American Prairie is a prairie-based nature reserve in Central Montana, United States, on a mixed grass prairie ecosystem with migration corridors and native wildlife. This wildlife conservation area is being developed as a private project of the American Prairie Foundation (APF). This independent non-profit organization aims to include over through a combination of both private and public lands.
American Prairie provides public access to its land for all types of outdoor recreation including hiking, mountain biking, hunting, and fishing. The predominant economic activity in the region is the raising of cattle on homestead parcels along with adjacent rangeland leased from the federal government. Ranchers in the region are invited to adhere to wildlife-friendly standards on their ranches and required when grazing their cattle on American Prairie's parcels. Within large but securely fenced areas, American Prairie is developing a bison herd with attention to heritage genetics and minimal cattle introgression. Wildlife-friendly fencing allows the natural movement of wildlife such as pronghorn. Animals like prairie dogs are welcome amidst the native vegetation.
Prairies are the dominant ecosystem of the Interior Plains of central North America. The main vegetation type is herbaceous plants like grasses, sedges, and other prairie plants, rather than woody vegetation like trees. Grazing is important to soil, vegetation and overall ecological balance. The ecosystem was maintained by a pattern of disturbance caused by natural wildfire and grazing by bison, a pattern which is called pyric herbivory.
Before the 1800s, bison were a keystone species for the native shortgrass prairie habitat as their grazing pressure altered the food web and landscapes in ways that improve biodiversity. The expanses of grass sustained migrations of an estimated 30 to 60 million American bison which could be found across much of North America.
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The shortgrass prairie is an ecosystem located in the Great Plains of North America. The two most dominant grasses in the shortgrass prairie are blue grama (Bouteloua gracilis) and buffalograss (Bouteloua dactyloides), the two less dominant grasses in the prairie are greasegrass (Tridens flavus) and sideoats grama (Bouteloua curtipendula). The prairie was formerly maintained by grazing pressure of American bison, which is the keystone species.
The Buffalo Commons is a conceptual proposal to create a vast nature preserve by returning of the drier portion of the Great Plains to native prairie, and by reintroducing the American bison ("buffalo"), that once grazed the shortgrass prairie. The proposal would affect ten states: Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. The proposal originated with Frank J. Popper and Deborah Popper, who argued in a 1987 essay that the current use of the drier parts of the plains is not sustainable.
The Interior Plains is a vast physiographic region that spreads across the Laurentian craton of central North America, extending along the east flank of the Rocky Mountains from the Gulf Coast region to the Arctic Beaufort Sea. In Canada, it encompasses the Canadian Prairies separating the Canadian Rockies from the Canadian Shield, as well as the Boreal Plains and Taiga Plains east of the Mackenzie and Richardson Mountains; while in the United States, it includes the Great Plains of the West/Midwest and the tallgrass prairie region to the south of the Great Lakes extending east to the Appalachian Plateau region.
Highly lethal pathogens (e.g., hantaviruses, hendra virus, anthrax, or plague) pose unique public-health problems, because they seem to periodically flare into outbreaks before disappearing into long quiescent phases. A key element to their possible contro ...