Very little of this land has been formally protected by law. In fact, across the Great Plains as a whole only about 1 percent of the countryside has been set aside in parks or conservation reserves, less than in any other biome in North America. The surviving expanses of native prairie are hard-working landscapes that today, as in the past, provide the basis for western cattle production. This is cowboy country. Ranches are not wildlife refuges, and over the years, ranchers have made it clear that varmints like prairie dogs, wolves, and wild bison won’t find a warm welcome here. But at the same time, ranching has placed a value on both wild prairie as grazing land and on the esthetics of broad horizons. For many ranchers, maintaining large expanses of native pasture in productive condition has been a labor of love, as well as an act of economic self-interest. It is a tribute to their efforts that several recent conservation projects, including Grasslands National Park and Old Man on His Back Conservation Area in Saskatchewan and the Tall Grass Prairie National Preserves in Oklahoma and Kansas, have been established on lands that were previously managed as commercial ranches.
Ranching not only has the advantage of preventing the prairie from being plowed up. It also helps to keep it from becoming fragmented. Anything that takes a bite out of the natural grassland, whether it be a tame pasture, a pricey ranchette, or an oil field with its network of service roads, breaks up the landscape and subtly alters its ecological function. A study conducted in Colorado showed that the subdivision of ranch land into acreages led to the displacement of grassland birds, such as lark buntings and meadowlarks, and their replacement with robins, magpies, and other common-and-garden species. The pattern was the same for carnivores, with coyotes and bobcats ceding their role as predators to domestic pets. Most worrying of all was the discovery that these cut-up tracts of prairie were much more susceptible than working ranch lands to intrusions by a long list of invasive plants, including introduced species such as smooth brome, crested wheatgrass, leafy spurge, and dozens of others. Given an inch of bare ground, these aggressive weeds will literally take a mile, eventually overwhelming and choking out the natural vegetation. The more lines of disturbance are scratched across the country, the more access these invaders gain and the more quickly the native prairie is forced to give way.
One way to prevent these losses is to keep livestock on the range and to maintain the historical use of the land for grazing. Perhaps the best-known proponent of this approach to conservation is billionaire-businessman-turned-cowpoke Ted Turner. In an attempt to disprove the adage that the best way to make a small fortune in the livestock industry is to start with a large one, Turner has invested a portion of his wealth in a string of ranches across the Great Plains, with the intention of showing the world that conservation can pay. Now the largest bison producer in the country, with a combined herd on his various holdings of some forty thousand to fifty thousand head, he makes it a policy to stock his ranches below industry standards, both as a means of saving money (no need to provide extra feed during droughts) and as a safeguard against overgrazing. What’s more, through the Turner Endangered Species Fund, he and his family are attempting to improve the prospects of prairie dogs, black-footed ferrets, and other species at risk both on the Turner properties and elsewhere. And finally, he has launched a chain of restaurants under the banner of Ted’s Montana Grill, where diners can share his taste for prairie conservation.
The livestock industry has been the subject of intense criticism from environmentalists, often for valid reasons. But not all ranches are created equal. Under thoughtful management, working rangelands can be highly productive for wildlife and, at their best, have been known to support more native species, at higher densities, than are found on nearby wildlife refuges. Buying range-fed beef or bison from a conservation-minded producer has a significance that extends far beyond the dinner table. Happily, these prairie-friendly products are readily available in many parts of the Great Plains, whether purchased at the farm gate or through farmers’ markets, health food stores, and other alternative outlets. A number of producers are also offering their range-fed meats to a broad public through the Internet, under trademarks such as Conservation Beef and Wild Idea bison.
Two other strategies for conserving native grassland deserve mention. The first is a type of legal contract known as a conservation easement. Simply put, an easement is a commitment made by a landowner to exempt a specified parcel of land from future development. In return, he or she qualifies to receive compensation from the sponsoring organization, usually an environmental group (like the Nature Conservancy or Ducks Unlimited) or a government agency (like the United States Fish and Wildlife Service). Although the terms of the contracts vary, the restrictions typically include a ban on cultivation, subdivision, and the destruction or degradation of wetlands; sometimes energy development and road building are also prohibited. These limitations apply not only to the current owner but also to anyone who subsequently acquires the land, thereby achieving permanent protection at the cost of a onetime payment. And even though the payouts are modest, they have been welcomed by ranchers, who find themselves chronically caught between high costs of production and low prices at the livestock market.
Conserving rangelands ensures a future for species like the prairie rattlesnake. To survive, rattlers need grasslands for summer hunting and bankside crevices as hibernacula, or communal winter dens. Though venomous, prairie rattlesnakes are not aggressive and will typically slither away if given half a chance.
A second strategy—setting aside sweeping landscapes for wildlife, in parks and ecological reserves—understandably raises the hackles of private landowners. But with fair compensation for those who choose to sell and the promise of a diversified economy, built around ecotourism, to sustain those who remain on the land, there can sometimes be a meeting of minds, a softening of differences, and a merging of agendas.
