Sustainable Grasslands Grazing Advocated in Bismarck

Another bill seeing discussion in the North Dakota Legislature is Senate Bill 2368, which lays out the framework for the Grasslands Grazing Grant program that promotes sustainable grazing practices on national grasslands in North Dakota. Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring spoke in favor of the bill. “My department has administered this in the last two biennium and I believe the program has been beneficial and it’s helped improve the functioning of the grasslands and the health of the grasslands.” Goehring went on to say the Grasslands Grazing Grant Program has helped restore activity to otherwise abandoned areas of grasslands. “When you have isolated areas, they don’t get utilized. Not only for ranching, for grazing, management, but wildlife doesn’t utilize them either. With this program, we’re able to go in when we start doing a lot of reclamation on some of these abandoned orphaned wells to retain some of those spots, plug them to the depth of the Fox Hills Aquifer, then go back in and perforate them, and then start to develop water wells in western North Dakota.”