Sec. 2. Findings
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Congress finds that— grasslands provide vital habitat for a multitude of species which represent the lifeblood of local and regional economies that depend on income generated by sportsmen and women and other forms of outdoor recreation; grasslands have been managed for millennia by Indian Tribes through the use of practices referred to as Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge to conserve and restore habitat for native flora and fauna, including practices such as restoration and conservation of grassland ecosystems to support continued cultural traditions, including subsistence agriculture, cultural burning, and management of culturally significant wildlife and their ecosystems; the maintenance of healthy populations of grassland species and working lands that are critical for rural economies and carbon sequestration is dependent on the conservation, restoration, and management of grassland ecosystems, which are composed of tallgrass, mixed grass, and shortgrass prairies, sagebrush shrub-steppe, and savannah grasslands (referred to in this Act as grassland ecosystems ); grassland and rangeland ecosystems provide— essential and significant habitat for mammals, pollinators, reptiles, and other wildlife of commercial, recreational, scientific, aesthetic, and cultural value; and an abundance of critical ecological services, including forage and hay for grazing livestock, carbon sequestration, carbon storage, drought and flood resilience, water filtration, and water storage; grasslands cover 358,000,000 acres of the United States, 85 percent of which are privately owned and serve as an important habitat for 29 breeding obligate grassland bird species; sagebrush occupies 161,000,000 acres of 14 Western States; over the last decade alone, millions of acres of grassland ecosystems in North America have been converted to cropland and residential and commercial development; grassland ecosystems are threatened by fragmentation, invasive species, wildfire, degradation, and land conversion; on average, about 1,200,000 acres of sagebrush burn each year in the United States due to invasive annual grasses that fuel catastrophic wildfires; in addition to wildfires, there has been a decrease in the number of working farms and ranches due to— pressures to convert or sell land; and challenges in keeping ranching profitable; effective restoration strategies for land managers of grassland ecosystems require— access to adequate quantities of high-quality, regionally appropriate, and diverse native plant seeds; science-based guidance on cultivating native plant species; and as stated in the National Seed Strategy for Rehabilitation and Restoration developed by the Plant Conservation Alliance and chaired by the Director of the Bureau of Land Management, more research on seedling establishment and species interaction in order to increase the use of native plant species; many plant species most often associated with grassland and rangeland ecosystems are drought tolerant, characteristics that will help ensure the viability of critical wildlife habitat and other ecosystem services in the face of increased drought prevalence brought on by the effects of climate change; grassland and rangeland ecosystems are often comprised of disturbance-dependent communities that rely on disturbances such as fire to maintain the desired plant community composition, reduce fuel loading, and arrest ecological succession; beneficial fire, when scientifically applied and in accordance with local fire prescriptions, is a critical tool in the maintenance of grassland and rangeland ecosystems, particularly in the face of climate change which has been linked to an increase in the frequency and intensity of wildfires in areas in which beneficial fire has been excluded and fuel loading is high; the migratory bird treaty obligations of the United States with Canada, Mexico, and other countries require conservation of grasslands and rangelands that are used by migratory birds for breeding, wintering, or migration and are needed to achieve and to maintain optimum population levels, distributions, and patterns of migration; the 1988 amendments to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act of 1980 require the Secretary of the Interior to identify conservation measures to assure that nongame migratory bird species do not reach the point at which measures of the Endangered Species Act are necessary; and conservation of migratory birds and their habitats requires long-term planning and the close cooperation and coordination of management activities by Canada, Mexico, and the United States within the framework of the North American Wetlands Conservation Act ( 16 U.S.C. 4401 et seq. ), the 1916, 1969, and 1986 Migratory Bird Conventions, and the Convention on Nature Protection and Wildlife Preservation in the Western Hemisphere.
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