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> WIDE OPEN FOR CONSERVATION
In 2004, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation and the Nature Conservancy brought together a panel of experts to identify the most important and promising sites for grassland conservation in North America.
The regions they identified, as shown on this map, represent the best of what’s left, combining high bio-diversity value with expanses of intact grassland. Similar opportunities also exist in three areas of northern Mexico: Tokio-Mapimi, Marfa-Big Bend-Maderas del Carmen, and the Sierra Madre Occidental Foothills.
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> COWBOY CONSERVATION
If there were legal protection for endangered societies as well as species, the ranching communities of the western plains would surely top the list. In one struggling town after another, school enrollments are declining, storefronts are boarded up, and the ranchers who meet on coffee row are no longer young. A uniquely western way of life is at risk of blinking out.
In the past, conservationists and ranchers have often had a testy relationship, as insensitivity to local values met head on with local suspicion of outsiders. But tempers have mellowed with time, and the old adversaries are increasingly able to find common ground in their concern for the future. Ranchers want to earn a living from ranching, and conservationists want them to succeed, as part of a strengthened and diversified nature-based economy.
In a report entitled New Directions for the Prairie Economy: Connecting Conservation and Rural Development in the Northern Great Plains, published in 2009, the World Wildlife Fund presents a twelve-point plan for “fostering nature-based economic development in ways that also support the goals of biodiversity conservation.” Key recommendations include: expanding ranch-based ecotourism (including hunting) to “reward landowners who conserve biodiversity”; developing markets for bio-diversity-friendly beef and other grassland products, possibly through certification and labeling; enlarging ecological reserves to encompass at least 10 percent of the northern plains; expanding support for Indigenous people’s ecological and cultural aspirations; securing adequate funding for existing co
nservation programs, which are chronically underresourced; and providing compensation to ranchers for the billions of dollars worth of ecological services they provide, including protection of watersheds, prevention of soil erosion, and the sequestration of carbon.
“We have no illusions that a nature-based economy is the main path to meeting the region’s rural development needs,” the report’s authors admit, “or that rural development is the best path to conserving the region’s biodiversity. But we do believe there is a place where these two paths intersect, where there is common ground for merging the interests and needs of both for mutual benefit.”
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> GOING, GOING . . .
There are more than 460 “species of concern” on the Great Plains. These are organisms faring so badly in population and reproductive success that they are feared to be heading toward extinction. Although compilations vary, the list includes something like 18 species of crayfish and other crustaceans, 19 species of reptiles (among them the Black Hills redbelly snake), 19 amphibians (including a kind of blind salamander found only in Texas caves), 21 birds (the whooping crane, for example, and the lesser prairie chicken), 26 mammals (including the black-footed ferret and the swift fox), 33 fishes (sturgeon, minnows, darters, shiners, and chubs), 41 snails and mussels, 57 spiders and insects (including the so-called superb grasshopper, also from Texas), and well over 200 kinds of plants (the blowout penstemon, for example, found only on active sand dunes, and the delicate prairie fringed orchids, among many others).
One species that is conspicuously absent from this disheartening roster is the black-tailed prairie dog, though it also deserves mention. After initially declaring the species “endangered but precluded” from listing because of other priorities, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service changed its mind in 2007. The prairie dog is no longer a candidate for listing. Meanwhile, their plight continues to affect dozens of other species that are specialized to live in and around prairie-dog towns, including such vulnerable birds as the mountain plover, ferruginous hawk, and burrowing owl.
Species that are habitat specialists, rather than generalists, are at elevated risk of extinction because they are not well equipped for change. If their habitat vanishes, they are finished. It is therefore not surprising that most of the species at risk, about 70 percent, are endemics. These are organisms with unique adaptations to unique habitats. The narrower the specialization, the more vulnerable a species is to becoming rare and ultimately going extinct. For this reason, the Edwards Plateau of Texas, which has more than its share of unusual organisms, is also a zone of endangerment.
Monarch butterfly, at risk
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Growing Conservation
The importance of protecting the surviving horizons of native grassland can scarcely be overstated. But it is not the only urgent priority for prairie conservation. To borrow again from Aldo Leopold, relegating wild prairie to the western rangelands is like relegating happiness to heaven; one may never get there to enjoy it. Meanwhile, there are other pleasures. The parts of the country that have been altered by farming still shimmer with life. Roadsides are heady with wild roses; geese explode out of farmers’ fields; pretty little deer mice patter around barns and granaries. Although farmland is not prairie, it nonetheless provides habitat for many species of native animals and plants. Sometimes these farmyard populations are all that is left, remnants of a world that has otherwise vanished.
