Southern Great Plains Conservation and Recreation Area
Great Plains Restoration Council (GPRC) has convened an A-team of executives from State agencies, conservation non-profits, foundations and banking to: “Establish a historic, landscape-scale shortgrass prairie preserve (up to 100,000 acres or more) in the Texas Panhandle for wild Texas bison, pronghorn, black-tailed prairie dogs, black-footed ferrets, elk, grassland nesting birds, swift foxes and more that also offers multicultural human engagement, including ancestral connections for Indigenous Kiowa and Comanche people.” Additionally, this will be a new kind of wild Park for America, explicitly interweaving human wellness, mental health, and personal recovery into conservation while addressing the extinction crisis.
According to Jarid Manos, GPRC’s Founder and CEO, “Sorrow and loss from the past can feel bottomless, but history is not over. We’re all in this together now. Through the audacity of hard work and loving more, we are bringing people together of all colors, cultures and communities to create the nation’s first-ever Southern Great Plains Conservation & Recreation Area in the Texas Panhandle and combine human wellness with biodiversity protection. This landscape-scale grassland conservation area out in America’s “Flyover Country” will breathe life back into the Texas High Plains, provide an extraordinary public refuge of sun, wind, grass and blue sky for wildlife and people that has to be experienced to be believed, and show what we can do when we tangibly work together.”
I was born upon the prairie, where the wind blew free and there was nothing to break the light of the sun. I was born where there were not enclosures and everything drew a free breath. I want to die there and not within walls.”
Listen to lonely meadowlark singing on the emptied Llano Estacado plain that should be filled with Southern bison, elk, antelope, prairie dogs, swift foxes, burrowing owls and a lot more.
(Please listen with headphones.)
While this project and video is focused on the Northern Plains, it is a good summary of the situation swift foxes face across the Great Plains, and swift foxes are one of our Texas Wildlife Action Plan Species of Special Concern.
“How They Killed The Buffalo” (August 1956, Volume 7, Issue 5) n:50822 — detailed account of 1870’s buffalo hunters coming down from southwestern Kansas to the Texas Panhandle; Adobe Walls / /Canadian River country (where the Turkey Track ranch is).
Harper’s Weekly originals we possess from 1877 and 1874 talking about the buffalo hunters from southwestern Kansas. They had a technique called “still hunting” where they would shoot the leader of the herd with a long-range Sharps .50 rifle, and then in the ensuing confusion be able to kill the entire herd.
Buffalo wolves (now-extinct Canis Lupus Nubilus) feeding on slaughtered buffalo left to rot on the Plains. Note the white coat color variation common to buffalo wolves in the Southern Plains.
Last (known) buffalo wolf shot in Texas in Palo Duro Canyon, white color coat variation (somewhat faded by time). Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, TX.
Black-tailed prairie dog, 1892.
“Herd of Buffalo Fleeing from Prairie Fire”, Meyer Strauss, 1888, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth.
Here’s an article from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission:
“Indian expulsion: Upon taking office, Lamar instituted an immediate change in Indian policy. Like most white Texans, Lamar did not accept the idea of coexistence with Indian tribes within Texas. Instead of Sam Houston’s policy of negotiation and conciliation, Lamar proposed to drive the Indians out of the areas of white settlement and to aggressively go after the Comanches.”
Vocabulary of the Kiowa Language (PDF) – from Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology