Sandhills

Why You Should Visit
The Nebraska Sandhills is the nation’s most extensive and intact wetland/grassland system.  It supports a system of high-quality streams and rivers and provides vital habitat for birds in the Great Plains Flyway. The many rivers and hundrends of wetlands provides habitat for finescale dace, northern redbelly dace, blacknose shiner and other small native fishes.

Birdwood Creek

Location
The Sand Hills region encompasses a large expanse of the state of Nebraska and reaches into southern parts of South Dakota.

Size
19,300 square miles

What to See: Flora

• Blowout penstemon
• Sand bluestem
• Little bluestem
• Needlegrass
• Sandreed grass
• Yucca

Long-billed curlew © Charlie Ott

What to See: Fauna

• Black-tailed jackrabbit
• Plains pocket gopher
• Ord's kangaroo rat
• Prairie vole
• Deer mouse
• Masked shrew
• Small footed bat
• Silver-haired bat
• Big brown bat
• Badger
• Muskrat
• River otter
• Coyote
• Swift fox
• Bobcat
• Elk
• Mule deer
• White-tailed deer
• Proghorn
• Bison

Why the Conservancy Selected This Site
Wetland draining, inappropriate grazing in wetland areas and woody pant invasions are threats to the stability of the sandhills grasslands. The large grass-stabilized dune region is easily susceptible to erosion and depends upon the complex root system of the grasses and forbes inhabiting the area.

What the Conservancy Has Done/Is Doing
The Nature Conservancy is working with other conservation partners and encouraging private conservation ownership of land by private landowners.

The Conservancy acquired a 9,920-acre conservation easement along a five-mile stretch of Birdwood Creek on the Buckboard Ranch in the Sandhills. Birdwood Creek is an exceptional watercourse, noted for its unique hydrology, diversity of wildlife, and high-quality riparian areas. This project is the first large conservation easement on a Sandhills stream. The Conservancy and Michael J. Kelly, owner of the Buckboard Ranch, are also working with numerous partners to develop grazing regimes that promote increased range diversity and protect sensitive areas along the creek while not precluding it from livestock use. The partners include the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Nebraska Grazing Lands Coalition (NGLC), and the Sandhills Task Force (a local rancher-driven range conservation and management group). Another partner, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, provided a $100,000 grant as part of a nationwide initiative to support innovative stewardship on private lands. The Nature Conservancy, along with our partners, seek to demonstrate that conservation easements when combined with well-designed grazing management can achieve multiple resource conservation goals in large-scale working landscapes. We believe this project exemplifies positive, solution-seeking, on-the-ground action. We also believe it is cost-effective and replicable in other private-lands settings in and beyond Nebraska.