Our mission is to create the largest nature reserve in the continental United States, a refuge for people and wildlife preserved forever as part of America’s heritage.
STAFF CONTRIBUTORS
Becky Lonardo, Editor and Creative Director
Travis Campbell, Graphic Designer
Lars Anderson
Damien Austin
Alison Fox
Seth Hawkins Scott Heidebrink
Daniel Kinka
Janna Long
David Nolt
Ellie Oakley
NATIONAL BOARD OF DIRECTORS
George E. Matelich, Chair
Gib Myers, Vice Chair
Keith Anderson, Treasurer
Jay Abbe
Clyde Aspevig
David A. Coulter
Steven N. Cousins
Alison Fox
Sean Gerrity
Liliane A. Haub
Tim Kelly
Jacqueline B. Mars
Susan Matelich
Karen Petersen Mehra
Nancy S. Mueller
Susan Myers
Roland Parrish
Will Price
Jeffrey Talpins
Mara Talpins
COVER PHOTO by Dennis Lingohr
INSIDE PHOTO by Reid Morth
A NOTE FROM ALISON FOX
The spirit of collaboration is evident in just about everything we do at American Prairie Reserve. A dedication to teamwork is etched into our organizational values, and nearly everything we’ve accomplished toward our mission has been done through cooperative hard work. From donors and institutional partners to government agencies and the communities surrounding the Reserve, our vision of a publicly accessible, expansive, and fully intact prairie ecosystem implores us to work together with those who love this place like we do.
In many ways, the past year has exemplified this shared approach to conservation.
As a National Geographic Last Wild Places partner, American Prairie Reserve will benefit from cutting-edge technology and innovative conservation solutions to support our work in the years ahead. Likewise, our collaboration with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute is providing a deeper understanding of the prairie’s flora and fauna to guide us as we manage this immense landscape for species both large and small.
And in the community of Lewistown, Montana the National Discovery Center will soon serve as a global gathering place to celebrate and learn about the prairie. This exciting addition to downtown Lewistown will also contribute to the economy of central Montana, provide employment opportunities, and attract tourism to support local businesses in the region.
We are forever grateful for the efforts of everyone involved in helping the Reserve become a reality, and we look forward to continuing our work together.
As with all our efforts, we will look to the prairie to teach and inspire us. The more we understand about this amazing ecosystem, the more we realize the intricate synergy involved in a fully functioning prairie. Its health requires a vast network of species and natural systems working together for the benefit of all. What a fitting guide for our shared mission.
Alison Fox, CEO
American Prairie Reserve is pleased to announce the purchase of the Blue Ridge Ranch, located approximately 45 miles southeast of Malta in southern Phillips County, Montana. The 14,122-acre property is comprised of 9,695 deeded acres and 4,427 leased acres, and brings American Prairie Reserve’s total deeded and leased property to more than 419,000 acres.
The Blue Ridge property is nestled in the Larb Hills and shares a five-mile border with the Reserve’s Burnt Lodge unit. The acquisition expands American Prairie Reserve’s connectivity to migratory pathways for wildlife from neighboring protected areas such as the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge. It is part of APR’s mission to grow contiguous habitat area, which is essential to restoring ecosystem biodiversity on the prairie.
According to Reserve Superintendent Damien Austin, the property brings together a diverse landscape including sagebrush steppe, rocky buttes and breaks, and ponderosa pine-covered hills, offering crucial wildlife habitat for many plant and animal species.
“The topography and habitat of Blue Ridge are extremely important to the regional elk population,” said Austin. “We feel very fortunate to be able to add such a wildlife-rich area to the Reserve.”
Blue Ridge is known for its wildlife, including a resident elk herd, bighorn sheep, mule deer, pronghorn, and prairie dogs.
To date, charitable contributions have allowed the Reserve to purchase or lease more than 419,000 acres in Montana’s northern plains — one of the only remaining places on Earth where it is possible to conserve and restore temperate grasslands at an ecosystem scale.
“Thanks to the good land stewardship of indigenous peoples and conservation-minded ranchers, it is possible to preserve this ecosystem for the world,” said Alison Fox, CEO. “The Blue Ridge acquisition moves us one step closer to achieving our goal of building a refuge for people and wildlife preserved forever as part of America’s heritage.”
