I love Jarid Manos. I am resisting using all caps but you know I really want to yell here. Okay not resisting: LOVE HIM. LOVE. True heart, true hero. Amazing writer. From Grist.org:.
Q: What does your organization do?
A: Out here in flyover country, our prairies and plains have been so devastated they have been left for dead. Our region was once one of the most profusely abundant, in terms of ecosystem lushness and volume of life, ever to exist on terrestrial earth. Unfortunately, our region's recent human history has largely been written in bloodshed, suffering, and sorrow.
But out of the ashes, people from all colors, cultures, and communities are now coming together to protect our remaining intact lands and restore and reconnect others. There is too much violence in the world, and the violence people do to the earth mirrors the violence people do to each other. Our inner-city youth and Indian reservation youth share many of the same social challenges, but rarely interact. They understand the similarities between their own social devastation and the ecological devastation of our prairie. By working to heal the earth, they heal themselves, while developing leadership skills and technical expertise needed to survive and thrive in this world and go forward.
Right now, our Great Plains native wildlife still face aerial gunning, spring-loaded cyanide guns, massive prairie dog poisoning campaigns, killing contests, overgrazing, desertification, bulldozing, and more. Grassland bird populations, which need healthy native prairies to nest (and rest during their long to-and-from flights to Central and South America) are crashing. There are no free-roaming buffalo anywhere, including Yellowstone National Park, where the animals are prevented from coming out of the mountains down onto ancestral High Plains terrain. The great prairie dog ecosystem, once 5 billion strong -- the coral reef in the sea of grass, and so important to over 160 native animals -- has been killed down to less than a scattered 3 percent. Meanwhile, the last vestiges of tallgrass prairie ecosystems are facing the bulldozer or plow.
But GPRC, through its Buffalo Commons movement, has put forth a new ethic of ecological identity and ecological health, where people work to restore the health of themselves, their community, and their natural environment, proudly steeped in returning life to a gasping land.