The Dec. 7 MALT newsletter reported that the Montana Sage Grouse Oversight Team agreed to fully fund three proposed sage grouse conservation projects (conservation easements), and that four additional easements were approved at less than full funding, with an uncertainty of if those four projects remained viable.

     The good news is that on Dec. 14 MSGOT learned The Montana Land Reliance and the landowners it partnered with, and The Nature Conservancy in Montana and the landowners it partnered with, were able to make the projects work within the confines of a roughly 18 percent reduction in requested funding. All told, in 2020 MSGOT approved about $4.2 million to permanently conserve over 24,000 acres of important sage grouse habitat, thanks to MLR, TNC and landowners supportive of conservation.