WATCH MORE:
americanprairie.org/ explore-blue-ridge
by
Photos
Travis Campbell and Gib Myers.
By Truly Herbert
If you’ve spent time at the Reserve, you already know its allure. You can easily conjure up the verdant grasses waving in time with the wind, the peacefulness of wideeyed pronghorn picking their skinny-legged way through the landscape, and the vast, unimaginably endless sky.
But for many around the globe, “prairie” is just a word — without ties to any recent history or particular emotion. Rarely can people love and save what they don’t know, and
perhaps that’s why prairies are disappearing at such a rapid pace.
The Northern Great Plains of the United States is one of the only remaining temperate grasslands left on the planet that can be restored to scale, and the only one in North America. That is why American Prairie Reserve’s mission of braiding together public and private lands to create a seamless prairie ecosystem in the middle of the Northern Great Plains ecoregion is so important. And
that is why the organization was recently recognized as a partner in the National Geographic Society’s Last Wild Places initiative.
A GOOD FRIEND TO THE PRAIRIE
With the ultimate aim of bolstering the health of our planet and all its inhabitants, National Geographic Society is working to help protect the few remaining wild places on Earth. The initiative means grant and technology support for American Prairie Reserve, with
Photo by Gib Myers.
A PLACE OF HOPE:
AMERICAN PRAIRIE RESERVE
the added bonus of information sharing between other Last Wild Places conservation partners.
An example of such support is the 2019 Living With Wildlife conference. Sponsored by National Geographic Society and organized by American Prairie Reserve, the conference brought together ranchers, industry experts, and agriculture producers to discuss ideas and solutions for managing wildlife interactions
while maintaining a productive livelihood.
That intersection between humans and wildlife is a hot topic in the field of global conservation as populations spike and more human-wildlife conflicts arise. One of APR’s key tenets is to work with local ranchers and Native American tribes to ensure the Reserve and border areas are models of coexistence where both humans and wildlife thrive.
SEEDING THE TECHNOLOGY GARDEN
With the constant innovations in global technology, the available methods of conservation are expanding and improving each day. Tens of thousands of data points can be collected remotely and automatically, and then interpreted through tools such as artificial intelligence, which can predict and inform the way scientists and managers do their jobs.
Photo by Gib Myers.
The Technology Garden project – another initiative attributed to the Last Wild Places partnership – holds the hope of expanding the reach of science and management across the 419,000 plus acres of the Reserve. By attaching unobtrusive and relatively inexpensive ear-tags to the Reserve’s bison, for instance, scientists receive GPS data about their movements and interactions with one another, and can monitor that information from miles or even continents away. Or, hightech camera, video, or audio devices can look out for large carnivore presence near a ranch, so Reserve staff can preempt human-wildlife conflict. And with innovations like solar batteries and other renewable energy sources, conservationists can do much more with fewer hours spent on the ground and less interference in the natural world.
The harsh conditions of the prairie are perfect proving grounds for all manner of technology. From heavy prairie snows to raucous winds to blistering sun, equipment can degrade or fail quite easily. That broad range of conditions makes American Prairie Reserve a great place for partners like National Geographic to test and improve upon equipment in order to make it durable for severe scenarios and climates around the world.
BOOTS ON THE GROUND
As a Last Wild Places partner, American Prairie Reserve is also receiving support from National Geographic Society for two science fellows – Dr. Rae WynnGrant and Dr. Daniel Kinka – who are conducting intensive work on the Reserve.
Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant is an ecologist who uses statistical modeling to determine where and how wildlife move throughout a landscape. Before her work with American Prairie Reserve, she worked with
lions in Kenya and Tanzania and bears in Yellowstone and the western Great Basin. Now she is investigating the pathways that bears, wolves, and cougars might someday take to get to and move around the Reserve, and how such movement might affect the surrounding communities.
Dr. Daniel Kinka is a wildlife ecologist and APR’s Wildlife Restoration Manager. Kinka manages the Technology Garden project, working directly with technologists at National Geographic to strategically place audio, video, and GPSmonitoring equipment throughout the Reserve.
