As the year draws to a close, will you help us continue this battle by donating today?
In building the ground level of the Buffalo Commons, we are setting up a new culture of ideas and caring, and of healthy people and healthy prairies. This work on the Great Plains - America's catastrophically damaged but iconic landscape - serves as a model for us all.
This year the Buffalo Commons had a breakthrough. Now we need your help more than ever. 2014 promises exciting and challenging work ahead!
Here's some of what happened in 2013:
New 100,000 acre Buffalo Range: Tribal Resolution passed by the Oglala Sioux Tribe to allow 1,000 wild buffalo and human healing to return to Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
After years and years of locally-led work, the Oglala Sioux Tribe will now be creating a 100,000 acre highway-to-highway Buffalo Range encompassing the South Unit of Badlands National Park, which will ultimately be a Tribal National Park. A lot of restoration work must be done but the first of 1,000 planned wild buffalo are expected to be reintroduced by November 2015. GPRC's Oglala Lakota team contributed 9 years of work to this effort, and now will be coming back on board to assist with the prairie restoration needs and green jobs programming. If you know how deeply native people and wildlife have suffered on the Great Plains, you know how powerful and exciting this story of healing is.
Pictured: Original buffalo skull left over from the 1800's slaughter, hidden in the badlands of the South Unit of Badlands National Park, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota.
Fort Worth Prairie Park: We have fought almost 8 years for its safety. The beautiful, lush Fort Worth Prairie Park is still alive, but threatened again!
This vestige of original tallgrass prairie Eden "where the West begins" came under new threat by the Texas General Land Office this past summer. 2014 is going to require all of us like never before. Across the state of Texas there is an urgent scramble to save the last of the platinum prairies. The Fort Worth Prairie Park is a high profile battle not only because of its size, but also because it is one of Texas' most important breeding and resting grounds for the international migrations of Monarch butterflies and grassland nesting birds. The Fort Worth Prairie Park is also an easily accessible refuge for people to walk and breathe for miles in a landscape that shows how just how alive and beautiful the legendary Texas prairie once was.
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| Hiking the Fort Worth Prairie Park: Fulton Murray, Venture Capitalist/Philanthropist, Laura Wood, President, DM Wood Foundation, Jim Bradbury, Attorney at Law, Bill Fuller, Investment Advisor |
Houston's Esteban Park to add homeless green housing: In Houston's Esteban Park, we have created plans to add 4 green-designed prairie cottages for Restoration Not Incarceration™ workers as part of the overall design of the Park.
There will now be four main components to Esteban Park: the Coastal Prairie Preserve, the Organic Farm at the front entrance, a Weekend Farmer's Market, and ecologically designed green housing Prairie Cottages for young homeless workers. Less than 1% of America's endangered Gulf Coast native tallgrass prairie remains and Esteban Park serves all three of GPRC's pillars, Preservation, Education, and Healing. We hope to get Esteban Park completed in 2 years. Esteban Park is located in the Sunnyside neighborhood of southeast Houston, noted as one of the most violent neighborhoods in the U.S. Esteban Park is already serving as a model of deeper Ecological Health, with informational requests coming in from cities like Miami, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, and the Caribbean. With your help, we can build up this program as a model.
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| Building the handicapped-accessible trail through the tallgrass coastal prairie preserve restoration area of Esteban Park, Houston, TX. |
Gunnison's Prairie Dogs were just denied protection under the Endangered Species Act, even though they meet all 5 criteria. Only private efforts on permanent wild prairies will save them from extinction.
In Santa Fe County, New Mexico, GPRC is partnering with Commonweal Conservancy's 13,000 acre Galisteo Basin Preserve to create a permanently protected meta-population of Gunnison's prairie dogs, who are rescued from urban fragments of habitat and reintroduced into hand-constructed new colony starter systems in the wild. We have completed the East Preserve's Gunnison's Prairie Dog reintroduction, and wrap- up land restoration activities are now taking place there. At the same time, we're now turning our attention to the New Moon Overlook. This sweeping yellow plain at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains is on the rim of the Basin's escarpment, and includes a recently discovered old wagon trail that we are working with archeologists to preserve. 2014 plans are to establish the first prairie dog colony on the New Moon Overlook as well as brush removal, and green job employment for Restoration Not IncarcerationTM workers. Come hike! Several miles of the Galisteo Basin Preserve trail system are already open to the public for hiking. Be sure if you are in the area to spend a few hours walking in this old Southwestern land, and try to read the thousands of years of human history where the western edge of the Great Plains rolls up to the foothills of the Southern Rocky Mountains like a wave. The Galisteo Basin Preserve is owned and managed by the Commonweal Conservancy, and GPRC is a restoration partner. Future wildland potential: This shortgrass prairie/Chihuahuan desert grassland preserve could also be expanded several times in size if we can demonstrate the model, and inspire adjacent landowners and government agencies to join in.
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| Galisteo Basin Preserve, Santa Fe County, New Mexico. |
We also continued to teach Ecological Health across the country, and are looking forward to expanding our "We take care of body and Earth as one" and "By taking care of others, we take care of ourselves" movement in 2014!
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| Pictured: Chicago Greencorps visit Dec. 2013 -- This very powerful event showcased that the restoration movement is starting to grow strong. |
Please donate whatever you can today to help save the grassland birds, the buffalo, the prairie dogs and the youth, and help build a tangibly healthier future for people of all colors, cultures and communities. For ease, you can donate online right now at www.gprc.org.
Thank you very much for caring. If you have already given, please pass this letter on to your family and friends.
From all of us out here in the land of sun, wind, grass and blue sky, best wishes and best health for the holiday season and the New Year.
Sincerely,
