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To many, the Western grasslands still reflect the essence of this country: the vast plains that begin with prairie and bump up against the Rockies, home to herds of cattle and the cowboys that run them. Yet this indelible image belies the facts, as much of the nation's rangeland has been degraded by overgrazing. Land where lush, waving grasses flourished is now eroded and only sparsely covered with plants. One consequence, says farmer and rural public policy expert Michael Bowman of Wray, Colorado, is that "hundreds of small communities whose economies relied on healthy grassland are withering with the grass."

Many ranchers, conservationists, and investors are determined to revive this magical and (once) highly productive landscape. And have embarked on doing so by increasing the density of livestock.

Wait — wasn't overgrazing the problem?

The key is how grazing animals are managed. For according to Shannon Horst, CEO and co-founder of the Savory Institute, an organization dedicated to restoring the world's grasslands through Holistic Management, ranchers can consistently double, and even — depending on the condition of the land and adherence to the practices — quadruple livestock capacity over time.

However, more cattle per acre is just one benefit. By actively planning and managing the grazing and recovery of the plants as opposed to allowing continuous grazing, ruminants become part of the solution rather than a burden to the land. Allan Savory, who developed Holistic Management as a researcher and farmer in Southern Africa, saw the connection between roaming animal herds and grassland vitality. The dynamic is as follows: the animal chews the grass so as to stimulate plant and root growth, and allow sunlight to get through to the growth points, then moves on in a herd either (in a leisurely way) to find fresher grass or (with a pounding of hooves) to elude a predator. He found that when domestic livestock are managed to replicate this behavior on degraded lands, the grasses come back: the deep-rooted plants enrich and aerate the soil and the hoof movements chip away at hardened earth so that seeds can germinate and grow and water can penetrate.

Rich, aerated soil is productive, retains water, and, highly significant in environmental terms, is a carbon sink. "Healthy grasslands represents the ecosystem with the highest potential for carbon sequestration of any on the planet," says Steven Apfelbaum, Founder/Chairman of Applied Ecological Services, Inc., a landscape restoration company based in Brodhead, Wisconsin. He notes that grasslands cover more than 45% of the U.S., a proportion fairly consistent throughout the world. This has important implications for reducing atmospheric CO2. Plus, soil carbon plays a vital role in sustaining water supplies, which are perilously threatened in much of the West. "Every one percent increase in soil carbon holds an additional 60,000 gallons of water per acre," says Apfelbaum. "Water infiltrates the ground and replenishes groundwater sources. Springs reappear."

The grassland landscape "co-evolved with grazing animals and plants and predators," says Shannon Horst. This was once a biologically synergistic community, she says, but over thousands of years human interventions like hunting, farming and domesticating livestock changed the nature of the symbiotic relationship and produced stress on the land. Specialists in land restoration say that by considering animals, plants, soil and water as a system farmers and ranchers can work to restore the carbon, water and plant nutrient cycles that underlie land's biological productivity, and ultimately economic viability.

From this standpoint, excess atmospheric CO2 can be understood as a carbon cycle dysfunction: too much carbon is up in the air rather than in the soil, where it lends fertility (33% of soil organic matter is carbon). Similarly, floods and droughts are symptoms of a carbon cycle gone wrong: when soil is compacted or eroded, rain evaporates or runs off. This June, Allan Savory won the Buckminster Fuller Challenge for "Operation Hope," a program in Zimbabwe that uses livestock and Holistic Management to fight poverty and food scarcity through restoring soil, water and biodiversity to degraded lands.

Meanwhile, back at the Western ranch, landowners are using Holistic Management to streamline costs and enhance profitability. Nancy Ranney of Ranney Ranch in Corona, New Mexico, family-run since 1968, says that since introducing Holistic Management practices in 2002, feed costs have plummeted to one-fifth of what they were, fuel and labor costs have dropped 50% and 30% respectively, and the land is more resilient during droughts. She has also noticed that the land — at 18,000 acres it's a mid-sized operation — is healthier. While the pasture had been dominated by one type of grass, blue grama, "within three years we had 25 native grasses," she says. "The seeds were dormant in the soil and reappeared." This attests to increased biodiversity, which reflects a healthier ecosystem.

For Ranney, these changes not only made economic sense, but also spoke to family priorities. "We all feel this land was entrusted to us by our parents and grandparents, and we care about the integrity of the land," she says. "We're also concerned about global environmental health and biodiversity. We're interested in finding ways of protecting land as well as developing it." Some investors are establishing Western ranches with land restoration at the core. Grasslands, LLC, is a vast tract of two ranch properties in South Dakota acquired by investors including John Fullerton — a former Managing Director of JP Morgan and Founder and President of The Capital Institute — and under the operation of CEO Jim Howell, who's affiliated with the Savory Institute. In its pilot season Grasslands has already enhanced the land's productivity: there's 20% more edible grass, rather than opportunistic plants unpalatable to cattle that crop up when grazing is unmanaged. This means the land can carry more cattle. "When you improve the quality of the land in an ecological sense, the profitability follows," says Fullerton. He adds: "We're trying to track not just ecological and financial, but also social improvements so that we can have a thriving rural land based economy again."

Grasslands, LLC is also exploring means to monetize the sequestration of carbon. "Putting a value on the ecosystem services of the land makes maintaining the land more profitable than, say, putting up condos," says Fullerton. "Our approach is triple bottom line people, planet and profit — leading with restoring ecological function. We want to show investors that you can make money and restore the grasslands." Courtney White, Executive Director of the Quivira Coalition, a New Mexico-based organization devoted to ecologically and financially sound Western ranch management, has introduced the concept of "The Carbon Ranch," the topic of the group's 2010 Conference, to be held in November in Albuquerque. He says: "This puts all the pieces together: reducing the carbon footprint, providing grass-fed food, restoring habitat, and carbon sequestration."

To White, setting an economic value for sequestered carbon is important for mitigating against climate change — plus for added income to ranchers struggling economically. "It's tough for everybody," he says. "Farmers and ranchers get 19 cents on every dollar in the food system. If you do a good job you can raise your stocking rates. But usually you have to diversify income streams." The question, he says, is: "How can rural landowners be compensated for sequestering carbon? There is a role for government to light this fire: reward early adopters willing to tackle climate change for land use and food production.

Steven Apfelbaum underscores the need to bring grassland soil sequestration into the discussion as the Senate embarks on new climate/energy legislation. "The work of the ranches in revitalizing grasslands is also good for the climate," he says. "Appropriate energy and climate policies that address growing soil carbon would provide a new source of revenue and give ranchers and farmers an incentive to apply ecosystem-based management."

Michael Bowman, a fifth-generation Coloradan, would be happy to see new economic opportunity in the Central Great Plains. "The out-migration has reached epidemic proportions, especially among young people," he says. "The school system here has one-half the students compared with three decades ago." Nancy Ranney says people in her New Mexico town have to drive 2 1/4 hours to find a fully stocked grocery store. More effective grazing management and additional sources of income, she notes, could allow more people to "stay on ranches, otherwise they'd have to sell."

For now, Ranney is still stunned by how grazing management has changed the ranch routine: "We used to have three to four weeks of sustained riding to move animals to new pasture. Now they're in in a day. Where did the old Western round-up go? We're nostalgic for that, but it's all about less work and therefore greater productivity."

• Judith D. Schwartz
• To save the withering grasslands of America's West some ranchers are implementing an unusual strategy -- have more cattle grazing, not fewer