ENTERPRISE — Wallowa Resources will be a recipient of one of three grants to fund conservation efforts in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, according to a press release.

The Enterprise-based nonprofit is scheduled to receive $323,348 from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation of a total of $1,755,163 from the Conservation Partners Program. The grant will provide farmers, ranchers and forest landowners with targeted technical assistance to improve stewardship on working lands and achieve specific conservation outcomes.

Marci Schreder, lead director for Wallowa Resources on its range program, said the grant goes along with the greater emphasis the nonprofit has been placing on working lands.

“Our grazing lands and farmlands are super-important,” she said.

She said the infusion of cash will go to empower Northeastern Oregon’s ranching community through high-demand ranching skill sets to livestock operators and to convene them in Natural Resource Conservation Service initiatives. Among these will be a regional rangeland summit in La Grande in April and others in Wallowa County.

“The project will increase the number of rangeland properties operating with best-management plans in an imperiled grassland landscape of Wallowa County, in Northeast Oregon,” Schreder said.

Wallowa Resources will contract with six rangeland consultants to advise producers and write rangeland management plans for their use.

“This is a great way to help support local community and purchase materials locally,” she said. “We have incredible producers here in Wallowa County.”

She said the new grant opportunity opened the door to more conservation on working landscapes. It’s tied to the NRCS Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative and the two together will let producers get connected to funding they’ll be able to use on conservation. One focus will be on water-improvement projects and another on fencing to better control livestock.

Controlling invasive grasses — such as medusahead rye — is another element of the conservation plan.

“These are dollars to help support that,” Shreder said. “Our grazing lands are such an important part of our rural economy.”

The funding will help develop an action plan for producers.

“This is a first step toward developing that plan,” she said.

The Oregon awards are part of 27 grants from the NFWF totaling $14.7 million to support the implementation of voluntary conservation practices on farms and ranches across 21 states from the Midwest to Western grasslands. The grants will leverage approximately $7 million in matching contributions from grantees, generating a total impact of $21.7 million, according to the press release.

In addition to the grant for Wallowa Resources, two others in the Northwest are:

• $921,853 to expand Audubon Conservation Ranching in California and Columbia Plateau in Oregon, Idaho and Washington.

• $509,962 to enhance agricultural resilience in the Deschutes Basin of Oregon.

“The NFWF grant will bolster our local partnerships and our collective support for producers, ranchers and landowners here in Northeast Oregon through peer-to-peer learning, and a new annual Northeast Oregon Rangeland Summit, to develop long term management plans that improve grassland health and ranching operation viability,” Schreder said.

She emphasized that Wallowa Resources had valuable partners who helped obtain the NFWF grant. Those include Oregon State University Extension Service, The Nature Conservancy, the NRCS and the Wallowa County Soil and Water Conservation District.