Take the case of the tallgrass prairie. Apart from a relatively small enclave in the Flint Hills and Osage Plains of Kansas and Oklahoma (where the soil is too rocky to till), this ecoregion has been almost 100 percent converted to crop production. We’re talking about the row-after-row-after-row-ness of the Corn Belt. All that remains of the native vegetation are small, isolated patches that somehow escaped the plow, leaving a tantalizing glimpse of a country alight with butterflies and bright with flowers. Although some of these fragments are smaller than backyard gardens, each one demands attention and care as a unique example of a critically imperiled ecosystem. (Because of local variations in growing conditions and through pure chance, no two remnants have exactly the same species in the same proportions.) Through the combined initiatives of national and local organizations, many of these prairie remnants are now protected by law and are intensively managed to prevent the incursion of woody invasives and other takeover artists. Similar rescue efforts have also begun in the mixed-grass ecoregions.
These islands of survival provide critical habitat for many species at risk: the dickcissel, the regal fritillary butterfly, the ornate box turtle, the prairie rattlesnake, and on and on. But, alas, these small, isolated populations remain under constant threat. If some misfortune befalls them—whether through disease or predation or drought—there are no neighboring populations to move in and replace them, with the result that a single disastrous season could wipe them out. The only possible solution is, wherever possible, to create blocks of habitat large enough to support viable populations or to provide corridors between the existing fragments. Hence, the current lively interest in prairie restoration. Going against the historical trend of plowing prairie up, conservation-minded people have begun to replant it. This has called for innovation in both equipment and techniques and has sparked the development of a native-seed industry. Creating new prairie is tricky, expensive and, in terms of species richness, never a complete success, but it is an inspiring step in the right direction.
Regal fritillary butterfly, at risk
Plains wolf, extirpated
The cause of prairie restoration has found some unexpected advocates, among them the Iowa Department of Transportation. Iowa is farming country taken to the extreme, with only scant vestiges of native prairie. What the state does have, however, is a go-anywhere grid of roads, all of which have vegetated verges. Taken together, these strips add up to about half a million acres (roughly 2,000 square kilometers) of unproductive land that requires mowing, spraying, and other regular maintenance. In an attempt to reduce costs in the late 1980s, the transportation authorities began to experiment with the use of native plants, on the assumption that they were adapted to local conditions and could look after themselves. Since then, more than 50,000 acres (20,000 hectares) of roadside have been seeded, a little more every year, to either a four-grass mixture—typically big and little bluestem, sideoats grama, and Indian grass—or to a colorful assortment of native grasses and wildflowers.
The results have exceeded all expectations. In addition to controlling expenses, the flower-rich plantings in particular have become slender oases of life, blooming not only with flowers but also with butterflies. In one case, for example, researchers found five times as many butterflies and twice as many species in the high-quality restorations as in comparable grassy or weedy ditches. This success has inspired the Iowa Transportation Commission to pump millions of dollars into the Living Roadways Program, making the state a leader in what it calls “Eco-Logical transportation.”
Big bluestem pushes up through a profusion of goldenrod and other wild flowers in a prairie-restoration project in western Illinois.
The New Green Revolution
The thought that corridors of prairie might one day run along roads and highways across the Great Plains is cheerful to contemplate. But even if it eventually happens, it will not be enough: life cannot be relegated to the margins. In areas devoted to farming, the working landscape is an ecoregion all its own, where there is a great deal more at stake than crop production. Admittedly, cultivated land provides less-than-ideal habitat for many organisms, notably for those that cannot cope with chronic disruption. Yet for species that have been able to make the transition to the agroecosystem, farmland is home, and what happens there is critical to their survival.
Ferruginous hawk, at risk
The acceptance of conservation as an everyday aspect of farming practice has been halting. On the plus side, thanks to the object lessons of the Dirty Thirties and the 1980s drought, the importance of
soil conservation is now well established and has been widely translated into both policy and action. On the debit side, however, conservation of wildlife habitat is often a hard sell. Sometimes producers resist as a matter of principle. Having devoted their efforts to producing food to feed a hungry world, they argue that leaving space “idle” for wildlife is a misuse of productive potential. But while this position would have been irresistible in the 1960s, when an exploding human population faced a net shortage of food, it is no longer convincing. In the intervening decades, a complex suite of developments, some of them halfway around the world, have opened up new and more hopeful options for prairie agriculture. The achievements of the world’s farmers since World War ii have been stunning. Between 1950 and 1992, for example, world grain production increased by 170 percent, with only a 1 percent expansion of the area under cultivation. Although many people still go hungry, there is more than enough food available to feed everyone on Earth, a situation that is expected to persist well into the future. This triumph has come about as the result of a no-holds-barred commitment to maximizing production, known colloquially as the Green Revolution. Sparked by an Iowa-born scientist named Norman Borlaug, who won a Nobel Prize in 1970 for his work, the revolution was based on the development of high-yield varieties of wheat and corn. And yield they did, provided that they were supplied with ample stores of nitrogen, from artificial fertilizer, and abundant water, typically from irrigation.
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