Image
Photo credit: Ashley Townsend

Celebrating and Tracking Private Lands Conservation

Private working lands provide a significant amount of wildlife habitat. This tool helps individuals and organizations summarize and celebrate conservation efforts on those working lands. Note that this tool is not a comprehensive resource for all habitat conservation on private lands - for instance, many private landowners do excellent habitat improvements on their own.

Miles of Fence Removed or Improved
0
Acres Active in Grassland CRP
0
Acres Under Conservation Easement
0
# of Habitat
Projects
0

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Disclaimer: This tool is for informational purposes only. While efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, data limitations exist, including gaps in easements and habitat projects. Future updates will continue to refine and expand the tool with additional regions and data layers.

Why It Matters

Conservation Across the MBGI

The Migratory Big Game Initiative (MBGI) spans five states, bringing partners together to conserve shared wildlife resources. The Conservation Tracker provides a unified view of private land conservation efforts across the region, helping partners summarize projects, measure progress, and understand conservation at a landscape scale.

5 States
Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, and Montana make up the MBGI footprint tracked here.
2,498,969
Acres active under the Grassland Conservation Reserve Program across all tracked areas.
424,505
Habitat projects (EQIP, WWNRT, and WRI) completed across all tracked areas.
How It Works

Exploring the Conservation Tracker

Choose a layer or area

Toggle Summary Layers like Counties, State NRCS MBGI Priorities, or Grassland CRP Zones, or draw a custom boundary and upload your own shapefile.

Explore the map

Hover or click any county or priority area to see a quick summary, colored by whichever metric you've selected from the layer's dropdown.

Analyze the trend

Drill into Overview, Land Conservation, Habitat Projects, and Change Over Time to see acres, landowners, and easements shift year over year.

Conservation Tracker screenshot
Platform Outputs

What You Can See And Analyze

Landowner Engagement

See what share of landowners with more than five acres are involved in easements, CRP, or EQIP, broken out by program.

Land Conservation

Track acres and number of landowners moving into conservation easements or CRP, with a 10-year mean annual change summary.

Habitat and Fence Projects

Review NRCS-EQIP habitat and fence work completed within a county, priority area, or custom-drawn boundary.

Change Over Time

Chart conservation easement and CRP activity year by year, and download any chart as an image for reporting.

Map Layers and Legends

Switch between Grassland CRP, Sagebrush Conservation Design, Surface Land Management, and Land Value, each with its own color-ramp legend.

Custom Areas

Draw your own boundary or upload a zipped shapefile to get the same conservation summary for a place that isn't on the map by default.

Image Photo credit: Jeremy Roberts / Conservation Media

Frequently Asked
Questions

Datasets are updated on an annual basis when new information is available to us. This can vary from state to state.

This app focuses on areas within the Migratory Big Game Initiative designation(Wyoming, Coloardo, Utah, Idaho, Montana). Although, data availabliity may vary state to state.

No, raw data cannot be downloaded through this application. This application is meant for visualizaiton and summariziation. Although, any charts visualized in the app can be downloaded.

Please reach out to us...
Analysis -
i
This section covers the number of landowners involved in conservation work on parcels > 5 acres.
Land Management
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This section covers the acres and proportion of what agency is managing the public land in the given polygon. This is based on BLM's Surface Management Agency dataset.

Private Lands > 5 acres
i
Private lands data is based on available parcel information. However, not all counties provide parcel data, so coverage may vary by location.

Acres: Unknown

Percent: Unknown

# of Private Landowners: Unknown

# of Parcels: Unknown

i
This section covers the acres of private land conserved where parcels > 5 acres.
Conservation Easements
i
Data from National Conservation easement database and more detailed Land Trust information. Note that the area of some easements can expand over time. To simplify for visualization, we only use the earliest year of each easement. Additionally, data is filtered to only private lands > 5 acres.

Owners Under Easement: Unknown

Acres: Unknown

Percent: Unknown


CRP
i
This chart summarizes Grassland Conservation Reserve Program (GCRP) enrollments supporting grassland conservation that fall on private lands > 5 acres.

Owners Under Grassland CRP: Unknown

Acres: Unknown

Percent: Unknown


EQIP
i
This chart summarizes Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) practices by type and implementation status on private lands > 5 acres. Click a bar to open the associated practice guide in a new tab.

Total # of Contracts: Unknown

Conservation Easements & CRP
i
Data from National Conservation easement database and more detailed Land Trust information combined with the Grassland Conservation Reserve Program. Note that the area of some easements can expand over time. To simplify for visualization, we only use the earliest year of each easement. Additionally, data is filtered to only private lands > 5 acres.
10-Year Mean Annual Change

NA

NA


NA

NA


Development
i
The chart shows cumulative acreage of developed land from 1986 to 2024 on private lands greater than 5 acres, based on the NLCD development layer. Developed cells (NLCD classes 22-24) are classified as impervious surface, while any cell within 250 meters of a core cell is classified as indirect loss. Acreage is shown as a rolling sum to illustrate change over time.
10-Year Average Annual Change

NA

NA


Summary Layers
Counties
i
Counties within the MBGI
% private lands under easement & GCRP
0%37.4%
SO3362 Priority Areas
i
Priority areas identified by state wildlife agencies related to SO3362.
State NRCS MBGI Priorities
i
State NRCS MBGI Prioritiy areas
Grassland CRP GYE Zone
i
Grassland CRP Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem Zone
Custom Areas

Drop a zipped shapefile here to summarize conservation in a custom boundary

Map Layers
Grassland CRP
10
1K
100K
600K+
Grassland CRP Priority Zones
Conservation easements
Habitat projects (NRCS-EQIP only)
10
1K
100K
600K+
Habitat projects (all)
10
1K
100K
600K+
Sagebrush Conservation Design
Surface Land Management
Land Value
Wildlife Migrations
Elk
Mule Deer
Pronghorn
Base Maps