Intermountain West Joint Venture

06/16/2026

Thank you Rocky Mountain Power for 20 great years of partnership to safeguard habitat! Here’s our Communications rockstar Hannah Jean Nikonow with some thoughts from a recent visit to Farmington, Utah.

06/11/2026

For forty years, the North American network of Migratory Bird Habitat Joint Ventures (including the IWJV) have collaborated with over 5,000 organizational partners to conserve migratory bird habitat in each of our regions. In 1986, the North American Waterfowl Management Plan called for our creation, and in early 2026 our representatives got together to celebrate the milestone. Read more at the link in our the comments.

Which of the 23 North American Joint Ventures are you checking in on us from? Let us know in the comments!

06/04/2026

The IWJV just wrapped up a workshop for journalists in north-central Wyoming, taking them on a deep dive into the biggest threats facing the sagebrush sea: invasive annual grasses and rangeland fire. Reporters learned from land managers and conservation practioners who spoke with both professional expertise and personal passion. Huge thank you to the journalists and speakers who made this such an incredible event!

05/08/2026

The Wetland Evaluation Tool, or WET, is the platform we use to share decades of data on seasonal flooding in Western wetlands with partners.

The mapping platform has three modules that offer data on wetland water availability, timing, and resilience over time. Viewers can look month by month to help visualize trends—a super useful body of info in any year, but especially now that many of our partners suspect this will be an especially dry summer

WET is freshly updated with datasets that reach into March of 2026, so it's up to date for your planning needs. Check out the tool at the link in the comments, and please reach out to our team with any questions about how these datasets can be applied to your management or research work.

05/06/2026

"Technical transfer" is the art and science of getting the right information to the right people. We have great science on how to restore sagebrush rangeland ecosystems—but applying that science, and guiding land managers to make good decisions given their local context, is a whole different problem that the Sagebrush Technical Transfer Network (STTN) aims to troubleshoot.

In December the STTN hosted a panel with speakers from Montana State University, University of Wyoming, the Eastern Oregon Agricultural Research Station and more aimed at HOW we can go about connecting the right info to the right people in the right places for conservation. We landed on FIVE best practices for engaging audiences with technical info. Want the takeaways? Click the link in the comments.

05/01/2026

This western tanager stopped by* during its spring migration to ask an important question: Do you know anyone working in western conservation who deserves some recognition for their efforts? PLEASE let us know at the link in our bio or in the comments—because we're currently accepting nominees for the 2026 IWJV Conservation Leadership Awards!

*...technically speaking this isn't true. Birds can't talk, and they don't care about awards. But if they COULD talk, we think a western tanager would care about the Conservation Leadership Awards, and they might even nominate a person or two. There are so many unsung heroes in rural communities across the West working tirelessly in the field, and in fluorescent-lit conference rooms, and in rusted-out trucks for too many hours, to maintain working habitat, working lands, and working partnerships on behalf of migratory birds. And big game, and native vegetation, and...entire landscapes, and ways of life. And you, and me. Know someone like this? Nominate them for an award. Link in the comments. Thanks!

04/28/2026

Hi! We're the Intermountain West Joint Venture.

We work across 11 Western states to conserve and restore priority wildlife habitat for birds, wildlife, and people alike.

Specifically, we work with an amazing network of partners at local, state, and federal levels to support sagebrush, wetland, and forest conservation by providing staffing, science, and communication support.

Want to learn more? You can start by scrolling our social media feeds for sure, or give us a visit at www dot IWJV dot org—we might even have some resources there to help with your own local projects.

Thanks for being here with us.

04/24/2026

Our Water & Wetlands Capacity Team was hard at work across the Intermountain West in 2025, implementing conservation projects for the benefit of wildlife and people. Read the Water 4 Annual Report at the link in the comments.

04/22/2026

Sagebrush rangelands helped across the Intermountain West, all thanks to our Sage Capacity Team — read our 2025 Sage Annual Report at the link in the comments!

03/11/2026

This year, we are celebrating 40 years of Migratory Bird Joint Ventures. Since the North American Waterfowl Management Plan called for their creation in 1986, Joint Ventures have helped to conserve 33 million acres of habitat across the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

There are twenty-two Habitat Joint Ventures (including IWJV) and three Species Joint Ventures. All are working to bring partners together for conservation because we can achieve more together than we can alone.

Learn a bit more about what we achieve together in this short video.

Migratory Bird Joint Ventures are cooperative, regional partnerships that work to conserve habitat for the benefit of birds, other wildlife, and people. We a...