Great Plains Restoration Council “Serving our Youth, Protecting our Prairie Earth.”
Great Plains Restoration Council “Serving our Youth, Protecting our Prairie Earth.”
(Debuting in late 2008). Selected Formerly Incarcerated Persons (FIPs) from across the state of Texas (and eventually operating in other states) are given tough but counselor-supported opportunities to work a good paid restoration job in a strictly-structured outback Prairie/Plains environment, learn personal and technical skills, and hopefully stay out of the prison system.
Highly biodiverse native grasslands -- especially tallgrass prairie, but also mixed grass and shortgrass prairies -- are excellent sequesters of carbon. The roots do it. Researchers have traced more than 8,000 years worth of carbon stored in the soil of healthy, strong native prairies. Where other communities and nations are replanting trees on deforested areas as carbon mitigators, communities on the Great Plains and Prairies need to be replanting native prairies on plowed, degraded, damaged areas wherever possible (and also making absolutely sure no remaining virgin prairies are destroyed.)
Companies wishing to offset their carbon emissions can help finance the large scale restoration and protection of tallgrass, mixed grass and shortgrass prairies. Tallgrass prairie is the most endangered major ecosystem in North America.
Furthermore, with grassland birds declining drastically (even once common birds like bobwhite quail and meadowlarks have now dropped precipitously), rebuilding our native prairies will have immense value as wildlife nesting habitat, not to mention all the other ecosystem services like water source protection, erosion prevention, public health, open space, and more.
GPRC makes a call to universities, academics and researchers to help further refine this project. This section of our website can serve as a clearinghouse for the latest advances, both on the ground and scientifically. We wish to help advance the science of prairie restoration as a tool in combatting global warming and climate change at the same time it protects critical biodiversity, provides good jobs, and brings people together through community volunteer opportunities. We envision the Grassland Carbon and Birds Project to take on a life of its own.
Resources:
Declining Birds in Grassland Ecosystems (U.S. Dept. of the Interior Report)
