BOISE, ID – By agreeing not to develop their land, some ranchers and conservationists have been teaming up for almost 20 years to protect wildlife habitat in central Idaho.

Last month, The Nature Conservancy reached a milestone after helping secure a conservation easement on a 5,368 acre ranch near the Pioneer Mountains owned by Glenn Schumacher. The easement put the organization and its partners over the milestone of protecting a cumulative 100,000 acres in central Idaho since 2007.

“One of the biggest challenges for wildlife and conservation is habitat fragmentation, so we’re trying to find areas where there’s intact landscapes and seeing how we can hold those together,” said Tess O’Sullivan, land and water protection program manager for The Nature Conservancy.

The effort is part of a large partnership between ranchers, local residents, conservationists, nongovernment organizations and land managers called the Pioneers Alliance. Members of the alliance include The Nature Conservancy, The Wood River Land Trust, The Conservation Fund, Idaho Wildlife Foundation, Idaho Conservation League, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, various state and federal agencies, cities and community members.

What is a conservation easement?

A conservation easement is a voluntary, permanent legal agreement between a landowner, rancher or farmer and a land trust or government agency. The landowner continues to own their land and maintain their use of farming or ranching, but they agree to protect wildlife habitat, often by agreeing not to subdivide and develop their land, O’Sullivan said.

If the landowner sells the land or dies, the conservation easement stays with the property permanently.

Schumacher, who owns a ranch near the Pioneer Mountains, said O’Sullivan worked with him for about a year and a half to explain the process and secure the conservation easement.

“The main goal was preserving the open spaces – and for wildlife – just preserving this into perpetuity for the migration of wildlife and cattle ranching,” Schumacher said in a phone interview.

O’Sullivan said conservation easements are a tool that allow ranchers and farmers to continue their agricultural use of the property while protecting it from development that would encroach on wildlife habitat and migration corridors.

Why conservationists and ranchers are teaming up to protect land in central Idaho

Partners in the Pioneers Alliance are seeking to project land within the central Idaho corridor between the Pioneer Mountains and Craters of the Moon National Monument. 

“Some of the primary things we’ve been looking at are areas that are identified as important for wildlife connections – migration corridors and pathways for wildlife to move across landscapes,” O’Sullivan said.

Because the landscape is a mixture of federal and state land and large ranches that has not been broken up and developed, the land supports wildlife movement and migration, said Keri York, land protection manager for the Wood River Land Trust.

One of the largest overland pronghorn migration routes has been documented in the corridor between the Pioneer Mountains and Craters of the Moon National Monument. The area also provides a habitat for deer, antelope, sage grouse, elk and endangered wolverines.

O’Sullivan and York said there is a connection between protecting private land and public land.

“Because of historic and cultural aspects of the region, its open vast landscape and the wildlife habitat it provides, our organizations came together to protect the private land within that landscape so it could be added to the public and state land that is already ‘protected,’” York said.

For Schumacher, the rancher, he liked that his conservation easement protected ranching and wildlife habitat.

“It’s a combination, a balancing act between agriculture and wildlife that I like,” Schumacher said. “That is my personal preference. I want to see the balancing act.”

Learn more about conservation easements

More information about conservation easements and other programs in Idaho is available online at the Idaho Coalition of Land Trusts website.

This story first appeared on Idaho Capital Sun.