Grassland Workshop Follow Up & Report

Below is a copy of the follow up email and report that was sent from Curt Francis (President-elect) to those who were able to attend the Grasslands Workshop at our 2024 Annual Meeting. If you were not able to attend but have interest in being involved please reach out.

Dear attendees of the 2024 NDCTWS grassland workshop,

Kevin and I wanted to provide some much needed follow up from the NDCTWS grassland workshop that was held this past February. Before moving forward, we would like to give a well-deserved thank you to Dr. Charlie Bahnson and his crew for their role in collecting, analyzing and providing a report on the data you provided at the workshop.

As a recap, this workshop was hosted to identify, discuss and develop actionable items regarding challenges and barriers facing land managers when restoring grasslands. The session included presentations and facilitated group exercises. The attached report includes a write up and results of the facilitated exercises. Your input from the workshop helped to identify 29 challenges/barriers when it comes to implementing grassland restorations and 34 challenges/barriers with regards to managing restored grasslands.

Many of these challenges are universal. Some may be relatively easy to address others will certainly prove to be more complicated. To address actionable items, we suggest utilizing the Chapter and its membership to develop goals and solutions and provide technical support and knowledge to practitioners. More specifically, we recommend the development of 2 smaller working groups to identify action items starting with the top 5 challenges recognized during the facilitated exercises. It would be to the discretion of each group to address additional challenges/barriers that were identified.

With actionable items in hand, it is now time to develop these working groups. Approximately 100 individuals attended the workshop representing federal, state, NGO’s and others. For the purposes of these working groups, it would be great if we could get a cross section of volunteers covering these entities as each brings its unique perspective.

Please take the time to review the <ATTACHED REPORT> and consider volunteering for one of the working groups. Ultimately, the outcomes from these working groups are intended to assist/benefit practitioners when implementing and/or managing grassland restoration projects. We will be looking for 4-5 volunteers for each of the working groups and Kevin and I will each plan to be in one of the groups.

Again, we encourage volunteers, especially if you see that one of your actions items made the list. If you are willing to join one of these groups, please reach out Kevin, Curt, or the Chapter so we can start the next steps of the process.

Thanks to everyone who joined us at the workshop and to those willing to step up and volunteer.

Sincerely,

Curtis Francis