 We're situated on the eastern side of the Prairie Catole and in this part of the state contains some of the largest intact tall grass prairie remaining. This morning, you know, we were out on site. We were joined by Wayne Krause and we were viewing the Sharptail Lick on the Krause operation. Sharptail Krause are a grassland obligate species. They're endemic to this area. Their requirements for their life cycle is really these large intact grasslands. That's what we have here on this operation is some very expansive grasslands that support species like the Sharptail Krause. What Krauses are doing on their operation really supports their populations because with the rotational grazing system that they have implemented over the years and their continued management techniques to improve the health of the grassland really illustrates the benefits of what we're seeing out there for Sharptails. Probably in the last 10 years, we never knew what a grouse was around in Duel County but it's really expanding. We've got other pastures too that we've just started seeing them the last old couple years on them but these here have probably been here about 10 years now. I think we've seen four of them at that first what we first seen and they've just been increasing steadily every year. Sharptail Grouse, they require different vegetation characteristics throughout their life cycle starting, you know, if we started in the spring they're going to congregate on these lecks which are typically located on top of hills on ridge lines where vegetation is probably a little bit shorter which makes their displays more visual. They tend to select for vegetation and nesting that is a little bit taller and especially, you know, Sharptail Grouse because they begin to select for nesting sites and begin to nest so early in the spring that residual vegetation from the last year is really important to them because we don't have any green cover growing yet so they really key in on that vegetation from last year and so with a rotational grazing system that allows that vegetation from last year especially when you're rotating through paddocks and allowing for adequate rest you really have that residual vegetation for birds like the Sharptail Grouse available for nesting the following year and then as you begin to work through these paddocks you're promoting certain species to grow and certain diversity of plants it's those areas that are highly diverse, you know, a highly diverse plant community that female grouse are going to take their chicks to. This particular section has never had anything broke up on it it's pretty rough ground but there's been some others that are surrounding ground that we have around it we have sowed that down it was marginal ground we've put it into grass and we think we get more use out of it as grass and we do it as farm ground especially when it's marginal and it's just hard to find good grass and then we get some cool season grasses along with it so we can get, we rotate onto them first in the spring and then as here coming like July the warm season grasses take off we go onto them then once in a while we will go back on in the late fall on some of the cool season if it came back but normally we don't let it get down we try to leave probably a third of the grass out there I started working with Wayne Kraus a few years ago on some water development on another unit and it kind of snowballed into working with the project that we have here today Wayne came to us along with Games Fish and Parks and asked about better water management for approximately three sections of land it's a big operation especially for this part of the state so we worked together and came up with a water design for him that includes multiple pipelines and tanks it actually is about three to four miles of pipe that was put into the ground to make this all work funding for that project was provided through the environmental quality incentive program or EQUIP the benefit of putting in this water system is that Krauses end up with better water quality for their livestock it allows them to rotate their cattle more because they can move based on the grass they're not dependent on the water to say where they have to have their cattle in a lot of cases if you're working with surface water that's the determining factor is where do you have quantity of water and quality of water it's not that you can manage the grass properly and if you can manage the grass properly it allows for better habitat for all of the wildlife species in addition it keeps the cattle out of the wetlands and the streams and that allows for better vegetation which improves the habitat for especially our waterfall in those situations anytime we can improve the quality of the grass it improves habitat for a wide variety of species including the sharp-tailed rocks I don't know it's just fun to come out here early in the morning when the sun's coming up and see all the different kinds of wildlife moving around and birds singing it just differs