Drought Resilience Planning and Assisted Migration of Imperiled Sweetgrass Populations on the Rocky Boy Reservation, North-Central Montana

The Rocky Boy Reservation of the Chippewa-Cree Tribe is located in north-central Montana within the Bear Paw Mountains, a region of climate extremes, with periodic severe droughts. In recent years, the Reservation has been subjected to more frequent droughts, accompanied by increasing warming temperature trends. The third, fifth, and seventh most severe droughts (over a 128-year period) all occurred during the last 8 years. Two recent droughts occurred during the third and fifth warmest years on record (2017 and 2021).

Consecutive years of precipitation deficits and warming temperatures are of great concern for Tribal water supplies, local livestock production, and cultural-traditional natural resources. Locally imperiled sweetgrass populations, the Chippewa-Cree Tribe’s most important cultural plant species, are restricted to wetlands habitats that are especially vulnerable to increasing frequency and intensity of drought and climate change. 

Through this project, the Chippewa-Cree Tribe will develop a Drought Contingency Plan that can be used for immediate management actions. The project team will incorporate drought planning into a finalized version of the Chippewa-Cree Tribe's Climate Change Plan, which will also include planning and implementation of specific drought resiliency projects over the next three years.

The team’s priority drought resiliency project is to implement an assisted migration sweetgrass monitoring project over a 3-year period, to protect and conserve imperiled sweetgrass populations, which have shown steep declines during the past 12 years. 

This research was funded by NIDIS through the FY 2024 Coping with Drought: Tribal Drought Resilience grant competition. For more information, please contact Britt Parker (britt.parker@noaa.gov).