2024 Annual Report
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Roadmap Partners Make the Difference
The CGRI is built on the best practices of collective impact. Highly collaborative, cross-sector efforts such as CGRI demand a well-organized structure with decentralized leadership to ensure that effective, mutually reinforcing activities are happening across the biome. This is commonly referred to as a ‘Constellation Governance Model’ and helps build a strong network for collaboration. The backbone organization (Bird Conservancy of the Rockies) mobilizes collaboration with guidance and leadership from the ‘Steering Committee’, driving the momentum towards shared priorities and vision.
‘Work Groups’, become hubs of collaboration, information sharing, elevating best practices, and identifying challenges and solutions. Work Groups inform policy and funding, clarify communication strategies, and refine research and decision-support tools. All of this increases the capacity for conservation delivery, which is designed and implemented by a multitude of on-the-ground partners. The diagram below is only an illustration of how our collaborative process comes together; it is not, and cannot be, inclusive of everyone involved or their level of involvement. The diagram shows how broad and organized this network and initiative became in 2024.
The Central Grasslands Assessment Map
The 2024 version of the CGRI Assessment Map features several improvements including additional forest, water, and development layers, as well as expanded acreage calculations using clarified methodologies. We are constantly listening to feedback and strengthening the map as new information becomes available and data quality improves.
Tracking Acreage Goals: JV8 Grasslands Business Plan
“Based on recent grassland loss rates from cropland conversion and woody shrub encroachment, the JV8 established an overarching goal of no net loss of grasslands throughout the JV8 geography between 2034 and 2044 (a 10-year trend of 0% per year). Including and extending beyond the original 10-year, 100-million acre goal that was published with the original CGRI Assessment Map in 2022, the JV8 estimates that “by
2044, JV8 and our partners [including the CGRI] are implementing conservation action on 27.8 million acres of grasslands annually, with a cumulative total of 375 million activity acres by 2044. To reach this long-term goal, JV8 and partners [including the CGRI] need to impact 19.5 million acres of grasslands annually by 2034 to stabilize, and potentially recover, grassland bird populations, and their habitats. [This] overarching conservation goal addresses two primary landscape stressors: cropland conversion and woody shrub encroachment.” Using the forthcoming Conservation Efforts Database and other forms of partner reporting, the JV8 will help track these efforts under four identified conservation actions and corresponding funding needs.
No one methodology or set of metrics can be established and updated across the entirety of the Central Grasslands; the biome is simply too vast and diverse. Instead, CGRI is a coordinated hub to share efforts and examine progress through a variety of lenses. In 2024, the publication of the JV8 Business Plan helped articulate funding and acreage goals, which are directly informed by the CGRI Assessment Map.
The CGRI Roadshow
In 2024, CGRI Director, Maggie Hanna, traveled the biome, (and beyond!), and furthered our Roadshow Initiative. She shared resources like our Grasslands and You posters, presented on the Roadmap and the plight of the Grasslands, and made connections with incredible people. Other Roadmap leaders have presented at places like the Calgary Stampede and throughout South Dakota.
To date, since the CGRI beginning, the Roadshow has covered a lot of ground:
… and there’s much more to come in 2025!
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