Pierre and Calvin's first ever work trip to Santa Fe County, New Mexico, as Great Plains Restoration Council's two top Restoration Not Incarceration™ achievers, went very well.

The main newspaper of Santa Fe, the Santa Fe New Mexican, published a nice feature, "Program gives participants a chance to rebuild lives while restoring prairie lands".

Constructing a new prairie dog town on the northern rim of the Galisteo Basin Preserve

Differences are stark between the tallgrass Gulf Coast Prairie in and around Houston, and high and dry shortgrass plains/desert grasslands against the Southern Rocky Mountains in New Mexico, yet Great Plains Restoration Council's Houston-based RNI Crew knows how to easily adapt their learned prairie restoration tools and Ecological Health practices and principles to the local ecosystem. That's what makes restoration work and Ecological Heath so powerful.

Cesar Monjito, who lives in Santa Fe and performs our heavy equipment operations, augured the large nest box holes and smaller starter tunnels on each side using a Bobcat and two different size bits.

Calvin, Pierre and Jarid worked in the dirt to install the nesting boxes & tubes and fill in and finish out each burrow, and Paula, the Prairie Dog Grasslands Coordinator, assisted and guided with all of the above.

The weather was very dry and windy, and the blowing dirt and dust raked the crew's eyes, lips and skin but  - as plainsmen do -- they adjusted to harsh, ever-changing elements.

Each day the crew worked outside till sundown, and by the end of the trip, the beginning of the first prairie dog town on the northern rim of the Galisteo Basin Preserve to exist since extermination days was emerging, ready for its first prairie dog release next spring.

See photos from the trip below.

Sunset over the Cerillos hills.

Jarid, Calvin and Pierre on the Galisteo Basin Preserve.

Installing the starter runnels on the new Gunnison's prairie dog town.

Calvin finishing out the nest box chamber of a reintroduction burrow system for Gunnison's prairie dogs (on a windy, dust-blown day!)

Calvin and Pierre with Cesar Monjito, our heavy equipment operator.

"We do our work well."

Building prairie dog nest boxes (Pierre, Paula and Pierre pictured.)

Calvin and Pierre being interviewed by Staci Matlock, reporter for the Santa Fe New Mexican.

In downtown Albuquerque, on the way home, with a job well done behind them.

City of Santa Fe, New Mexico.

This constructed reintroduction system has been developed and designed by biologists to aid maximum survival rate of reintroduced wild prairie dogs, who are highly sensitive. Also, all constructed tunnel systems were capped so no small wildlife might enter over the winter. (This high elevation shortgrass prairie desert grassland ecotone is prone to (and adapted to) drought, and was included in the large American drought this year. The land continues to recover from decades of livestock grazing pressure. Everybody is hoping for a good monsoon season next year.)

Gunnison's prairie dogs, the prairie dog species native to that elevation range at the western edge of the Southern High Plains and foothills of the Southern Rocky Mountains, meet all 5 criteria of the Endangered Species Act, as do black-tailed prairie dogs who formally used to live on the grasslands just to the east. Both are highly endangered, are critical to what's left of the sea of life that the Great Plains used to be, but are afforded no federal protections. Private efforts lead the way. 

Calvin and Pierre also got to experience the City of Santa Fe, which at 7,000 feet and over 400 years old is the highest and oldest capital city in the United States. They remarked that it was quite a cultural experience.

Great Plains Restoration Council's Restoration Not Incarceration Crew was glad to meet everybody, including the top staff of WildEarth Guardians and Commonweal Conservancy, and look forward to being back next spring for the prairie dog release work.  

As GPRC's long time slogan says, "Friends Aren't Temporary". Through good hard work, we build and nurture healthy relationships - with others, ourselves, and the Earth. 

Thanks to all who have donated to Great Plains Restoration Council to continue building the restoration movement of the Great Plains.

- Great Plains Restoration Council