Great Plains Restoration Council “Serving our Youth, Protecting our Prairie Earth.”
Great Plains Restoration Council “Serving our Youth, Protecting our Prairie Earth.”
Overview
Oglala Prairie Preserve
Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation
South Unit/Badlands National Park
Conata Basin/Buffalo Gap National Grassland
Grass Creek
GPRC’s South Dakota office is led and operated by Oglala Lakota residents on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. We have a partnership with Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation to accomplish mutual Ecological Health goals.
Biologists say a minimum of a million contiguous acres is needed to recreate a fully-functioning Great Plains Prairie ecosystem.
GPRC’s Oglala Lakota team is working to restore and tie together, over time, a million acre reserve of Tribal, public and private land in southwestern South Dakota. The Great Plains is over 400 million acres in size.
3D Aerial View – GPRC/WRC’s 4,600 acre Oglala Prairie Preserve (outlined in blue)
The potential components of the Million Acre Project include: South Unit/Badlands National Park (within Reservation boundaries), Buffalo Gap National Grassland, North Unit/Badlands National Park, GPRC/WRC’s 4,600 acre Oglala Prairie Preserve, and fee acquisition and/or conservation easements on individual private lands from willing sellers.
Next step: Purchase a 7000+ acre ranch that is currently available and strategically connected to the South Unit of Badlands National Park.
Black-footed ferret recently released into Conata Basin, Buffalo Gap National Grassland. Photograph by Dan Licht, Pronghorn Productions.
Meanwhile, on the Reservation, our team is trying to help the Tribe find a way to replace the cattle lease income on the 133,000+ acre South Unit, which was used to guarantee a loan. The National Park Service has agreed to provide “surplus” buffalo from its good gene herd in the North Unit when this occurs. Restoration of the excellent springs on Range Unit 504 can then also take place, as well as expanded antelope and prairie dog protection in the larger reserve.
A concurrent effort by our Oglala team is underway to reconnect local Oglala people with their Native ecosystem and Ecological Health. Many Reservation residents have not even been into the Badlands, and it is their backyard. Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation is designing a new green community along these lines.
Photograph by Dan Licht, Pronghorn Productions
None of this important ecological work can happen in a vacuum, without a cultural context. People must be part of every step of the process, because we are all part of the ecosystem in which we live, wherever we live.
Current public land acreages in Million Acre Project target area:
(The above numbers do not include any Indian tribal lands, except for the disputed South Unit of Badlands, which is Tribal land inside the reservation borders but the U.S. equally claims it.)
All of the lands except our Oglala Prairie Preserve are threatened with some prairie dog poisoning. And all of the lands, except for our Preserve, and the North Unit of Badlands National Park, are currently used for cattle overgrazing.
Buffalo Gap National Grassland is very exploited and must be restored and upgraded to National Park or National Wildlife status.
Through a joint project between GPRC and Wildlands Restoration Corporation, we’ve purchased 4,600 acres directly adjacent to the North Unit of Badlands National Park. We have just reached agreement with the National Park Service for the 6.5 mile Park fence between our property and the Park to be taken down so the two can ecologically connect. The ultimate goal is to help the National Park Service acquire this new preserve and fold it officially into the Park.
Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation
On Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, GPRC and Thunder Valley CDC (TVCDC) share mutual Ecological Health goals of bringing buffalo, antelope, prairie dogs and other native wildlife back and building healthy sustainable communities. We jointly run the Youth InterACTION leadership development program. GPRC is working to acquire and restore a new, several thousand acre former cattle ranch (fee land) that has excellent connectivity to the South Unit of Badlands National Park in southwestern South Dakota. Next to it, Thunder Valley CDC is working to build, near the road, on 200 already degraded areas, one of the greenest communities on the Great Plains. Its centerpiece will be a state-of-the-art solar-powered wellness center complete with swimming pool, basketball court, gym, cultural space, and more. This new community will help Oglala Lakota folks build financial equity, healthier living conditions and much healthier lives, while serving as an Oglala-led Ecological Health education lab where youth and adults relearn and reconnect with the natural world, their culture, and their place within it. Thunder Valley will also be a language lab, front-edge community meeting place for the exchange and development of new ideas, a headquarters for new prairie wilderness restoration and protection, and a sustainable ecological economy model for Tribal residents in all 9 Districts on the Reservation. Community Meeting House is just completed.
South Unit/Badlands National Park
Conata Basin/Buffalo Gap National Grassland
Coming soon...
Coming soon...
