Essay | Can We Save Vanishing Grasslands?

Editor's note: This is the latest article in an occasional series on how national parks might serve as an impediment to the sixth mass extinction.

Once upon a time in the Midwest, almost a century ago, there was talk of creating a "Great Plains National Monument" that would preserve a slice of grasslands that once dominated the nation's heartland. It could have been a place where bison roamed, prairie dogs prospered, and Western meadowlarks greeted the sunrise with their melodious song.

The idea of such a place can be traced to the 1830s, when George Catlin went West from his Pennsylvania home and fell in love with the landscape and its native cultures. He wrote of the need to create "a magnificent park, where the world could see for ages to come, the native Indian in his classic attire, galloping his wild horse, with sinewy bow, and shield and lance, amid the fleeting herds of elks and buffaloes.”

Catlin was being overly patriarchal, racist in his view of the native cultures say some, and certainly blind to the young nation's expansion and evolution. But the idea of preserving this vignette of wild America was not fleeting.

By the 1930s, the National Park Service was considering the possibility of carving a national park out of the Great Plains to preserve it before it was gone. Debate ensued as to whether South Dakota or Nebraska would offer a better location for such a concept, but before serious discussions could get underway World War II broke out and the idea was put on the back burner.

It moved to the front burner in the 1960s, when the congressional delegation from Kansas urged the U.S. Senate to create a "Prairie National Park" in their state. The delegation envisioned herds of bison and swift-running antelope crossing the landscape. Prairie chickens could thrive in the protected grasslands, along with quail and other native wildlife and plantlife.

But then, as now, local fears of losing control over the lands led to the project again being mothballed.

Good ideas, though, are hard to entirely dismiss. In 1995, the National Park Service again took a shot at creating such a park, this time considering a "Niobrara Buffalo-Prairie National Park" in Nebraska. A study, called for in the Niobrara Scenic River Designation Act of 1991, found merit in the idea.

That report "identified many significant natural, cultural, and recreational resources throughout the study area that were worthy of increased protection."

However, when the report was forwarded to Congress in July 1995, it carried no recommendation from the National Park Service. That was unfortunate, as those who looked into the idea had found a suitable 138,000-acre landscape along the Niobrara River in Nebraska that contained mixed-grass prairie, tallgrass prairie, and hardwood and pine forests.

Several years ago the idea materialized once again, though. This time a Nebraska man proposed a larger "Great Plains National Park" that would range from Valentine, Nebraska, through the Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge, and downriver another 29 miles. As something of a bonus, this park would touch the 60,000-acre Niobrara Valley Preserve managed by The Nature Conservancy and which is home to a bison herd.

Though Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve was added to the National Park System in 1996, it encompasses a little less than 11,000 acres in Kansas.

While the United States so far has lagged in creating a "national park" to protect, preserve, and showcase the value of grasslands and the history surrounding them, Canada hasn't. Back in 1988 the country created the quarter-million-acre Grasslands National Park in Saskatchewan "to conserve, protect and present to Canadians a portion of this country's mixed-grass prairie." Along with protecting cultural sites as well as archaeological and paleontological resources, the park has enabled some endangered plant species to thrive.

"A visit to the park and region -- with its scenic vistas of prairie, valleys and badlands, wildlife and plants, endangered species, Aboriginal and ranching heritage, and dark night skies can offer a life-changing experience," reads the park's 2010 management plan. "People will come to the park to witness these for many reasons - to explore, recreate, learn, and/or relax."

While the idea for a similarly sprawling national park in the United States so far has failed to gain traction, there now is a call to "restore America's most endangered ecosystems -- our prairies and grasslands." The call is more than timely, as the United States' population growth and urbanization, along with the impacts of climate change, are stressing species, particularly those listed as either threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

In a collaborative Op-Ed written for The Hill, leaders of the National Wildlife Federation, Pheasants Forever & Quail Forever, the National Wild Turkey Federation, the Congressional Sportsmen's Foundation, and the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership urged Congress to not let the moment pass.

Only fragments of our once vast prairies remain supporting the wildlife that captured the imaginations of early Americans. The grazing lands that have sustained generations of ranchers are dwindling and species from pronghorn and elk to teal and pheasants are struggling to navigate places they used to call home.

On behalf of five of America's largest conservation organizations and our millions of members, we call for bipartisan solutions to the crisis facing our native grasslands, including passage of a new North American Grasslands Conservation Act. This would invest in conserving and restoring our native grasslands for ranchers, wildlife, and future generations.

There are grasslands in this country, but they are shrinking, being turned into industrial agricultural complexes, subdivided into housing tracts, and paved over. Once upon a time in America it was thought that 150 million acres of the central swath of the country was constituted by tallgrass prairie. Today, though, that ecosystem has dwindled to about 4 percent of its original size.

There are remnants you can see. 

While researching a book on bison, I drove across landscapes that once boasted grasslands as far as the eye could see. The Thunder Basin National Grasslands in Wyoming still protects, to a degree, those natural shortgrass prairies. During stops I listened to Meadowlarks and fox sparrows, and no doubt if I spent more time looking I likely would have seen burrowing owls and probably badgers and fox.

Visit north-central Montana and you can find the sprawling aspiration of the American Prairie Reserve, a nonprofit endeavor that seeks to create a quilt of 3.5 million public and private acres that could rekindle and protect the "least protected biome on Earth," the grasslands. The working concept is to turn the calendar back on these lands, to return bison herds and other native species, plant and animal, to heal this remnanent grassland ecosystem.

