Landmark on the American Prairie Reserve
“Sentiment without Action is the ruin of the soul”
As a child, I remember watching my mother plant tree after tree, shrub after shrub. It must have been thousands of them, all on her little half acre part of the world. What began as an empty space, 11 years later was an oasis of green. Kookaburras, constantly on the look out for lizards and snakes sang upon fence posts. Rosellas and Lorrikeets fed on the sunflowers, and the spoils of the fruit trees were shared among all.
It comes as no surprise that in my 31st year of life, I found myself living in a tent in the North of Montana. Contributing to one of the most ambitions conservation projects in the North America, far from that green garden on the east coast of Australia.
The American Prairie Reserve (APR) is a conservation project at heart, to protect and restore an significant area of the Great Plains. I was a crew member for the Landmark project, a collaboration between APR and Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation (ASC).
I had followed ASC for a number of years, and when the opportunity came up to work alongside an organisation built on a foundation of my two loves, adventure and science, there was no chance I was sitting this one out.
ASC was founded by Gregg Trenish, a National Geographic emerging explorer, with the aim of providing a link between adventurers who were spending time in remote regions of the world, and scientist looking for data. It is citizen science meets cause driven adventure. “There are tens of thousands of athletes that go outside every day, going to every corner of this planet. We find the scientists who need that data. We are the match making service” says Gregg. One thing I find inherently similar with scientists and adventurers is a desire to explore new places, new concepts, new ideas. It’s the passion for knowledge and desire for experiences and answers over all else.
APR, much like ASC, is an organisation thinking outside the box to achieve goals and objectives, no matter how difficult or time consuming. The president of APR, Sean Gerrity, is a former Silicon Valley entrepreneur and National Geographic fellow. With his team of likeminded conservationists, they are working towards creating the largest wildlife complex ever assembled in the continental United States. The collaboration between the the two, one could say, is match made in heaven. Many parts of the reserve have never been fully explored and thus establishing what is actually out there is vital to supporting the ongoing and future management decisions on the reserve. “The landmark crew are in many cases, the first people to walk across this landscape in a long long time” says Mike Kautz, ASC Program Manager. The data will also provide the basis for future comparison.“We are establishing baseline trends in wildlife use of this landscape, and 40 years down the track we will be able to look and see how far we have come” says Mike Kautz.
It’s a long drive from Bozeman to the Sun Prairie, the centre of APR’s current area. August heat creates an endless shimmer on the horizon. We travel through the countless wheat fields, shimmering in the wind, almost ready for harvest. Past the miles of renewable energy producing wind turbines, a sure sign of changing times in the west. Crossing the Missouri River Breaks the landscape becomes a series of flats and gullies to the North. The Little Rocky Mountains appear on the horizon. We take a right towards the Sun Prairie. The mountains in the revision mirror, a constant reminder that this landscape has its limits.
Summer was peaking on the prairie, 100 plus temperatures, a monotonous, unforgiving brown landscape. I have spent time in these places before and therefore was accustom to the heat. I would by lying however, if I said there was no apprehension about spending the next 8 weeks sleeping in a tent, 50 miles from the nearest store, the nearest hospital, and, from my first impression, the nearest anything really.
It is that assumption made on my first journey into the Great Plains that is inherently the difficulty in protecting this ecosystem. It’s not sexy, its not dramatic. Michael Forsberg is an award winning natural history photographer who has spend many years documenting the Great Plains of North America. “Its not the sort of place that can be appreciated from a highway pull out. The first time I walked into this landscape it took hold of me, and I’ve never been able to let it go”.
It is this perceived lack of anything of interest that has historically been the source of much of the grasslands industrialisation and lack of protection.
During the golden age of national parks and wilderness declarations within the United States, the prairie grassland was the one ecosystem was largely forgotten. Stretching from Central Mexico, through the United States and into Canada, only 1% of the original system remains intact and of that only 2% is protected. It is for this reason that projects such as APR are so important.
In truth, my initial assumption could not be further from the truth. The landscape, far from monotonous, is complex and teeming with life, from the smallest of frogs and insects to largest of Bison, Elk, Pronghorn, Coyote and Bobcats. Colonies of prairie doges, so vital to the ecosystem, are spread across the prairie. Hawks circle constantly over head, on the lookout for field mice. Prairie rattlesnakes, commonly seen and as commonly almost trodden on were a constant risk to the crew. Burrowing owls with their interesting almost comical stance utilising the prairie dog holes for their homes. It is a thriving, complex ecosystem, every one bit as important as the other.
