rangeland

This can be healthy up to a point, creating fire breaks that reduce the damage of future fires, says Stevens-Rumann, an assistant professor of forest and rangeland stewardship at Colorado State University.

It was a time of drought, which increased tensions on the rangeland.

The Halversons are one of four families in Montana behind a new effort called the Montana Grasslands Carbon Initiative, which seeks to pay ranchers to fight climate change by letting the grasses grow tall across their rangelands.

But now the great prairies had all been overgrazed or carved into farms; there was little suitable rangeland left to occupy.