Grass-tory: A history of the indigenous.

Upon attendance of a talk by Dwayne Estes, PhD, I came to the understanding that grasslands in the Eastern part of the USA have been grateful undervalued, and under represented in the fight for conservation.

Consider this: our land was inhabited as cleared plains by those settling and growing crops, these plains were then destroyed in terms of soil quality and biodiversity due to over planting, conservation efforts focused on reforesting brought normalcy to trees growing where crop growing was no longer sustainable. Then, the grasslands were no more.

If this is not the case, then why are only 33% of species forest dependent in this region of the USA, while a significantly larger part of the region is forested through conservation efforts?

We must revisit these conservation efforts, that began before the Civil War, and focus on restoring grasslands (prairies, savannas, meadows) to succeed in carbon retention and native ecology restoration. Over 50% of terrestrial biodiversity lives in a grassland habitat, who knew!?