Holding the Line: Protecting the Sagebrush Sea
Forests are encroaching into sagebrush landscapes, threatening wildlife that depend on sagebrush habitat. TNC and partners are working to address this issue.
High Divide Headwaters
A working wilderness of multi-generational ranches and public lands where wildlife and people thrive.
Rolling westward from Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, the High Divide Headwaters is a landscape of wildlife-rich mountain ranges and sagebrush-scented valleys with a proud ranching heritage.
Nestled between the Greater Yellowstone and northern Montana’s Crown of the Continent, the High Divide provides a vital connection between the regions for grizzly bears and wolverines and hosts seasonal migrations of elk, pronghorn and deer. It’s the source of the Missouri River, whose headwaters offer cold, clean water for rare Arctic grayling, a world-class sport fishery and local agriculture. The region is stewarded by multi-generational cattle ranches that are the economic driver of rural Montana and our greatest hope for managing this land at scale.
Summer in Montana
The Centennial Sandhills Preserve.
© Joanna Pinneo
Centennial Sandhills Preserve
Our 1,400-acre preserve protects a unique landscape of shifting sand dunes that supports wildlife and rare plants. Learn more here.
But the High Divide is under intense development pressure that threatens the area’s biologically rich, intact landscape and rural way of life. Our work at The Nature Conservancy is aimed at conserving this special place.
TNC works in communities across the High Divide to secure a healthy future for the area’s extraordinary wildlife, water, forests, sagebrush grasslands and ranching heritage. We have more than 40 years of experience in Montana working with local communities to protect land, build trusting partnerships and lead science-based restoration—all of which have helped us protect and sustain more than 1.3 million acres of wildlife habitat.
We can protect the High Divide Headwaters.
Alongside local partners, we are ensuring that the High Divide Headwaters remain a place where wildlife thrive alongside working ranches and a strong rural economy.
Land protection
TNC works with local families to help place voluntary conservation easements on their land that limit subdivision and development. The easements offer potential tax advantages and capital that help keep family ranches financially strong and in agriculture instead of being developed. Through conservation easements, TNC and interested landowners have protected more than 260,000 acres of biologically rich and agriculturally productive private land in the High Divide, and we continue to expand this work with interested landowners.
Working with communities
Nature can only thrive in the High Divide if the people who live there have economic opportunities and strong communities. We design conservation projects that directly support rural livelihoods in the High Divide, such as selling byproducts from our habitat restoration work as forest products or supporting regenerative ranching tools like virtual fencing. By working together, we can conserve the High Divide Headwaters region for wildlife and people alike.
On-the-ground restoration
Within the High Divide Headwaters region, we have more than two decades of experience using science to guide restoration work. On sagebrush grasslands, we combat invasive weeds, keep forests from expanding into rangelands and regenerate native forage using controlled burns. To conserve our precious water and the critical habitat it supports, we build in-stream structures to slow water runoff, which creates wet meadows and improves forage production for livestock. And we protect migrating wildlife by helping ranchers make their fences wildlife-friendly.
Partnering for connected lands
At TNC, we know that when we work together, we can achieve far more than we could alone. Collaborations such as the Southwest Montana Sagebrush Partnership enable landowners, local businesses, public land managers and nonprofits to conserve habitat and watersheds across boundaries at a scale that builds a more resilient future for both wildlife and agriculture. Another important collaboration is the Youth Employment Program, which helps build the next generation of conservation leaders who will keep our lands healthy and our communities strong.
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The High Divide Headwaters needs you.
Support nature and people in Montana by making a gift to protect vital systems like the High Divide Headwaters.
High Divide
Part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, southwest Montana’s High Divide Headwaters region harbors meadows amid a sagebrush sea.
© Jim Berkey/TNC
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