With the surfeit of bad news lately, I’ve been hunting for positive trends in the West. This report about grazing buyouts came via our Northern Rockies Editor, Ray Ring. My savior.

The National Wildlife Federation has helped engineer the purchase of a 74,000-acre grazing allotment near Yellowstone. They’ve been doing this around the national park for a while (HCN: Wildlife win one in Yellowstone) and their efforts have slowly built a sort of buffer zone that supports wildlife and reduces the number of cows and sheep that get ripped to shreds by wolves and grizzlies.

Grazing on public lands has been a thorny Western issue for a long time, whether it has to do with environmental degradation on poorly managed allotments, or the taxpayer cost of managing what amounts to a federal subsidy of ranching interests. And for a long time, environmentalists carped about the issue but resisted acknowledging the economic value that a federal grazing lease represented for ranchers. As the above article suggests, that’s been changing lately, with environmentalists offering generous cash offers to buy out and retire grazing leases. These “golden saddle” offers have worked in a number of states (HCN: The Big Buyout) and seem to represent one of the few trend lines where not only are good things happening for the environment, but they’re happening without a lot of acrimony.

If you’ve heard any good news lately, email me via HCN’s feedback form.