AUTHORS: Alex Wright, US Fish & Wildlife Service; Kelly VanBeek, US Fish & Wildlife Service; Tyler Harms, Iowa Department of Natural Resources; Doug Gorby, Upper Mississippi/Great Lakes Joint Venture, US Fish & Wildlife Service; Bill Moritz, Wildlife Management Institute; John Carlson, US Fish & Wildlife Service; Kelley Myers Tymeson, US Fish & Wildlife Service
ABSTRACT: Ranchers, farmers, water resource managers, wildlife biologists, agronomists, corporate sustainability officers, and policy makers have all voiced their desire to see a collective, collaborative approach to conserving and managing grasslands. The Midwest Grasslands Summit was held August 27-29, 2024 at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Gardens in Des Moines, Iowa to chart a partner-focused path forward for our most critically imperiled ecosystem in the Midwest, the Tallgrass Prairie Ecosystem. The summit engaged a broad and diverse audience of representatives from government agencies, Native Nations, NGOs, industry and agricultural organizations, and private landowners to develop a collective vision and identify collaborative actions to advance grassland conservation in the Midwest. We will report out on these efforts to begin (1) Shaping a unified vision for native and surrogate tallgrass habitats across the Midwest, (2) Build an active coalition of people invested in increasing grasslands on the landscape, and (3) Identify collaborative actions to pursue next steps moving forward to realize the vision of this effort.
