Restoration Goals

Biodiversity enhancement plays a crucial role in maintaining ecosystem health, resilience, and long-term sustainability of landscapes across Montana. Because Montana contains a wide range of habitats, from rangelands to alpine zones, protecting and enhancing biodiversity has ecological, cultural, and economic importance. Using a variety of grasses, shrubs, and forbs can be as important as species-level diversity when considering a restoration project. Moreover, providing phenological diversity (when plants green up and flower) and varied plant heights can provide better wildlife habitat and facilitate greater cover overall. Biodiverse ecosystems promote wildlife, clean water, and healthy watersheds, and can provide resilience and promote recovery in fire-affected areas.

Indigenous communities can have restoration goals specific to cultural practices and values. Tribal-led restoration projects strengthen sovereignty, ecological connectivity, and the connection between people and the land.

Preserving topsoil is critical across Montana. Topsoil losses, due to a variety of conditions from fires, overgrazing, and other disturbances, can result in both ecological and economic problems. Preventing these losses through a variety of approaches such as mulches, matting, and hydroseeding can reconnect vegetation to the soil surface and prevent unnecessary losses.

Wildfires are an integral part of Montana's ecosystems and are increasing in frequency, duration, and intensity due to warming temperatures, increased drought, and invasive annual grasses. Many Montana native plants are adapted to these fire-prone environments. Planting native species adapted to these conditions — drought tolerant, high moisture content, and fire-resilient — can help maintain home and landscape safety.

Livestock production is a valuable piece of Montana. While non-native species are often used and favored by livestock, there are a number of palatable native species that can provide adequate protein for grazing.

Montana is home to many different types of pollinators — birds, bees, hummingbirds, and moths are a few examples. Generally, building a pollinator habitat that contains a variety of flowering plants with staggered flowering times can benefit pollinators and provide steady sources of nectar and pollen throughout the season. Montana is along the path for migrating monarch species. Planting milkweed (Asclepias sp.) helps play an important role in their lifecycle and helps build habitat connectivity along their migration path.

Large wildfires can dramatically alter the landscape they burn. Burned zones can result in hydrophobic soils, rapid erosion and topsoil losses, and debris slides. Stabilizing these soils, managing invasive weeds, and recovering native vegetation can be extremely difficult.

Rivers and wetlands define many of Montana's landscapes. Small side streams, rivers, "green zones," and mesic areas that hold moisture into late summer drive Montana's ecology and economy — providing critical habitat for native trout, bolstering forage production for wildlife and livestock, and providing recreational opportunities across the state. These riparian areas face unique restoration challenges when degraded, including impaired water quality, reduced water quantity, disconnected floodplains, and encroachment from invasive and non-native species.

Plants can be used in phytoremediation to help recover soils that contain heavy metals from mined sites, contaminated areas, or oil and gas extraction. Selecting plants that can withstand these heavily polluted sites, acidic or alkaline soils, can be challenging — yet once established, they can result in lower toxicity and higher soil organic matter. Seeding in these sites can be difficult; plugs may be the preferred method to start native plant revegetation.

Water conservation is increasingly important across Montana as the state experiences hotter summers, prolonged drought, and growing water demands. Selecting drought-adapted native plants for landscaping and revegetation projects can dramatically reduce irrigation needs while supporting pollinators, wildlife, and healthy soils. Xeriscape and water-wise approaches replace water-thirsty turf and non-native ornamentals with diverse plantings that thrive on natural precipitation once established.

Disturbed sites are a magnet for invasive weeds. Whether it's post-fire, construction-related disturbance, or erosion, combatting invasive and non-native weeds is essential to create and preserve healthy native habitat. There are many strategies that can be used to create an integrated weed management plan — mowing, grazing, controlled fire, herbicide, and hand pulling. Be sure to clean, drain, and dry any recreational equipment to reduce transport of invasive species.

There are many reasons to restore wildlife habitat: maintaining migration corridors, preserving winter ranges, restoring habitat connectivity, carrying out conservation easements and lease requirements, and promoting outdoor recreation opportunities.