Wyoming’s Sagebrush Sea

This iconic landscape is disappearing at an alarming rate—more than a million acres a year—and the causes are many. Some of the land has been plowed under for crops, poorly grazed or paved and developed for energy facilities. Invasive grasses like medusahead and cheatgrass are muscling out native plants—producing poor forage for wildlife and livestock and fueling a cycle of larger and more dangerous wildfires.

Native plants are key to restoring Wyoming’s wild and working lands, but land managers have long struggled with not having enough native seeds, enough of the right mix of local species, or enough to restore large areas such as mine sites or areas where invasive grasses have taken over. These efforts are central to upland restoration across the Sagebrush Sea, helping native vegetation and wildlife rebound.

TNC has stepped in to help solve this challenge by studying native plants in the lab to determine what environmental conditions they need to sprout. Some native plant seeds just need a period of cold, moist conditions similar to what you would expect them to experience over the winter. Others need their tough exterior shells scratched and scarred to allow water to enter the seed and induce germination. By answering some of these basic scientific questions, we can move native seeds toward commercial production and help make them available for restoration projects across Wyoming.

To help create a much-needed pipeline for native seeds, our Wyoming team co-wrote a new seed strategy in 2025 with a group of statewide partners. The strategy, released by the Wyoming Department of Agriculture, lays out a plan to expand the availability of seeds of native species that are essential to conserve and restore Wyoming’s wild and working lands while keeping the needs of seed growers at the forefront.

“So far, the video collars have shown deer weaving through Cody backyards, being fed by people, struggling to jump over fences and all sorts of other behaviors that are giving us a more complete picture of how human development impacts the herd,” explains Kimi Zamuda, Absaroka Front migration program manager for TNC in Wyoming. The footage is also revealing how conservation efforts have already had a positive impact: how private landowners who have deployed wildlife-friendly fencing or restored streams, for instance, are making it easier for deer to survive the lean months on their winter range.

When spring arrives and the deer begin their migration toward the parks, the video collars provide detailed data on how they’re using wild habitat and what plants they’re most reliant upon for forage. In addition, the collars capture intimate moments that people almost never witness: a doe quietly nuzzling a young fawn or pausing for a wobbly-legged youngster to catch up as she leads the way to summer range. “We’re seeing them, in real time, passing along intergenerational knowledge of migration routes that the herd has used to survive for millennia,” Zamuda says.