Summer                                                             First Harvest Moon

Make no little plans.  Daniel Burnham

The American Prairie Reserve fits Burnham, a macro-thinking architect of Chicago.  This is a plan to knit together lands under public management by a private foundation’s purchase of lands from willing sellers.  The goal:  an intact grasslands eco-system, 3,000,000 acres in size, the size conservation biologists estimate is necessary to preserve what was once a dominant ecology in the middle and western U.S.

They’re well on their way as the maps below can show.

A similar idea that I recall from a NYT magazine article years ago is the Buffalo Commons. And the wikipedia information. Apparently it still has some life, too.  It was in part a response to the unsustainable agricultural practices in the mapped area.

And, there’s one I hadn’t heard about, the Western Wildway.  See maps below.

IMAGINE

a grassland reserve of THREE-MILLION acres – a wildlife spectacle that rivals the Serengeti and an AWE-INSPIRING place for you and your children to explore.

Imagine helping to
build a national treasure.

Two maps, the bottom map is current.