PBS story: How Montanans are partnering to preserve wildlife and rural communities

[Linda Poole]

When I moved to Montana 25 years ago, there was a landscape of fear and animosity between family ranchers and environmental groups. So much has changed for the better in that time, and strong alliances have sprung up between diverse groups who love prairie grasslands and wildlife. So much is possible when we act in accordance to Wendell Berry's tenet: “You can’t save the land without saving the people, to save either you have to save both.”

In Montana, an unlikely group of allies is working together to preserve a unique prairie ecosystem, and at the same time, help their own rural economies. Montana PBS’s Stan Parker reports from one of the planet’s last remaining intact grasslands.

• Laura Nolan:
  We're all kind of meeting in the middle here because we do have these common goals. And part of that, too, is we have to not always be so defensive as ranchers and landowners, too. And we can improve what we're doing. And we should improve where we can.
• Stan Parker (voice-over):
  These ranchers and wildlife organizations are also working together to help the small towns that support ranching.
• Alexis Bonogofsky:
  We know that supporting these communities and the work that they're doing is the only way we will protect the northern Great Plains ecosystem. The conservation work isn't separate from the community work.
• Bill Milton:
  And it demonstrates to people who are still, I think, in the ranch community a little bit of scant. Like, well, I don't trust these guys. In the end, they're really coming out to get us. And I just don't believe that anymore because the evidence of people's actions are a lot more credible than people's projections of what they think they are.

Read/watch PBS's inspiring story of collaboration here.