#Prairie

[julesofnature]

I should be glad if all the meadows on the earth were left in a wild state, if that were the consequence of men's beginning to redeem themselves. ~ Henry David Thoreau

[funkybunkymalunky-blog]

Psittacos on the prairie

Thats enough animations for a bit I been in a chair far too long

[spiritofthemountainnaturephoto]

Pronghorn fawn season is soonnn I cannot wait to see the tiny speedsters

[rebeccathenaturalist]

Well, I meant to do more posting, but on Sunday morning my Pixel phone gave me the dreaded green screen of death, which apparently is a flaw involving an inability to discharge static? Anyway, it took me most of the day to troubleshoot the phone only to have the screen completely die. Thankfully I had my old phone with me which has been riding around with wifi and data turned off since last summer, so I had to put it on wifi, let it spend two hours catching up on software updates, and then swap the SIM card into it so I would have a somewhat functional phone for the drive home to Oregon. There will be a new Pixel waiting for me when I get there since this one was still under warranty, but for now my reliable old Samsung is back in temporary service.

Which is good, because yesterday I made sure to have my customary hike at Konza Prairie. I haven't actually been there during burn season before, so I got to see several prescribed burns around the area, to include adjacent to the trailhead. I was also fortunate enough to get to see the progress in sections of Konza that were previously burned, with a significant increase in wildflower growth. And the spring green-up made for some seriously pretty scenery along the way, as did stands of last year's grasses. I really want to be spending more time down in the oaks as well, but since they're the last section of the hike I'm often hurrying to get back to the car; I owe them more attention in the future.

So now my partner (who I picked up at the KCI airport last night) and I are driving around Kansas City getting info about The Everyday Naturalist to bookstores before heading out west toward Denver. We'll see how far we get tonight.

[rosechata]

Sweeping prairies and endless skies

[roadtrippinlilly]

Spring Time Grazing On The Prairies of Oklahoma.

Source Me laf@ilyF ❤️

[reasonsforhope]

"A tribal-led nonprofit is creating a network of native bison ranchers that are restoring ecosystems on the Great Plains, restoring native ranchers’ connections with their ancestral land, and restoring the native diet that their ancestors relied on.

Called the Tanka Fund, they coordinate donors and partners to help ranchers secure grazing land access, funds needed to install and repair fencing, increase their herd sizes, and access markets for bison meat across the country.

That’s the human part of the story. But as Dawn Sherman, executive director of the Tanka Fund, told Native Sun News, they’re “buffalo people” and these four-legged, 2,000 lbs. “cousins” are equal-part-protagonists.

The return of the bison means the return of the prairie, one of the three great grassland ecosystems on the planet, of which just 1% remains as it was when the Mayflower arrived.

“Bringing buffalo back to their ancestral homelands is essential to restoring the ecosystem. We know that the buffalo is a keystone species,” said Dawn Sherman, a member of the Lakota, Delaware, Shawnee, and Cree.

“Bringing the buffalo back to the land and to our people, helps restore the ecosystem and everything it supports from the animals to the plants to the people. It’s come full circle. That’s how we see it.”

As Sherman and the Tanka Fund help native ranchers grow their operations, everyone is well aware of the power of the bison to transform the environment: just as nations across Europe are, who are reintroducing wood bison to various ecosystems, for all the same reasons.

Sherman points out the variety of ways in which buffalo anchor the prairie ecosystem. The almost-extinct black-footed ferret, she points out, lived symbiotically with the bison, and with the latter gone, the former followed—nearly.

The long-billed curlew uses bison dung as a disguise to hide nests from predators. Deer, pronghorn antelope, and elk all rely on bison to plow through deep snows and uncover the grasses that these smaller animals can’t reach.

Everywhere the bison hurls its massive body, life springs in the beast’s wake. When bison roll about on the plains, it creates depressions known as wallows. These fill with rainwater and create enormous puddles where amphibians and insects thrive and reproduce. Certain plants evolved to grow in the wet conditions of the wallows which Native Americans harvested for food and medicine.

Native plants evolved under the trampling hooves of millions of bison, and that constant tamping down of the Earth is a key necessity in the spreading of native wildflower seed.

Indeed, Sherman says some of these native ranchers are bringing bison onto lands still visibly affected by the Dust Bowl, and already the animals are acting like a giant wooly cure-all for the land’s ills.

Since 2020, the Tanka Fund, in partnership with the Inter-Tribal Buffalo Council and the Nature Conservancy, has overseen the transfer of 2,300 bison from Nature Conservancy reserves to lands managed by ranchers within the Tanka Fund network.

“[T]he more animals that we can get the more of that prairie we can restore,” said Sherman. “We can help restore the land that has been plowed and has been leased out to cattle ranchers.”"

-Article via Good News Network, February 13, 2025. Video via Tanka Fund, July 17, 2024.

[spinus-pinus]

Eastern Meadowlark Sturnella magna

5/10/2022 Kissimmee Prairie Preserve, Florida

[thefinalcrownofthorns]

abandoned grain elevator, highway 195 through the palouse in wa. // dec. 2024

[3leftsandaright]

[gothictravelguide]

Winter Lace

Lawrence, Kansas

[annapolisrose]

Saskatchewan prairie views.

[prairiedeath]

[futuredeadgirlfriend]

[rosechata]

Warm winter tones

[plains-flora]

july 4, 2022