“Especially as the Reserve acreage grows, remote technology is an essential tool for all kinds of projects,” says Kinka. “We can save time and valuable resources by remotely pinpointing exact locations of downed fences, for instance, or virtually monitoring rare or vulnerable wildlife.”
Using such tools to foster an increased awareness and love of the prairie ecosystem is just one way that American Prairie Reserve is innovating to save this precious landscape for generations to come, while making an impact on conservation efforts around the world.
READ MORE ABOUT LIVING WITH WILDLIFE: livingwithwildlife.us/resources-reading
READ MORE ABOUT LAST WILD PLACES: nationalgeographic.org/projects/ last-wild-places/
Wildlife Restoration Manager, American Prairie Reserve
National Geographic Society Fellow
by
Photo
Adam Richins.
By Dr. Hila Shamoon
This article was reprinted with permission from the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.
My name is Hila Shamoon, and I’m a landscape ecologist with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. My job is to study how different ecological processes affect ecosystems (like how a bison’s behavior changes its habitat). I’m also part conservation biologist, which means I research ways to better protect Earth’s biodiversity.
I spent the first two weeks of this past April working with colleagues at American Prairie Reserve to place GPS collars on plains bison in the grasslands of the Reserve. Before I discuss how we accomplished this, I should explain why we’re tracking this subspecies of American bison — and why it’s important to study how they move.
Imagine a grassland from a bird’seye view. Most would picture an ocean of grass, the same bland landscape as far as the eye can see. But this is far from accurate. A closer look would reveal a diverse mosaic of habitat patches that support hundreds of plant species, each adapted to its own niche within the whole.
This complex grassland system is created and maintained by variations in soil, topography (the shape of the land), climate, fire, and by animals that ecologists call “ecosystem engineers.” Ecosystem engineers are organisms that physically modify their environment in a way that provides new habitat for other species — and bison are a great example. These grassland engineers transform the land in many ways.
WHAT BISON BRING TO THE PRAIRIE
Bison create landscape heterogeneity — or landscape diversity — through grazing, trampling, and wallowing (rolling on the ground). In turn, this heterogeneity
Dr. Hila shamoon
Photos
supports hundreds of prairie species, including grassland birds. The McCown’s longspur, for example, prefers habitats with short patches of grass or bare ground, which the bison grazing and wallowing provides.
Bison were once a major ecological force on the North American Great Plains, yet they were forced to the
brink of extinction by European settlers in the 1800s. Developing restoration efforts that mimic the bison’s natural influence on grasslands is extremely difficult.
Any prairie restoration plan that aims to maximize biodiversity needs mega herbivores — or large, plant-eating animals — to engineer the habitat for native wildlife. Some
current efforts include the use of cattle in a rotational system. Moving cattle between fenced pastures, for example, mimics large-scale bison movement and prevents overgrazing. But how effectively this system replicates the relationship between bison and grasslands remains largely unknown.
Bison are adapted to the Northern Great Plains, and the other grassland species that occur here evolved alongside them. So, it makes sense that one strategy to restore grasslands is to bring back bison.
American Prairie Reserve first reintroduced bison more than a decade ago. The Bureau of Land Management granted permission to change the usage of some of the Reserve’s pastures from seasonal cattle grazing to year-round bison grazing. The Reserve made that request in anticipation that the change would allow bison to carry out their ecological role. Bison are migratory herbivores that need to move across large landscapes, and these movements are thought to have a key impact on grassland biodiversity.
Photos provided by Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.
scott
Senior Bison Restoration manager, American Prairie Reserve
The bison at American Prairie Reserve don’t currently roam free; they live in large, fenced pastures that are between 6,000 and 27,000 acres. Can they still fulfill their ecological role in a place this size? This is one of the questions we hope to answer by tracking their movement.
We also want to understand exactly how bison movement patterns relate to biodiversity. Following individual bison around day and night for an entire year will help us answer these questions. That’s where GPS collars come in.
GPS-TAGGING A BISON
Putting a collar on a bison is no small task. They are large, social animals that live in herds. When one of them is perceived to be in danger, others will come to the rescue. This makes bison handling risky, so every step must be planned to ensure the safety of the animal and of the handling crew.
