Great Plains Restoration Council “Serving our Youth, Protecting our Prairie Earth.”
Great Plains Restoration Council “Serving our Youth, Protecting our Prairie Earth.”
Help save our endangered “Prairie Rainforest.” The Fort Worth Prairie is one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America. We've succeeded in stopping the bulldozers for now; the Texas General Land Office has agreed to work with us toward a conservation alternative. We need teams of neighborhood volunteers to make this a county-wide push to a permanent success in 2008. Please contact us at 817 838 9022 as soon as possible to get involved.
Set up community meetings, contact the Mayor and City Council of Fort Worth, join volunteer canvassing teams, spread the word, help raise funds, awareness and support, and more. Thank you.
For more info, please call 817.838.9022. Our partner for the acquisition part of this project is Trust for Public Land, a national non-profit land conservation organization that has been working since 1972 to help conserve land for people.
Trust for Public Land joins forces with GPRC to permanently protect the Fort Worth Prairie Park.
Great Plains Restoration Council (GPRC) is working to protect 2000 acres of the biologically richest remaining Fort Worth Prairie Ecosystem as an anchor of urban tallgrass prairie wilderness, ultimately leading to a larger network of core wildland reserves and biological corridors connecting this lush remaining Fort Worth Prairie with the Western Cross Timbers. The State of Texas General Land Office owns the property and is seeking to sell it to developers.
Not too far north of the Fort Worth Prairie Park, sprawling development approaches. We must save whatever is left of our unique, endangered Fort Worth Prairie ecosystem.
The Fort Worth Prairie Park is one of the most beautiful places on Earth, and is of National Park quality, but still completely unprotected from the bulldozers. It is a hidden crown jewel of Texas, and a national treasure that must be preserved before it’s too late. The original Fort Worth Prairie Ecosystem is home to over 2,000 native plant species; it is our “prairie rainforest.” It is an important breeding and resting ground for internationally migrating monarch butterflies and Central Flyway grassland birds, whose numbers are crashing. Rock Creek and unnamed streams run through it. All kinds of native wildlife live there, including two genetically pure buffalo from the Fort Worth Nature Refuge, whose ancestors come from the original Wichita Mountains Herd. There are threatened and endangered species, a 300-year-old native Texas cedar elm tree, and more. Furthermore, Texas Christian University (TCU), University of Texas-Arlington (UTA), and GPRC’s inner city youth leadership development program, Plains Youth InterACTION™, study and learn on this land.
This rare, never-been-plowed, original Fort Worth Prairie tallgrass landscape holds enormous ecological and cultural significance. It was a meeting ground for numerous Prairie Tribes, including indigenous Caddo and Wichita people who lived here. Escaped black slaves traversed these wild grasslands as they headed for “this other country to the south” (Mexico) that they’d heard about where they could reach freedom. There are frontier ruins of a settler’s old stone house from the 1850s, as well as a mysterious, nearly 3 mile long handbuilt rock wall, and a burial ground. The land survey dates back to a land grant from Juan Seguin that was given to a soldier who fought at San Jacinto in the Texas Revolution.
Photo by Vishal Malhotra
Please help us build additional community support to protect the Fort Worth Prairie Park and connect it to other core areas through biological corridors. This very exciting Initiative includes sleek, new-millennial educational, cultural and social programs that are growing GPRC’s Ecological Health movement, and will at last allow Texas to lead the nation in something, instead of always being near last. The Fort Worth Prairie is a unique, very endangered ecosystem.
Many common North American birds now in decline, but of the top 20 American birds listed, the Fort Worth Prairie Park has 8 nesting in its grassland habitat.
The percentage declines are the national figures.
We are thankful to have strong populations of bobwhite and and both western and eastern meadowlarks.
We rarely hear eastern meadowlarks elsewhere anymore, but they are present on the Fort Worth Prairie Park. Just another very important reason to save this pristine, rare grassland ecosystem from the bulldozers.
Fort Worth has something that nobody else has anywhere else. It will be criminal if the city lets the Fort Worth Prairie get destroyed in its rush to become Anywhere, USA. Remaining, intact, original wildlands are Earth’s original genetic code for the future. By acting today, you can make a difference for the next 1,000 years and beyond.
Download the Fort Worth Prairie Park and Area Conservation Potential Map
The Fort Worth Prairie ecosystem is a subset of the once famous Southern Tallgrass Prairie. Tallgrass Prairie in general is the most endangered major ecosystem in North America. The Fort Worth Prairie, with perhaps 30,000 scattered acres remaining (was originally 1.3 million acres stretching from just south of the Red River down to Johnson County) is considered G1/G2 (Globally Imperiled).
