sites over the CFP agreement term to continue learning about success of prairie restoration for pollinators.  

This program offers three years of establishment payments to allow the native grasses and forbs time to establish before the site is adapted into a grazing or haying system. Many landowners plan to incorporate the CFP acres into a rotational grazing system where cattle are moved through different pasture cells during the year. By varying the length of time and season spent in each pasture, this benefits both cattle and wildlife by increasing forage quality and availability and by providing a variety of habitat types that grassland birds use at different life stages.  

This past year, 1,780 acres of cropland were seeded to grasslands through Conservation Forage Program and another 2,280 acres have signed agreements to be seeded, bringing a total of 9,947 acres enrolled in the program since the launch in 2022. Our goal is to enroll and restore 18,000 acres across North Dakota through CFP.