It's not just a romantic wish, but one that could benefit native species and perhaps help slow the sixth mass extinction. Don't think such an effort is necessary? A recent story from National Geographic's news service pointed out that "(A)ll across Europe, species are disappearing, nowhere faster than on agricultural lands. Since 1990, the populations of common farmland birds and grassland butterflies, for example, have dropped by more than a third. ... Rural havens for wildlife -- hedgerows, swamps, meadows, even rock walls -- have been removed to expand cropland."

Assets that should be added to any U.S. grasslands that are preserved are bison, a hardy, iconic species -- the national mammal -- that has called grasslands home for thousands of years. And by returning bison to these places, you encourage other species -- animals and plants -- to come back home. Purple needlegrass, switchgrass, and big bluestem were among the many plant varieties that could be found across the tallgrass prairie.

Lots of books cross my desk, and one that caught my eye was the 2nd edition of Facing Extinction, The World's Rarest Birds and the Race to Save Them. Within its pages is an example of the value bison bring to the landscape for other species. In a section discussing the American Curlew and its northward return migration to the Arctic, the authors noted that:

"Instead of migrating directly to the breeding grounds, they stopped off at regular staging points in the Great Plains, particularly in recently burned areas and areas disturbed by American bison, where they fed on a range of insects, particularly the eggs and young of locusts."

Bison are nature's rototillers. Their grazing habits and hooves turn over the land in places, revealing the many insects that live in the grasses and soils. That behavior, another recent study claimed, also is responsible for the return of "little barley and other small-seeded native plants..."

"Prairies have been ignored as possible sites for plant domestication, largely because the disturbed, biodiverse tallgrass prairies created by bison have only been recreated in the past three decades after a century of extinction," said Natalie Mueller, assistant professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Recent reintroductions of bison to tallgrass prairies have allowed ecologists to study the effects of their grazing on this ecosystem for the first time. Like rivers and humans, bison create early successional habitats for annual forbs and grasses, including the progenitors of eastern North American crops, within tallgrass prairies.

As the "30 by 30" drive accelerates, to preserve 30 percent of the planet for nature by 2030, protecting a large expanse of short- and tallgrass prairie would be a huge victory for nature, and for the country, giving flora and fauna places to expand into and human visitors open spaces to explore and rejuvenate in.

Already federal lands offer a measure of protection. Look at maps of the landscape and you can begin to see where possibilities exist to further protect and balance the ecological processes of grasslands by bringing back native species, such as bison. Buffalo Gap National Grassland in South Dakota borders Oglala National Grassland in Nebraska, wraps much of Badlands National Park, and isn’t far from both Wind Cave National Park and Black Hills National Forest, which also is adjacent to Custer State Park. Together those areas contain 2.25-million acres.

Look to North Dakota and you’ll find that the million-acre Little Missouri National Grassland, the largest of the national grasslands, actually encircles Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Stitching some of these grasslands to national park lands could protect a lot of grasslands.

And of course there was the "Buffalo Commons" proposal that gained attention in the 1980s. Under it, a large swath of the Midwest would be protected from development and the landscape and its native flora and fauna allowed to recover to its natural design.

But many, if not all, of the 20 national grasslands managed by the U.S. Forest Service have grazing leases for cattle operations, leases that would not easily be phased out. But that doesn't need to happen to protect shortgrass and tallgrass prairie, Whit Fosburgh, president and CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership told me.

Fosburgh said the idea of creating a national park to protect these grasslands could be an option, "but it's got to be far broader than that. A lot of the grasslands are private lands, and so they're you're trying to incentivize private landowners to protect or restore grasslands."

"You look at a place like the Dakotas, states like that, Kansas, that don't have a ton of public lands, it's up to the private landowners to do it," he continued. "There obviously are some areas, if you want to go to Montana, the prairie reserve, something like that could be set up in some permanent protection scheme. But I think by and large you're probably talking more about private landowners, how to incentivize them, because that's where the losses are coming. The losses aren't coming on federal lands, they're coming on private lands."

At the same time, invasive species and overgrazing can impair public lands, said Fosburgh.

In their Op-Ed, Fosburgh and his colleagues said Congress should adopt a North American Grasslands Conservation Act. "This would invest in conserving and restoring our native grasslands for ranchers, wildlife, and future generations," they wrote. "Policymakers should act now to support working grasslands and help stem the tide of habitat loss, fragmentation, and degradation. That includes ensuring that the Conservation Reserve Program is fully enrolled and providing sufficient incentives to make it worthwhile for landowners."

At the end of the day, preserving grasslands is an investment in the country and in nature. Such a movement could benefit the swift fox and black-footed ferrets, mountain plovers, greater sage-grouse and other plant and animal species that are being forced off the landscape, and it could help in the Interior Department's efforts to restore bison to places on the public landscape where they can thrive.

And it would benefit us as we seek places to avoid the phone, the Internet, and the stress that can overwhelm us.

Previous essays in this series:

Essay | National Parks As An Impediment To The Sixth Mass Extinction

Essay | What's Gone From The Parks?

National park landscapes are some of the most biologically diverse in the United States, but they are not immune from degradation. Many parks and lands worthy of national park designation are being hemmed in by development and resource extraction and adversely affected by the changing climate. These are some of the battlegrounds that are key to nature’s future. National Parks Traveler will continue to explore the role parks and protected areas can play in slowing the sixth mass extinction, and welcomes essays that address this topic. Please contact us with your ideas.

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