Adjacent to the APR lies, the Charles M Russell National Wildlife Refuge, equally important to the region, where Mountain Lions stalk the banks and forests of the Missouri Breaks. The refuge is one of the reintroduction sites of the Black Footed Ferret, a species once though extinct and whose health is closely related to the populations of prairie dogs.
Geographically, it is the presence of the Charles M Russell Refuge, which borders APR to the south, that will help to provide a continuous and expansive area of protected grasslands, that APR hope will spread over 3 million acres.
Part of sending the Landmark crews out to the area, is also to have them interact with the surrounding community. Our crew spent a few days and nights with U.S. Fish and Game biologists, spotlighting and trapping the critically endangered black-footed ferrets. Other crews have spent time, trapping small mammal with season teams from Fish and Game and crew members have also spent time with local ranchers. “We hope that we don’t only provide people with the opportunity to visit and spend time in these areas, but also create ambassadors for the region” says Gregg Trenish at the APR Annual General meeting in Bozeman.
When discussions pop up relating to the big question, if wolves and bears will ever be present in the area, things are not so cut and dried. So divided is the issue, particularly of the wolf, I was told by a local, that if I ever wanted to get into a bar fight in Montana, I should bring it up. Weather wolves and bears are ever present on the prairie will be something for the future to decide. It is not a biological issue, it is a socio-political one. One thing about protecting areas, is that as habitat is improved and ecological niches re-established, then who knows what will naturally migrate back into the areas. For that reason“APR is great” says Landmark volunteer Jason Gregg, “They are setting it up so that the ecosystem can take care of itself”.
One thing for sure, is the healthy population of Bison that have been reestablished on the reserve. Free from cattle genes, at last count the herd numbered some 450 individuals. With 80 calves born in 2014 the future of the bison on the reserve looks good. It doesn't take long living out there until you start to become attached to these magnificent animals. Many a morning were we woken by bison using our tent platforms as rubbing poles. We would see them on our transects, they were the ever present in our daily lives.
Describing conditions on the prairie as erratic during my 8-week stay, does not come close to doing it justice. Nor does saying that the range of experiences that one can have in this environment is mind blowing. It’s a difficult environment where comfort versus reward factors are very much at play.
August, produced a series of incredible storms. You see them coming from miles away, slowly building as they track west across the prairie. You feel the wind pick up, the first few drops of sporadic rain. Before long you are scrambling to tie your tent in a more secure manner and hope it stays where you put it. Waking at 5am to what felt like lightening right above my head was a particular more memorable moment. Grabbing my camera and poking my head outside the tent, turns out I wasn’t far wrong, one could say ‘It was on!’
At the end of August, a powerful low pressure system sat over Phillips County, dropping almost an entire year’s rainfall in a few days. Temperatures plummeted to almost freezing, creeks flooded, roads became impassable, leaving the crew stranded on our little Buffalo Camp Island.
It would take over two weeks before we could access parts of the prairie, completing some of our transects that required 16 mile hikes across boggy swamps and navigating swollen creek crossings.
The rain however, dramatically changed not only physical appearance of the landscape, but also the behaviour of its species. Bison became playful and the number of rattlesnake encounters seemed to explode. It was also during this time that the autumn colours began to appear in the creek lines.
As the prairie began to dry out, it was two weeks later that the mosquitos arrived. Not cold enough to kill them off during the nights, and not hot enough to push them into hiding during the day, they were a constant. Some crew struggled during this time, Jason however was a little more stoic about the situation, “it was completely new to me, I definitely learned how to stay calm”.
One thing that came very clear to me during my time in the North of Montana was that life in this part of the world is not easy. It has never been easy, and never will be. There is a justifiable proudness and passion in those living in this environment and etching out a living. Whether that’s the rancher running cattle, the wheat farmer, the local store owner, or those managing a 300,000 acre wildlife reserve. Experiencing some of that difficulty in a brief stay on the prairie, was an exciting, yet humbling experience.
As a masters student in Natural Resource Management, and a photographer and filmmaker interested in conservation, the experience of spending time on a project such as this, is invaluable. Rehabilitating grasslands is a lesson in all things biological, social and economic. The environment also throws up plenty of creative challenges. Its a life lesson in patience, perseverance and the importance of collaborations and working with others, often with a totally different agenda. If we are to effectively manage and conserve these areas we must communicate and develop concepts where economics and conservation do not work against each other. It starts by getting people out into the environment to experience it, it is here that APR and the Landmark project is an example of how it might just look in the future.
Landmark is a 3 year program, and currently accepting applications for crew members.
For more information on the Landmark project please visit
http://www.adventurescience.org/landmark.html, or
http://www.americanprairie.org/
Author and Photographer Morgan Cardiff spent August and September 2014, living with 5 other crew at the Buffalo Camp, Sun Prairie.
