DLL Operations Sample Clauses

DLL Operations. DLL’s primary business is cattle production. Recreation, including pioneer handcart trek activities and big game hunting on the Ranch is a secondary important part of Ranch operations. DLL has long practiced holistic management in order to preserve basic ecosystem health – including soils, vegetation, water and a diversity of wildlife and wildlife habitats. In recognition of these holistic ranching principles and practices, the Society for Range Management in 2006 awarded the Ranch the X.X. Xxxxxxxx Stewardship Award, the Society’s highest award for land stewardship. In 2008, the Ranch was designated by the National Audubon Society as a Global Important Bird Area, due to DLL’s conservation of significant populations of GSG and other avian species. Long-term ground and satellite-based range monitoring demonstrate that the long-practiced grazing management of carefully planned rests and rotational grazing, in combination with periodic vegetation treatments, has been effective in achieving Ranch management goals. Monitoring information and data on the primary habitat for the Covered Species reveals a heterogeneous mix of early, mid and late-seral vegetative conditions. Bare ground is in decline and has been replaced by species-diverse shrub and herbaceous vegetation and litter cover. These changes indicate an upward trend in functional condition of both upland and riparian habitats on the Ranch. Concurrently, since 1985, the number of GSG leks on the Ranch has increased and persisted (Table 1). Habitat conditions on the Ranch for GSG are in accordance with the conditions described in the Final CCAA Policy as a “property that is already in suitable condition for the Covered Species or [that] may already be doing the necessary conservation measures that will maintain its population or provide habitat.” Given the anticipated 30-year duration of the Agreement, DLL expects that agricultural and range management practices are likely to evolve, and that it is possible that new or additional treatments for grazing lands could be employed on the Ranch to meet livestock production and wildlife habitat and conservation goals. This includes the potential reintroduction of strains of native vegetation providing greater forage values for cattle, the Covered Species, and other species in order to supplement or supplant existing vegetation should such strains be identified or become available.1 DLL’s wildlife management program is focused on game and non-game species, and sp...