Download or read book A Field Guide to the North American Prairie written by Stephen R. Jones and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to wildlife and flora of the prairie, includes advice on where to hike and camp in the Great Palains.
Download or read book Grassland written by Richard Manning and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 1997-07-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than forty percent of our country was once open prairie, grassland that extended from Missouri to Montana. Taking a critical look at this little-understood biome, award-winning journalist Richard Manning urges the reclamation of this land, showing how the grass is not only our last connection to the natural world, but also a vital link to our own prehistoric roots, our history, and our culture. Framing his book with the story of the remarkable elk, whose mysterious wanderings seem to reclaim his ancestral plains, Manning traces the expansion of America into what was then viewed as the American desert and considers our attempts over the last two hundred years to control unpredictable land through plowing, grazing, and landscaping. He introduces botanists and biologists who are restoring native grasses, literally follows the first herd of buffalo restored to the wild prairie, and even visits Ted Turner's progressive--and controversial--Montana ranch. In an exploration of the grasslands that is both sweeping and intimate, Manning shows us how we can successfully inhabit this and all landscapes.
Download or read book The Great North American Prairie written by Sara St. Antoine and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Literature of the North American Prairie introduces young readers to the region's natural heritage.
Download or read book Prairie Conservation written by Fred B. Samson and published by Island Press. This book was released on 1996-08 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The area of native prairie known as the Great Plains once extended from Canada to the Mexican border and from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains to western Indiana and Wisconsin. Today the declines in prairie landscape types, estimated to be as high as 99%, exceed those of any other major ecosystem in North America. The overwhelming loss of landscape and accompanying loss of species constitute a real threat to both ecological and human economic health.Prairie Conservation is a comprehensive examination of the history, ecology, and current status of North American grasslands. It presents for the first time in a single volume information on the historical, economic, and cultural significance of prairies, their natural history and ecology, threats, and conservation and restoration programs currently underway. Chapters cover: environmental history of the Great Plains the economic value of prairie prairie types -- tallgrass, mixed grass, shortgrass, wetlands -- and the ecological processes that sustain each type prairie fauna -- invertebrates, fish and other aquatic creatures, amphibians and reptiles, birds, and mammals conservation programs such as the Great Plains Partnership, Canada's Prairie Conservation Action Plan, the U.S. Prairie Pothole Joint Venture, and others The book brings together knowledge and insights from a wide range of experts to describe and explain the importance of prairies and to position them in the forefront of North American conservation efforts. Praire Conservation is an essential reference for anyone interested in prairie ecology and conservation and will play a critical role in broadening our awareness and understanding of prairie ecosystems.
Download or read book Great North American Prairie written by Sara St Antoine and published by Turtleback Books. This book was released on 2004-07-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a collection of stories, poems, journals, and memoir excerpts of life on the Great Plains.
Download or read book Stories from where We Live written by Sara St. Antoine and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes stories from and about Alberta, Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
Download or read book Grassland written by Richard Manning and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1997-07-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: More than forty percent of our country was once open prairie, grassland that extended from Missouri to Montana. Taking a critical look at this little-understood biome, award-winning journalist Richard Manning urges the reclamation of this land, showing how the grass is not only our last connection to the natural world, but also a vital link to our own prehistoric roots, our history, and our culture. Framing his book with the story of the remarkable elk, whose mysterious wanderings seem to reclaim his ancestral plains, Manning traces the expansion of America into what was then viewed as the American desert and considers our attempts over the last two hundred years to control unpredictable land through plowing, grazing, and landscaping. He introduces botanists and biologists who are restoring native grasses, literally follows the first herd of buffalo restored to the wild prairie, and even visits Ted Turner's progressive--and controversial--Montana ranch. In an exploration of the grasslands that is both sweeping and intimate, Manning shows us how we can successfully inhabit this and all landscapes.
Download or read book North American Prairie written by John Ernest Weaver and published by lincoln, neb. : johnsen Publishing Company. This book was released on 1954 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A greedy pirate plunders one ship too many.
Download or read book Prairie written by Candace Savage and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Praise for the previous edition of Prairie: "Impelled with its sense of the miraculous in nature." —Globe and Mail Candace Savage’s acclaimed and beautifully written guide to the ecology of the prairies, now revised and updated. This revised edition of Prairie features a new preface along with updated research on the effects of climate change on an increasingly vulnerable landscape. It also offers new information on: · conservation of threatened species, including the black-tailed prairie dog and farmland birds; · grassland loss and conservation; · the health of rivers and the water table; · the effects of neonicotinoid insecticides on prairie wetlands; · the benefits of regenerative agriculture. Illustrated with elegant black-and-white line drawings and maps, this award-winning tome continues to be a highly readable guide to understanding the ecology, geological history, biodiversity, and resilience of the prairies.
