Northern Great Plains

WWF is working to protect the Great Plains' rich ecosystems from a variety of threats.
© Valerie Bruchon / APF

WWF is working towards large-scale conservation to address the threats that endanger the region’s biodiversity and to support long-term prosperity through a diversified economy. We collaborate with local partners to find creative ways to foster thriving local communities amidst a healthy prairie in a sustainable, diversified economy where agriculture and conservation coexist.

Agriculture
Historically, virtually no biome in North America offered a landscape more conducive to rapid and widespread agricultural settlement than the Great Plains. The result is a nearly monolithic land use devoted to agriculture, split roughly evenly today in terms of acreage between farming and cattle ranching.

Agricultural subsidies are a major economic driver: without them, farming would be unprofitable in many areas of the Northern Great Plains and there would be no financial incentive for “sodbusting”—the plowing of native prairie. Sodbusting for production of grain crops is the most serious threat to native prairie because it eliminates nearly all native species and restoration of tilled land is difficult and expensive.Sodbusting is the grassland equivalent of cutting old-growth forest.

Native prairie plants are just one feature of the Great Plains that WWF strives to protect.
© Valerie Bruchon / APF

Almost all private and public grasslands in the Northern Great Plains, including many protected areas, are grazed by livestock. Traditional grazing practices generally favor a uniform grazing intensity across the landscape, which produces an even vegetative structure rather than the patchy mosaics created by historic patterns of bison grazing; this reduces habitat diversity for grassland birds and other species. Inappropriate grazing can also damage the important zones alongside rivers and streams that affect aquatic health and provide critical habitat to numerous species.

Inappropriate use of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, along with confined animal feeding operations, have also resulted in widespread contamination of surface and groundwater in the region.

The Northern Great Plains is especially vulnerable to climate change.
© Daniel J. Cox / NaturalExposures.com

Climate change
Climate change is predicted to disproportionately increase average temperatures in the Northern Great Plains, with multiple effects on prairie vegetation and wildlife; wetlands are expected to dry up in many areas and the rate of nonnative species invasion will likely increase.

Oil, gas and coal development
Major deposits of fossil fuels occur in the Northern Great Plains. Volatile oil prices and the drive for energy independence in the United States are increasing fossil fuel exploration and development in the region. Development causes habitat destruction and fragmentation and can pollute the region's streams and rivers.

Fragmentation
Roads, railroads, tilled lands, and oil and gas development — all of which continue to spread — have greatly fragmented much of the Northern Great Plains. Fragmentation reduces the quantity and quality of habitat available to wildlife and has significant impacts on species such as sage grouse with diverse habitat needs and migrating pronghorn.