First, we worked with APR’s bison management team to create a detailed protocol for bison handling. The protocols were reviewed by an animal care committee at Smithsonian, and we received the
appropriate permits to capture and GPS-tag bison. The APR team has years of experience, and they are certified to dart the animals and handle the immobilization drugs.
The next step was timing. We couldn’t work in the rain, because muddy conditions in the field make it hard to follow the allweather bison. We couldn’t work in overly warm temperatures either, because bison could overheat. And we couldn’t interfere during calving season as the female bison need stress-free time with their newborns.
When the stars finally aligned, providing the perfect field conditions within the narrow time window available to get the job done, our team was ready.
Each morning started with a safety talk. Every team member had a specific task, and we all needed to work in coordination. APR’s professional handlers would approach the herd and immobilize a bison using a dart. They would immediately radio the second vehicle, which was waiting at a safe distance. Then, the clock started ticking.
The entire procedure needed to be done within 20 minutes. It took just a few minutes for the darted bison to lie down, effectively immobilized. The bison handlers then approached the immobilized animal and moved away the curious and protective bison concerned for their companion.
The second team, myself included, was then permitted to approach. My role was to quickly place the collar around the bison’s neck, while other team members collected hair, fecal, and blood samples for health and genetics testing.
Another team member recorded everything on paper and watched the herd to alert the team if the other bison approached. The collaring and sampling took just a few minutes, and then everyone returned to the vehicles. Finally, Scott Heidebrink, APR’s Senior Bison Restoration Manager, injected the reversal drug, and the bison woke up within a few minutes and reunited with its herd.
We repeated this process until we successfully collared 16 bison, and I’m happy to report that everything went smoothly.
I spent the next few days monitoring the bison remotely via laptop, as well as through in-person trips to the field to make sure all were adapting to their new collars. Thankfully, the bison continued their usual movements with the herd.
These collars will collect data over the next year and eventually fall off on their own. Next year, I’ll return to collect the collars, so we can refurbish them and redeploy them on different bison.
This is an exciting first step in a project that I hope will go a long way not only toward understanding how bison move, but also how they fulfill an important role at the center of the prairie ecosystem.
The original version of this article can be found on the Smithsonian website at https://nationalzoo.si.edu/conservationecology-center/news/tracking-bison-acrossgrasslands-montana
Discovery around corner the
By Truly Herbert
ike many large-scale parks and protected natural areas across the globe, American Prairie Reserve (APR) will one day have a central gathering place for visitors from around the world. That place is called the National Discovery Center, and it will be located in Lewistown, Montana, just two hours outside of the Reserve’s central point. The Center will host local, regional, and national activities and programs that stir visitors to love and want to preserve the prairie and all of its inhabitants.
HOW IT BEGAN
Two of the core tenets of American Prairie Reserve are enabling public access and education.
“We aim to make the National Discovery Center an inspiring place that champions the people, wildlife, and beauty of the prairie, and that also is an important hub for Lewistown and beyond.”
The Center will be a rendezvous point for visitors going to the Reserve, a vibrant place for community building and partnership, and an important educational resource on the importance of grassland ecosystems to the health of our planet.
–Seth Hawkins
Kären
& Jay Abbe Director of the National Discovery Center
American Prairie Reserve staff spent 18 months carefully researching potential locations for the Center. They settled on the Power Mercantile Building in Lewistown due to its proximity to the Reserve, the presence of local land and wildlife management partners, and to contribute to the Lewistown economy.
Since the historic building’s purchase, the APR team has
by Gib Myers.
Photo
by
Photo
Gib Myers.
been busy solidifying plans and raising funds for the extensive renovations needed for a facility of this size. Thanks to a generous gift from Kären and Jay Abbe, the team was recently able to hire the Center’s new director, Seth Hawkins.
As Director, Seth will oversee the Center’s renovation, while also keeping local stakeholders and residents involved and informed during the process.
PROGRESS
After a nationwide search, American Prairie Reserve recently hired exhibit and museum design team Split Rock Studios from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to create a plan for various components of the National Discovery Center. Split Rock specializes in cultural and nature exhibits, and past work includes designs for the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and the Charles M. Russell Museum in Montana. Split Rock is using the extensive research and community input that the APR staff gathered over the past few years to brainstorm the space.
