Northern Great Plains Stories

Recovering species is essential for effective wildlife conservation and critical to the work WWF does around the world. Here are just a few of our favorite, recent recovery stories.

Following in the footsteps of the North American Wetlands Conservation Act, a volunteer-based fund that has supported almost 3,000 wetlands improvement projects across 30 million acres in all 50 states, a new bill has been proposed to do the same for grasslands, our continent's most imperiled ecosystem.

Charles Henry Turner was one of the pioneers of the study of insect cognition. However, tragically and despite his brilliance, Turner wasn’t afforded an opportunity to conduct his research within one of the world’s great scientific institutions because of blatant discrimination over his race. 

Grassland birds are spectacular, but they are also North America's fastest-declining group of birds.

Four members of the Oglala Lakota Nation share stories from their lives.

WWF and Air Wick Scented Oils® and Botanica by Air Wick® have teamed up to reseed 1 billion square feet of grassland and wildflower habitat over the next three years, restoring critical habitat.

Everyone knows the honey bee, but did you know that there are over 20,000 different species of bee in the world? Here are a few easy things that you can do to help out your local pollinators. 

Until now, grasslands have rarely been a target of international conservation agendas. Although they provide key habitat for wildlife and critical ecosystem services, they are often undervalued because we have not invested the necessary resources to calculate their benefits to people and nature. The Rangelands Atlas fills part of that void.

As fresh snow redecorated the tranquil plains of the Wolakota Buffalo Range, new and precious life entered the world. Two bison calves took their first breaths amid the falling flakes—the first to be born on this ground in at least 140 years.

WWF president and CEO Carter Roberts talks with Wizipan Little Elk, CEO of the Rosebud Economic Development Corporation (REDCO), about reintroducing bison to native land and how to be an ally.

Help bring bison back to their native home in the Northern Great Plains.

Every year, the Eastern monarch butterfly flies up to 2,500 miles from its breeding grounds in the US and Canada, all the way down to its hibernation grounds in central Mexico. These tiny creatures have the most highly evolved migratory pattern of any known species of their kind, but this unique phenomenon is under threat.

The Tribe will create the largest native-owned and managed bison herd in North America. These 100 bison are the first of as many as 1,500 animals setting foot on 28,000 acres of native grassland.

Twenty-seven swift foxes were brought to the area from Wyoming in September, marking the beginning of a five-year reintroduction program led by the Assiniboine (Nakoda) and Gros Ventre (Aaniiih) Tribes of Fort Belknap.

WWF is joining forces with The Walmart Foundation, McDonald’s, and Cargill to invest more than $6 million in this initiative to make lasting improvements to America’s iconic grasslands.

From 2014 to 2018, tillage of grasslands across the Great Plains occurred at an average rate of four football fields lost every minute. This means that millions of acres of America’s temperate grassland, one of only four left in the world and a critically important ecosystem, is being plowed up for crop production.

Cindy and Harry Eisenberg reflect on the meaningful experiences that continue to inspire their support of WWF.

The Rosebud Sioux tribe committed 28,000 acres of native grassland for the creation of a new plains bison herd. With a capacity to support 1,500 animals, the Wolakota Buffalo Range will become North America’s largest Native American owned and managed bison herd.

The Northern Great Plains is one of the world’s last great, remaining grasslands. Across its 183 million acres, nearly 132 million remain intact. Among those acres that are still intact, approximately 70% is privately owned, and often by ranching families.

WWF, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Model Avionics developed an innovative system to deliver plague protection for black-footed ferrets in the form of peanut butter-flavored baits by drones or all-terrain vehicles to prairie dogs. Recently, the team received a patent for the design—a first for WWF!

The grasslands buzz with often unseen biodiversity. This medley of wildlife images offers a dizzying look at the insects and plants that contribute to the ecosystem of the Northern Great Plains.

Economic and cultural pressures have made ranching more challenging in recent years. WWF has been working with ranchers to help keep the grasslands intact to the benefit of both ranchers and wildlife.

Bison in Badlands National Park now have an additional 22,553 acres to roam thanks to a passionate group of supporters who want to see America’s national mammal thrive.

Each year, WWF uses data from the USDA to track the conversion of grasslands to cropland across the Great Plains of North America and compare the loss to that of previous years. Here's what we found.