The Southern Driftless Grasslands project area is the last and best stronghold for grassland birds in the state.  Populations of grassland birds are in serious decline across their ranges, a fact most startlingly brought home by the recent 3 Billion Birds report, which showed that grassland birds have suffered an overall 53% population loss since 1970.  One species, the Eastern Meadowlark, has declined overall by 75% nationwide; Wisconsin has experienced similar declines. The long-term sustainability of rare grassland birds including Upland Sandpiper, Henslow’s Sparrow, and Bobolink depends upon the conservation of large, open grassland landscapes. While such landscapes are now largely absent from Wisconsin, they still are found in the SWGN project area.  While grassland birds are the conservation target that currently shapes our conservation strategic plan; these protection efforts will, in turn, benefit our rural communities, streams and springs, and prairie and savanna remnants.  
 

The Southern Driftless Grasslands partnership utilizes a conservation design concept known as grassland Bird Conservation Areas (BCAs).  Grassland BCAs are large, predominantly treeless areas of at least 10,000 acres, each with a > 2,000-acre core of permanently protected, contiguous grassland, surrounded by a matrix of working lands (cropland and pastures) and idle grassland fields under short-term or permanent term protection. This model incorporates a mix of both protected and working lands.  There are four grassland BCAs in the project, the Perry-Primrose BCA, the Military Ridge Prairie Heritage Area, the Barreltown BCA, and the Garrison Grove BCA.  In each of these are grasslands protected by the state, land trusts, and through program enrollment as well as extensive acreage in pasture and hay.  We are focusing our outreach efforts currently in these four BCAs, understanding that it is here that we can have the largest impact protecting our conservation targets.