Though the plans are still a work in progress, the Center will include an immersive theater, exhibit hall, interactive children’s zone, a conference and event pavilion, and some American Prairie Reserve staff offices. In addition, there will
be an information desk that will help visitors plan and fully enjoy their trip to the Reserve.
In other words, imagine photography displays spanning the hallways, state-of-the-art interactive exhibits that bring
ANNOUNCING THE KEN BURNS AMERICAN HERITAGE THEATER
In honor of America’s most revered documentary filmmaker, American Prairie Reserve is thrilled to announce the naming of the National Discovery Center’s immersive theater as the Ken Burns American Heritage Theater. Mr. Burns is the award-winning documentary filmmaker famed for his iconic films about the Civil War, National Parks, jazz music, and more than 30 additional topics.
The Ken Burns American Heritage Theater will provide visitors a fantastic opportunity to get one step closer to the prairie without even stepping foot on the ground. It is anticipated that videos, films, and documentaries presented in the theater will cover topics ranging from wildlife to American history, and every topic in between.
American Prairie Reserve is excited that the activity resulting from the Center and all of its components – including the Ken Burns American Heritage Theater – will encourage patronage of local hotels, restaurants, and shops in Lewistown and the surrounding communities.
NEXT STEPS
Fundraising for the National Discovery Center has been one component of American Prairie Reserve’s Land of Legacy Campaign – a multi-faceted approach to raising funds to grow APR’s supporter base, land base, and visitor infrastructure.
Thanks to the support of generous donors, American Prairie Reserve has been able to raise more than two thirds of the funds necessary to complete the Center and open it to the public. The organization hopes to reach the fundraising goal in 2020, and plans on breaking ground on renovations once the funds are secured.
prairie wildlife to the viewer, youth summer camps and outdoor learning activities, and programs that bring to life the science, culture, and history of the region. All of this and more are in the mix.
Though an ambitious undertaking, enthusiastic donor and community support has helped make incredible progress, and it seems that the possibilities are limitless for the American Prairie Reserve National Discovery Center.
SETH HAWKINS, KÄREN & JAY ABBE DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL DISCOVERY CENTER
Seth Hawkins grew up in ranching communities in Montana and Oregon, and has spent the last 16 years creating and administering visitor centers, both domestically and internationally. He is an expert in producing unique and engaging visitor experiences, and recently moved to Lewistown from Salt Lake City, Utah. Seth is excited to return home to Montana and continue his work in such a beautiful place.
A self-described problem solver and fluent Spanish speaker, Seth studied History Teaching as an undergraduate and has a Masters in Organizational Behavior/ Business Administration. In his free time, he has participated in leadership committees with the United Way and Boy Scouts of America, and has visited and worked in countries around the world.
Seth is dedicated to building a National Discovery Center that welcomes visitors of varying backgrounds, interests, and experiences, and that inspires people from around the world to love and help protect the prairie.
Kären & Jay Abbe Director of the National Discovery Center
Traveling with Mel
By Melynda Harrison
walking along the Judith River with my son Finn and our friend, Eva. We pick up rocks, judge their shape, and continue up river to a little, rocky beach. The water is high right now, but we can still see swaths of destruction where ice dams and high water coursed through earlier in the year, part of the natural regenerative process on the North American prairie.
The Judith River dumps into the Missouri River a few miles from here. When the Corps of Discovery came through in 1805, Meriwether Lewis named it the Bighorn River. Later, William Clark renamed it in honor of his future wife, Julia (Judith) Hancock. Before that, the Crow people called it Buluhpa’ashe, which translates to “Plum River.”
In the 1880s, the area around the Judith River was home to two large
ranching operations – the DHS Ranch and the PN Ranch. We are staying in a tricked-out yurt on the PN, now owned and managed by American Prairie Reserve (APR).
I’ve been hearing about APR for over a decade and have been wanting to visit for just as long. For the last few years, my husband Henry has been making regular trips to this shortgrass prairie in central Montana to film, and now it was my chance
Photos provided by Melynda
Harrison.
to explore. We packed up the kids, our friend and two of his kiddos, a ton of food, and seven bikes. Then we caravanned to the PN on the west end of the Reserve.