Download or read book GREAT NORTH AMERICAN PRAIRIE CANCELLED DUPLICATE written by SARA. ST ANTOINE and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Great Plains written by Michael Forsberg and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-03-22 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Great Plains were once among the greatest grasslands on the planet. But as the United States and Canada grew westward, the Plains were plowed up, fenced in, overgrazed, and otherwise degraded. Today, this fragmented landscape is the most endangered and least protected ecosystem in North America. But all is not lost on the prairie. Through lyrical photographs, essays, historical images, and maps, this beautifully illustrated book gets beneath the surface of the Plains, revealing the lingering wild that still survives and whose diverse natural communities, native creatures, migratory traditions, and natural systems together create one vast and extraordinary whole. Three broad geographic regions in Great Plains are covered in detail, evoked in the unforgettable and often haunting images taken by Michael Forsberg. Between the fall of 2005 and the winter of 2008, Forsberg traveled roughly 100,000 miles across 12 states and three provinces, from southern Canada to northern Mexico, to complete the photographic fieldwork for this project, underwritten by The Nature Conservancy. Complementing Forsberg’s images and firsthand accounts are essays by Great Plains scholar David Wishart and acclaimed writer Dan O’Brien. Each section of the book begins with a thorough overview by Wishart, while O’Brien—a wildlife biologist and rancher as well as a writer—uses his powerful literary voice to put the Great Plains into a human context, connecting their natural history with man’s uses and abuses. The Great Plains are a dynamic but often forgotten landscape—overlooked, undervalued, misunderstood, and in desperate need of conservation. This book helps lead the way forward, informing and inspiring readers to recognize the wild spirit and splendor of this irreplaceable part of the planet.
Download or read book Prairie Fire written by Julie Courtwright and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2023-01-13 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prairie fires have always been a spectacular and dangerous part of the Great Plains. Nineteenth-century settlers sometimes lost their lives to uncontrolled blazes, and today ranchers such as those in the Flint Hills of Kansas manage the grasslands through controlled burning. Even small fires, overlooked by history, changed lives-destroyed someone's property, threatened someone's safety, or simply made someone's breath catch because of their astounding beauty. Julie Courtwright, who was born and raised in the tallgrass prairie of Butler County, Kansas, knows prairie fires well. In this first comprehensive environmental history of her subject, Courtwright vividly recounts how fire-setting it, fighting it, watching it, fearing it-has bound Plains people to each other and to the prairies themselves for centuries. She traces the history of both natural and intentional fires from Native American practices to the current use of controlled burns as an effective land management tool, along the way sharing the personal accounts of people whose lives have been touched by fire. The book ranges from Texas to the Dakotas and from the 1500s to modern times. It tells how Native Americans learned how to replicate the effects of natural lightning fires, thus maintaining the prairie ecosystem. Native peoples fired the prairie to aid in the hunt, and also as a weapon in war. White settlers learned from them that burns renewed the grasslands for grazing; but as more towns developed, settlers began to suppress fires-now viewed as a threat to their property and safety. Fire suppression had as dramatic an environmental impact as fire application. Suppression allowed the growth of water-wasting trees and caused a thick growth of old grass to build up over time, creating a dangerous environment for accidental fires. Courtwright calls on a wide range of sources: diary entries and oral histories from survivors, colorful newspaper accounts, military weather records, and artifacts of popular culture from Gene Autry stories to country song lyrics to Little House on the Prairie. Through this multiplicity of voices, she shows us how prairie fires have always been a significant part of the Great Plains experience-and how each fire that burned across the prairies over hundreds of years is part of someone's life story. By unfolding these personal narratives while looking at the bigger environmental picture, Courtwright blends poetic prose with careful scholarship to fashion a thoughtful paean to prairie fire. It will enlighten environmental and Western historians and renew a sense of wonder in the people of the Plains.
Download or read book American Serengeti written by Dan Flores and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2017-01-16 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's Great Plains once possessed one of the grandest wildlife spectacles of the world, equaled only by such places as the Serengeti, the Masai Mara, or the veld of South Africa. Pronghorn antelope, gray wolves, bison, coyotes, wild horses, and grizzly bears: less than two hundred years ago these creatures existed in such abundance that John James Audubon was moved to write, "it is impossible to describe or even conceive the vast multitudes of these animals." In a work that is at once a lyrical evocation of that lost splendor and a detailed natural history of these charismatic species of the historic Great Plains, veteran naturalist and outdoorsman Dan Flores draws a vivid portrait of each of these animals in their glory—and tells the harrowing story of what happened to them at the hands of market hunters and ranchers and ultimately a federal killing program in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Great Plains with its wildlife intact dazzled Americans and Europeans alike, prompting numerous literary tributes. American Serengeti takes its place alongside these celebratory works, showing us the grazers and predators of the plains against the vast opalescent distances, the blue mountains shimmering on the horizon, the great rippling tracts of yellowed grasslands. Far from the empty "flyover country" of recent times, this landscape is alive with a complex ecology at least 20,000 years old—a continental patrimony whose wonders may not be entirely lost, as recent efforts hold out hope of partial restoration of these historic species. Written by an author who has done breakthrough work on the histories of several of these animals—including bison, wild horses, and coyotes—American Serengeti is as rigorous in its research as it is intimate in its sense of wonder—the most deeply informed, closely observed view we have of the Great Plains' wild heritage.
