Two Ranches, One Idea: How Carbon Came to Help Pay for Prairie

Part of Legacy Land, our guide for people who want to keep land whole. Start with Protect Your Land Forever; companions include the carbon funded easements guide and grassland easements.

In spring the wildflowers come up through the bunchgrass on the Zumwalt Prairie in Wallowa County, Oregon, and the cattle move through them the way cattle have moved through this country for generations. The Nature Conservancy keeps a large prairie preserve here. Along its edges, working ranches sit against the wild grass, and for a ranch family the question is how to keep it grass.

For the Probert family, the answer was a conservation easement held by The Nature Conservancy that keeps their land in grass and keeps it a working cattle ranch. What made the deal unusual was how it was paid for.

What paid for Zumwalt

An easement is a purchase of rights, and rights cost money. At Zumwalt the money came from several directions at once, including the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, through its Agricultural Land Easement program, and private philanthropy.

The newest piece was carbon. Climate Trust Capital, an investment fund created by The Climate Trust, made Zumwalt its first grasslands investment. By The Climate Trust’s account, it was the first time carbon offset finance helped pay for a conservation easement. The logic was plain: keeping the native grass unplowed keeps its soil carbon in the ground, and credits for that carbon could be sold to help pay for the promise.

Zumwalt also became a cooperative. Neighboring ranches joined together beside land The Nature Conservancy already owns, so that more of the prairie could be protected under one carbon project.

A second ranch, a bigger map

Go east and north, to Montana, and the same idea shows up at larger scale. In late 2024 The Climate Trust announced a $2 million carbon investment in perpetual easements on a family ranch of nearly 38,000 acres, a deal it called historic.

Montana now has a cooperative of its own, the Northern Great Plains Grassland Carbon Cooperative. It is registered under the Climate Action Reserve Grassland Protocol, so smaller ranches can join together in one carbon project instead of each carrying the cost alone.

What the two stories share

The easement is the asset. Carbon is one way to finance it. In both places the easement is permanent, carbon helped close a funding gap, and the land stays in grass and in cattle. Carbon did not replace the older tools. It added a piece to a mosaic, and for a ranch that could not quite close the gap, one more piece can be the difference.

What these stories do not tell us

Most of what is public about these deals comes from The Climate Trust and its partners, and we have leaned on The Nature Conservancy and trade press accounts where we could. Three things are not public. We do not know what ranchers have earned from ongoing credit sales, because no rate is published. We do not know how carbon prices will behave over the life of a project. And two ranches are a small sample of a grassland carbon market that conservation finance writers describe as small. If you own grass, treat these ranches as proof of concept, not as a forecast for your land.

If you own grass

Start with the guide to how carbon funded easements work, then run your land through the fit checklist. Our grassland guide and ranch guide cover the wider field, and The Climate Trust’s profile in our directory links to its own landowner guide. We have no financial relationship with The Climate Trust. Ideal Location is an independent advocate, and no group pays us to send landowners its way. Legacy Land explains how we point landowners to the land trusts and conservation groups whose work fits, and talking with us is free.