When Lewis and Clark traveled across the region in 1804-1806, the prairie looked the same in a lot of ways. The Judith River, flowed into the Missouri. The landscape undulated and folded in every direction as far as the eye could see. Of course, there
were grizzly bears and bison, and more native plants. There were Native Americans who lived here or hunted in the area.
American Prairie Reserve was formed in order to save an ecosystem – one that needs some love and restoration, but is intact enough that it can still be conserved.
From APR’s website: “American Prairie Reserve represents a unique
effort to assemble a multi-millionacre nature reserve that conserves the species-rich grasslands of Montana’s legendary Great Plains for the enjoyment of future generations. When complete, an intact prairie ecosystem will span more than three million acres of private and public land, showcasing the iconic landscape that once dominated central North America and helped shape our nation’s character.”
We spend a lot of time talking to our kids about things that are going away. We visit receding glaciers, rivers threatened by mines, and climate changeaffected species of plants and animals. Visiting the Reserve is the opposite — it’s a place of renewal and regeneration. It’s a restored prairie ecosystem and reintroduced bison. It’s a future for black-footed ferrets munching on prairie dogs. We need places like
this that give us hope and provide concrete examples of successes. Sitting by the Judith River with Finn and Eva, I start to imagine what this place once looked like, and what it can look like again.
The day before, our group stayed in the Founders Hut, one of two yurts that APR rents at $125 per night for the whole facility, very affordable for a family like mine who wants to visit and play here. Eventually, there will be huts
across the Reserve, which visitors can bike, hike, or ride horses between.
We spent a couple days biking and hiking and reveling in the expanse and isolation. At first glance, the prairie appeared as swaths of sagebrush and grass, but as we picked our way up and over a small ridge overlooking the Missouri River, we started to notice cacti and delicate wildflowers.
Big pine cones from the conifers on the lee side of ridges decorated the ground. From the ridge, we saw the mighty Missouri River – a view that inspired the Lewis and Clark expedition and is now the Reserve.
It was springtime on the prairie. Meadowlarks and bluebirds kept the air alive with song. Shooting stars and phlox sprung forth in bursts of color. At the lower yurt –the John and Margaret Craighead
Hut – we awoke each morning to the screaming and honking of Canada geese. Cottonwoods, with leaves just beginning to pop in bursts of lime green, and red-breasted robins identified the season.
The season of renewal on the prairie, both metaphorically and actually, made us all feel alive. American Prairie Reserve is working to conserve one of the last intact prairie ecosystems in the world. I don’t want to idealize
it too much, but it’s exciting to think that conservation of the prairie is still possible and that it is happening right now.
This article was reprinted with permission from Traveling Mel at travelingmel.com
On a midsummer afternoon on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation, a group of Montana 4-H students bobbled in their seats during a bumpy drive across the heart of the Crasco Ranch. With the sound of songbirds greeting their arrival, the youth approached their destination and soaked in the 360-degree views of the surrounding prairie. On one horizon, cattle grazed on a lush hillside. In the other direction, a mule deer fawn bounded up from its bed and stared back at the visitors.
American Prairie Reserve Technician Teri Harper and Wild Sky Rancher Dave Crasco welcomed the 4-H Conservation Camp — which consisted of youth and volunteers from ranching families across APR’s 7-county region —
to tour the property and learn about wildlife-friendly ranching practices. After a presentation on APR’s Wild Sky ranching program, the students engaged in a dynamic Q&A session, covering topics from predator depredation to the tilling of native prairie.
After the discussion the group toured the ranch, crossing creeks, hiking up and down coulees, and eventually inspecting one of Wild Sky’s Cameras for Conservation units. As part of a rancher’s participation in the Wild Sky Program, they can elect to have trail cameras installed on their property to document wildlife. The information helps ranchers learn about wildlife movement on their properties and allows APR to provide financial incentives for ranchers who successfully document certain
wildlife species on their land. The students enjoyed learning about wildlife migration corridors and how the cameras help to guide range management for the benefit of ranchers and wildlife. This innovative practice is now being used to improve conservation efforts across the world.