Download or read book Prairie Directory of North America written by Charlotte Adelman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-06-06 with total page 685 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first single, comprehensive source for locating North American public prairies, grasslands, and savannas, Prairie Directory of North America is a guide unlike any other. First published in 2001, the book uniquely catalogs the continent's most well-known prairie sites by country and state for easy reference. With the addition of over three hundred newly located, preserved, or restored sites, the second edition is the prairie enthusiast's ideal guide to locating countless North American sites-from the well-documented to the remote. Readers can use the guide to plan both convenient visits to close-to-home prairies and journeys to sites well across the continent. Also included is an expanded state-by-state index, ideal for locating specific prairies in any given state. The victim of destructive plowing and construction at the hands of European settlers, North American grassland ecosystems that once spanned the entire continent have suffered degradation and fragmentation. With the Prairie Directory as a guide, however, ecologists, environmental scientists, and tourists can experience the essence of this ancient ecosystem and, in some locations, even its vastness. The book lists tiny, hidden half-acre prairies spared by the plow as well as popular sites covering millions of acres. It documents prairies hidden deep in forests or in plain sight in American Indian reservations. The only one of its kind, this book will allow readers to experience the prairie as a colorful, fragrant, wildlife-rich North American landscape.
Download or read book Conservation of the Black Tailed Prairie Dog written by John Hoogland and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2013-04-09 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The prairie dog is a colonial, keystone species of the grassland ecosystem of western North America. Myriad animals regularly visit colony-sites to feed on the grass there, to use the burrows for shelter or nesting, or to prey on the prairie dogs. Unfortunately, prairie dogs are disappearing, and the current number is only about 2% of the number encountered by Lewis and Clark in the early 1800s. Part I of Conservation of the Black-Tailed Prairie Dog summarizes ecology and social behavior for pivotal issues such as when prairie dogs breed, how far they disperse, how they affect other organisms, and how much they compete with livestock. Part II documents how loss of habitat, poisoning, plague, and recreational shooting have caused the precipitous decline of prairie dog populations over the last 200 years. Part III proposes practical solutions that can ensure the long-term survival of the prairie dog and its grassland ecosystem, and also are fair to private landowners. We cannot expect farmers and ranchers to bear all the costs of conservation while the rest of us enjoy all the benefits. With 700 references, 37 tables, 75 figures and photographs, and a glossary, Conservation of the Black-Tailed Prairie Dog is a unique and vital contribution for wildlife managers, politicians, environmentalists, and curious naturalists.
Download or read book Grasslands Grown written by Molly Patrick Rozum and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2021-08 with total page 601 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Grasslands Grown Molly P. Rozum explores the two related concepts of regional identity and sense of place by examining a single North American ecological region: the U.S. Great Plains and the Canadian Prairie Provinces. All or parts of modern-day Alberta, Montana, Saskatchewan, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Manitoba form the center of this transnational region. As children, the first postconquest generation of northern grasslands residents worked, played, and traveled with domestic and wild animals, which introduced them to ecology and shaped sense-of-place rhythms. As adults, members of this generation of settler society worked to adapt to the northern grasslands by practicing both agricultural diversification and environmental conservation. Rozum argues that environmental awareness, including its ecological and cultural aspects, is key to forming a sense of place and a regional identity. The two concepts overlap and reinforce each other: place is more local, ecological, and emotional-sensual, and region is more ideational, national, and geographic in tone. This captivating study examines the growth of place and regional identities as they took shape within generations and over the life cycle.
Download or read book Prairie Fires written by Caroline Fraser and published by Metropolitan Books. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR The first comprehensive historical biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the beloved author of the Little House on the Prairie books Millions of readers of Little House on the Prairie believe they know Laura Ingalls—the pioneer girl who survived blizzards and near-starvation on the Great Plains, and the woman who wrote the famous autobiographical books. But the true saga of her life has never been fully told. Now, drawing on unpublished manuscripts, letters, diaries, and land and financial records, Caroline Fraser—the editor of the Library of America edition of the Little House series—masterfully fills in the gaps in Wilder’s biography. Revealing the grown-up story behind the most influential childhood epic of pioneer life, she also chronicles Wilder's tumultuous relationship with her journalist daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, setting the record straight regarding charges of ghostwriting that have swirled around the books. The Little House books, for all the hardships they describe, are paeans to the pioneer spirit, portraying it as triumphant against all odds. But Wilder’s real life was harder and grittier than that, a story of relentless struggle, rootlessness, and poverty. It was only in her sixties, after losing nearly everything in the Great Depression, that she turned to children’s books, recasting her hardscrabble childhood as a celebratory vision of homesteading—and achieving fame and fortune in the process, in one of the most astonishing rags-to-riches episodes in American letters. Spanning nearly a century of epochal change, from the Indian Wars to the Dust Bowl, Wilder’s dramatic life provides a unique perspective on American history and our national mythology of self-reliance. With fresh insights and new discoveries, Prairie Fires reveals the complex woman whose classic stories grip us to this day.
