The Matador Ranch Grassbank is the most successful grassbank in the country, annually incentivizing conservation actions on over 200,000 acres of participating ranches. Incentives for management actions are in the form of discounts, which reduce the cost of leased grazing at the Matador Ranch. One of the required discounts for participating in the grassbank is a ranch management plan that guides grazing and benefits natural communities and the wildlife dependent upon them. This report details the results of our work to assess resource conditions and craft management plans with eight ranches on over 113,000 acres. Our analysis found that overall ranches implemented grazing management practices that maintained ecological condition that sustained healthy grasslands. Research results on grassland birds and grazing by Lipsey (2015) emphasized the importance of broad-scale outcomes versus incentivizing heterogeneity-driven grazing management practices on grassbank ranches. The most common management need on the ranches was changing season of use over time on native pastures and increasing utilization levels in crested wheatgrass pastures. Incentivizing these changes in the future will have corresponding positive outcomes for native habitats and wildlife.
