Rewilding and the Promise of American Prairie with Daniel Kinka

Two hundred years ago central Montana was the very portrait of wildness. Between about 1830 and 1890 the wildlife of the region were decimated and the frontier closed. Montana still holds one of the largest areas of intact prairie habitat on the continent with some of the greatest species diversity anywhere in the Great Plains, but these grasslands are being converted to croplands at an alarming rate. Further, artificially suppressed and shrinking abundance of numerous bird and mammal species threatens the overall functioning and resilience of the ecosystem itself.
Learn how American Prairie seeks to restore a vast and fully-functioning prairie ecosystem around the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge, that contains ecologically meaningful populations of all non-extinct native species, with management focused on maximizing the integrity, complexity, and resilience of the system. In practice this includes the return of bison, the proliferation of prairie dogs, the natural recolonization of grizzly bears, and much, much more. Part of a global movement to rewild the world around us and restore hope to conservation, our efforts focus on shifting land use practices, habitat restoration, and increasing social carrying capacity for wildlife.