Jordon Beshears started as a wildlife biologist in Lincoln County, Mo., and worked about 18,000 acres in the St. Louis district managing land for quail and obligate grassland birds.
Then, five years ago, he took that expertise to rural Missouri and began helping farmers create spaces where livestock, row crops and wildlife not only coexist but also thrive.
Beshears, who works as a private land conservationist for the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC), spends much of his time developing plans for prairie plantings. For farmers in northern regions of the U.S. where native rangeland exists, he notes that in states such as Missouri, it is a different ask of farmers.
“This area was a glaciated prairie, and now the majority is in agriculture production,” Beshears says. “So, land conversion has been a big deal here.”
Programs such as the Audubon Conservation Ranching Program, along with federal programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program, help. These offer incentives to farmers for incorporating native forages in pastures or pollinator plantings around row crop fields, Beshears explains, and make a real difference on grassland bird species populations.
The Missouri Department of Conservation conducts bird surveys every summer. Beshears sees an increase in dickcissels, Henslow’s sparrow, bobwhite and meadowlark in the east-central and northern regions of the state, in part because of these types of initiatives.
Yet, while transforming a farm to increase wildlife — especially bird habitat — is good for the ecosystem, Beshears realizes any type of change for a farmer “has to turn a profit.”
“We need to find the balance where natives plantings help raise healthy livestock and also benefit birds and wildlife,” he says. “Farmers have always been progressive, and with today’s input costs for chemical, fertilizer and seed, that’s more apparent than ever. Adding native forages and annual cover crops to grazing systems and installing prairie or pollinator plants on less productive row crop operations are just a couple examples. These practices improve their bottom lines, and those are the operations where we’re seeing good numbers of quail and other wildlife.”
Getting there
Older pastures or hayfields were often planted to a single species of introduced grasses. Today, Beshears recommends a variety of grasses or forage types for better land, farm and wildlife benefits.
A typical native forage mix may include species such as big bluestem, indiangrass, eastern gamagrass, switchgrass and a variety of wild ryes. The exact mixture of grasses depends on the soil types where the grasses are planted. Beshears helps farmers identify what works on their land and operation.
Native forages are no different than any crop you plant on the farm, he says. Proper preparation ahead of planting is critical, and natives really aren’t difficult to establish if done correctly.