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"Serving our Youth, Protecting our Prairie Earth"
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December 2009
www.gprc.org
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Dear Friend of Great Plains Restoration Council,
It's funny how prairie animals teach us to love and take care. Three years ago we successfully reintroduced a few native bison into the Fort Worth Prairie Park. They are allowed to live entirely as native wildlife. It was the first time in 150 years that their wild hooves had thundered in this tallgrass prairie, and it shook our souls with excitement.
The Fort Worth Prairie ecosystem is so rare only a few sizeable tracts of original native prairie remain. Since the reintroduction, these buffalo have reverted back to their ancestral herd culture and behavior, and have gotten to work quickly in managing the native prairie.
"Young
bull bison after reintroduction into the Fort Worth Prairie Park,now
living entirely as native wildlife within the parameters of the Prairie
Park. For the first time in 150 years, wild buffalo hooves shook this
tallgrass prairie. He is of a rare, non-hybridized genetic strain."
"New buffalo wallow on Fort Worth Prairie Park; first time in 150 years."
They've created micro-ecosystems through their new wallows, have designed trails and grass openings that are used by other wildlife, used their horns to take down small mesquites, and stationed rubbing posts around the prairie where their wool rubs off, which in turn has helped grassland nesting birds as well as the rodent understory pad their nests and increase survival rate.
GPRC youth and staff, as well as the larger community, have found hope through participating in this story of renewal. Even though times have been rough, and there is much worry about the long-term health of our planet, active work now shows that we can build that culture of caring.
Your involvement and financial support makes the difference, and we hope you will consider making a donation to Great Plains Restoration Council to allow us to continue this important work.
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2009 successes of Great Plains Restoration
Council:
- Texas Parks and Wildlife
has joined the effort in helping GPRC permanently protect this rare
Fort Worth Prairie ecosystem refuge.
- In August, the editorial board
of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, a 100-year old institution,
officially endorsed the Prairie Park:
"Fort Worth Prairie Park Must Be Saved" http://www.star-telegram.com/242/story/1558540.html
- GPRC youth worked on a
native prairie restoration project for the pipeline cut. We carefully
designed the seed mixtures, and only locally sourced native seeds were
used. This restoration is ongoing.
- GPRC's
Plains Youth InterACTION youth leaders attended the
historic "Breaking the Color Barrier in the Great American Outdoors" http://www.breakingthecolorbarrier.com conference held in Atlanta, and spoke before
senior officials of the Obama Administration as well as interfaced
with ecological youth leaders from around the country.
- Texas Christian University
(TCU) began a botanic inventory of the native plants species richness
at the Fort Worth Prairie Park. 700 different native species are
said to thrive in this prairie Eden.
- Seed from the Fort Worth
Prairie Park's unique "Prairie Barrens" area was collected
for the living green roof being designed for the new $47 million Botanic
Research Institute of Texas (BRIT) http://www.brit.org complex.
- The 4,600 acre Oglala Prairie
Preserve in South Dakota, with 6.5 miles frontage directly adjacent
to Badlands National Park, has now moved into the legislative
package in Washington, D.C. Up next is the boundary expansion
and then funds allocation for Badlands National Park to formally merge
this important prairie dog/bison/black-footed ferret mixed-grass prairie
habitat into the Park. The Oglala Prairie
Preserve is a joint project between Great Plains Restoration Council
and Wildlands Restoration Corporation, and saved this sensitive
4,600 acres right alongside a National Park from being bought by a prairie
dog killing club.
- GPRC has almost completed
its year-long restructuring. All of our ecological work is now
innovatively being done through our two social work programs
Plains Youth InterACTION, and our new, soon-to-commence
Restoration Not Incarceration. This is allowing GPRC to cleanly
focus on our core strengths
and help youth heal themselves through healing the prairie at the
same time. GPRC is building a network of licensed social workers and
restoration ecologists.
- Plains Youth InterACTION,
begun in 2002 on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and
run entirely by Oglala Lakota tribal members, operated jointly for
the past two years with Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation http://www.thundervalley.org. They completed ecological health trainings,
sacred sites work, youth empowerment work, and secured funding to begin
design and construction of their brand-new green community. The
merged program has been so successful that Thunder Valley is now
able to operate on its own, and has spun off to become free-standing.
- After working in South Dakota for 7 years, GPRC is now able to focus
solely on the Southern Plains, our area of greatest need.
- GPRC has expanded into
Houston, central to the original Coastal Prairie, so that Fort Worth
and Houston can become sister-cites in Ecological Health.
- Begun groundwork and secured
seed money for our new Restoration Not Incarceration program,
which will be designed out of the successful practices and principles
of Plains Youth InterACTION and will allow GPRC to serve a vastly
expanded number of young people and restore and protect a vastly
larger amount of endangered native prairie, particularly the
almost extinct Coastal Prairie. Harris County expects GPRC to scale
up to the point of being able to enroll 1,000 temporarily incarcerated
individuals and probationers in Restoration Not Incarceration, thereby
reducing recidivism, improving life outcomes, and providing new refuge
for stricken prairie wildlife.
- Formed a formal partnership
with Katy Prairie Conservancy. http://www.katyprairie.org
- In the last six
weeks, seed grants approved to GPRC for Restoration Not Incarceration
include $75,000 from Houston Endowment, $30,000 from Banner Foundation,
$5,000 from Powell Foundation, $7,000 from Trull Foundation, and $5,000
from Hershey Foundation, bringing RNI more than1/3 of the way toward
2010 financial goals necessary for Phase I and Phase II completion.
- Southern High Plains
Preserve: GPRC is in discussions with the Wind River Ranch, an
existing 5,000 acre preserve in northeastern New Mexico, and
The Wildlands Network http://www.wildlandsnetwork.org which comprises some of the top conservation
biologists in the world, to work together toward growing that
preserve to at least 100,000 acres, and perhaps eventually 10x that size.
- Upon proper funding, GPRC
will expand Plains Youth InterACTION and Restoration
Not Incarceration into New Mexico, thereby providing
the Ecological Health stability and guidance for struggling local young
people in the northeastern New Mexico communities (as well as urban
Albuquerque in central New Mexico) to help themselves through helping
recover the ancient shortgrass buffalo and prairie dog plains. GPRC,
Wind River, and The Wildlands Network are planning a summer 2010
Youth Summit to be held on Wind River. www.windriverranch.org
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This work has occurred because of
your generous support, for which we are immensely grateful.
Please help us continue toward that
time of health, peace and renewal by considering a donation to Great
Plains Restoration Council today. Your tax-deductible gift goes straight
to our important work.
http://www.gprc.org/makeadonation.html
Thank you very much for caring
- from all of us out here in the land of sun, wind, grass and blue
sky. May you be blessed in all ways in 2010.
Best Holiday Wishes from
the Staff and Board of Great Plains Restoration Council!
Please
also pass this email on to any of your friends and family. If you've
already given recently, or if you've already received a version of this
year-end wrap up and appeal in the mail, we want to say THANK YOU.
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| "Restoring prairies helps fight climate change!" |
Photographer Sandy Nervig, a long-time supporter of GPRC and advocate for prairie wildlife, is offering for sale a beautiful new 2010 Wildlife of the Great Plains calendar, including pictures of prairie dogs on 3 months of the year! Here is the link: http://growingideas.tv/store.htm
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