Today's intersection: grasslands disappearing as grazing expands

An increasing number of scientists believe the US Fish and Wildlife Service isn't doing enough to crack down on red states that flout or simply ignore protections for vulnerable species so now some 80% of original grassland ecosystems are gone. 

Ag producers have destroyed shelter belts to plant industrial crops that deplete aquifers and now drought is blowing toxin-laden topsoil into downwind states. Another early spring wildfire season has begun in Nebraska, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, the panhandles of Oklahoma, Texas and other Republican-held areas where moral hazard and poor ranching practices routinely decimate the high plains. In the last 10 years alone, we have lost more than 50 million acres of grasslands.

Habitat loss from factors such as agricultural conversion and invasive species, compounded by climate change, threaten the health of grasslands. Agricultural cultivation, development, and invasive species have led to a loss of at least 80% of these grasslands, including a loss of 99% of tallgrass prairie. Of the 20% of Great Plains grasslands that remain undisturbed, 93% of it is unprotected and at risk of conversion. Conversion of grasslands to agriculture and forests is reducing biodiversity, and invasive grass species, which account for 13-30% of the grass species in the Great Plains, further influence biodiversity loss. When native grasslands disappear, so do the benefits they provide. [Grasslands are being lost at a far faster pace than they are being conserved.]

South Dakota's governor is a committed Earth hater and the legislature is dominated by Republicans who ignore the effects of the Anthropocene so lobbyists like the American Farm Bureau Federation and Americans for Prosperity are lining up again to stuff their pockets with cash.

Geoffrey Gray-Lobe is a county commissioner and board member with the Clay County Park, a few hundred acres along the Missouri River where South Dakotans can camp, boat, picnic and hike. He has led the effort to convert about 30 acres of the park into native prairie. The site is part of 125 acres the park has been renting to farmers for years. Gray-Lobe said he did some research and found the park could more than double the rent it charges on the land. [Most American prairies are gone. These people are working to bring them back]

The reasoning is hardly mysterious: it's all about the money hunting and subsidized grazing bring to the South Dakota Republican Party depleting watersheds and smothering habitat under single-party rule. South Dakota's experiment introducing an exotic species has just not been able to keep up breeding a bird unable to adapt to the state's brutal weather and climate science-denying legislature. 

In January Earth hater Doug Burgum pulled the Bureau of Land Management leases from American Prairie. In February BLM and Forest Service bumped the Animal Unit Month or AUM lease to $1.69 from $1.35 for one cow and her calf, one horse, or five sheep or goats for a month.

Leaders from several government agencies and organizations joined together to discuss working together for improving cattle grazing opportunities, as U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to launch the Grazing Action Plan. [MOU Signed to Expand Federal Grazing]

Instead, the United States should rewild the high plains by connecting the CM Russell Wildlife Refuge in Montana along the Missouri River to Oacoma, South Dakota combined with corridors from Yellowstone National Park to the Yukon in the north and south to the Canadian River through Nebraska, eastern Colorado, western Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas.