Undaunted Stewardship®

Cindy Selensky

Undaunted Stewardship

MWGA Annual Meeting Information Session

Saturday, December 5, 2009

The Montana Wool Growers Association is one of 16 organizations serving as Undaunted Stewardship's guidance council. The program and its statewide partners are "dedicated to the environmentally healthy management of grazing lands."

Cindy Selensky described the three roles of Undaunted Stewarship: public education, interpretive site construction, and ranch certification.

PUBLIC EDUCATION: Undaunted Stewardship provides educational information to the public concerning range management practices.

• The media outreach program works to educate urban public about the compatibility between sustainable agricultural practices and environmental principles. Copies of the documentary Undaunted Stewardship are available from http://www.undauntedstewarship.com/, and the acclaimed documentary Path to Eden, funded in part by the program, can be requested at http://www.pathtoeden.org/.


• Undaunted Stewardship also hosts educational workshops and offers a list of 2,300 peer-reviewed articles related to biology, organisms, ecology, and grazing. To access the list of abstracts, visit http://arc.lib.montana.edu/range-science.

INTERPRETIVE SITES: Undaunted Stewardship is currently managing eleven interpretive sites along the Corps of Discovery's route through Montana. The private land owners on these sites sign on to ten-year Historical Site Preservation Agreements, which compensate the agriculturists for preserving the natural landscape and providing limited public access to the sites. The value of these sites, explained Selensky, is greater than mere historical education; they also serve to remind the public of the key role ranchers play in preserving the open space.

UNDAUNTED CERTIFICATION: Undaunted Stewarship certification is open to anyone in the state with greater than 160 acres of agricultural land. The certification process provides land owners with technical assistance and the paperwork to encourage good record-keeping and range monitoring practices. The program, Selensky clarified, is designed to "help you help yourself," but with an independent review of your decisions. The certification process is not a reward, it is not binding, and it is not regulatroy. The rancher benefits by learning how to photo monitor their pastures and establishing a flexible written management plan for their grazing practices. Undaunted Stewarship benefits by gaining documentation of good stewardship to use as promotional material in the media.