The 4-H team regrouped later in the summer to learn more about tracking wildlife from APR’s Wildlife Restoration Manager Dr. Daniel Kinka. And thanks to a partnership between the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and American Prairie Reserve, the 4-Hers received six trail cameras that each of them will use to track and learn about wildlife at their ranches around the Reserve.
Kids Corner Prairie Word Search
Did you know? Pronghorn have
S
Photos by Dennis Lingohr, Gib Myers, and Wild Sky Ranch camera trap.
Pronghorn
Camera traps are used across the Reserve to take pictures of wildlife and in this case, their eyelashes!
Photos by Dennis Lingohr, Gib Myers, and Wild Sky Ranch camera trap.
A POEM BY N. SCOTT MOMADAY, PH.D.
2019 KEN BURNS AMERICAN HERITAGE PRIZE RECIPIENT
Prairie Hymn
AS MY EYES SEARCH THE PRAIRIE I FEEL THE SUMMER IN THE SPRING.
—Chippewa
On the tongue a hymnal of American names, And the silence of falling snow—Glacier, Bearpaw, Bitterroot, Wind River, Yellowstone. I dreamed among the icecaps long ago, Ranging with the sun on the inward slope, Down the wheel of seasons and the solstices To the tilted moon and cradle of the stars. There was the prairie, always reaching.
Time was sundered, and the light bore wonder. The earth broke open and I held my breath. In the far range of vision the prairie shone bright As brit on the sea, crescive and undulant. Antelope bounded and magpies sliced the air. In the middle distance grazed the dark eminence, The bestial heft on cleft hooves, the horns hooked. Oh, sacrificial victim, your heart is sacred!
The range of dawn and dusk; the continent lay out In prairie shades, in a vast carpet of color and light. In the Sun Dance I was entranced, I drew in the smoke Of ancient ice and sang of the wide ancestral land. Rain-laden clouds ringed the horizon, and the humpBacked shape sauntered and turned. Mythic deity! It became the animal representation of the sun, and In the prairie wind there was summer in the spring.
If you can’t make it to the Reserve in person, here are a few ways you can join us in spirit:
Eager by Ben Goldfarb
“There is much to learn about the myriad of species that make up a rich prairie ecosystem and it is often challenging to find a single article or book that is both enjoyable to read and takes you to a very sophisticated understanding of a keystone species like bison, prairie dogs, or beavers. But this one has it all and you won’t regret the time spent with Ben Goldfarb as he takes you through the history, surprising facts, and multifaceted importance of this fascinating animal.”
— Sean Gerrity, Founder
FEATURED PARTNER: STIO
Last Bus to Wisdom by Ivan Doig
“Last Bus to Wisdom is a light-hearted story told from the vantage point of an 11-year old boy. It felt like reading Where the Red Fern Grows, where the reader gets to experience life from a different angle. The added bonus is picturing the Montana landscapes and pageantry of the people he encounters along the way.”
— Anne Dartman, Ken Burns American Heritage Prize Specialist
Stio was founded to inspire a connection with the outdoors through beautiful, functional products. While Stio draws inspiration from Wyoming’s mountain life, American Prairie Reserve’s vast landscape and rich biodiversity captured the Stio team’s imagination. Stio is proud to partner with American Prairie Reserve and to directly support APR’s efforts by designing a co-branded collection built for life on the remote and rugged grasslands of the American West.
Check out the newest designs at stio.com
Use promo code APR20 to get 20% off all American Prairie Reserve Stio products through 12/31/19.
Yellow Wolf: His Own Story by Lucullus
Virgil McWhorter
“This is a firsthand account of the Nez Perce people and their travels when they were forced from their homelands in central Idaho during the summer of 1877 and made their long and difficult journey through western Montana, Yellowstone Park, north across the Missouri River and through the Reserve area before their final battle in the Bear Paw Mountains. I’ve been to the battlefield in the Bear Paws (short 45 minute drive from APR’s White Rock unit) several times. Very special and sad place.”
— Dan Stevenson, Safety Manager
a monthly sustaining donor and take an
and
NEW: Active monthly donors giving $10 a month or more in the current calendar year will receive an American Prairie Reserve desktop calendar for the following year! Visit americanprairie.org/give to make your gift today!
