Stretching nearly 2500 miles from southern Canada to the Texas panhandle, the Great Plains lies atop an ancient inland sea that tilts gently eastward from the foot of the Rockies towards the Mississippi River valley and the humid deciduous forests of the East. It is a vast landscape formed over millions of years as the Rocky Mountains uplifted and stole moisture traveling from the Pacific, creating a more arid climate in its eastern shadow that favored grassland over trees. Just as sure as the mountains took away moisture they gave it back each spring in the form of snowmelt that washed out of the high peaks and onto the plains, carrying with it sediments that mixed with rubble left behind by continental glaciers and windblown loess, a fine mixture of silt, sand and clay that helped form the rich prairie soils and mold the landforms that exist today.

Until a century and a half ago, the Great Plains was perhaps the greatest grassland ecosystem on earth. Sixty to 70 million bison rumbled across its prairies in herds that stretched horizon to horizon, along with millions of pronghorn, elk and deer. Plains grizzlies and gray wolves roamed the vast grasslands and wooded corridors along prairie rivers and streams. An estimated five billion prairie dogs built towns that stretched for miles hosting a vast citizenry of prairie species that in turn fed a menagerie of predators like the golden eagle, ferruginous hawk, black-footed ferret, coyote and burrowing owl. There too were the great Plains Indian tribes like the Pawnee, Cheyenne and Sioux who along with their ancestors co-existed and weaved a delicate way of life in balance with the natural forces of the prairie and its endless cycle of seasons.

Today, the spirit of the these Great Plains remains firmly intact but its wildness is only a shadow of its former self, forever altered by man, first by westward expansion, then later by agricultural production and development. In the east, only tiny fragments survived the plow, small patches of virgin prairie that serve as living memorials often no larger than a few acres, usually surrounded by a road, housing development or cropland. In the west, its wildness exists in much larger spaces that may stretch for miles. Places like the 64,000 acre Sage Creek Wilderness area in Badlands National Park, the largest roadless tract of prairie left in the United States, or on private ranches that collectively make up the remote and scarcely inhabited Nebraska Sandhills, 19,000 square miles of intact mixed-grass prairie intermingled with groundwater-fed lakes, wetlands and streams. Yet even these places remain scattered: compromised and often unconnected islands of habitat susceptible to the pressures of a growing population.

But all is not lost on the prairie. These remaining wild places, large or small, still hold tremendous value. They are the last strongholds for many prairie species that hang onto an existence found nowhere else on earth. They are important natural laboratories for research. They are important reminders of our natural heritage and harbor the spirit of the prairie's magnificent past. They are important for their own sake.

The overriding goal of my work is to photograph and build appreciation for what is left of the wild Great Plains, trying to capture on film the fierce spirit and the unique and often overlooked beauty of the creatures and landscapes that still make up these wide-open spaces. Through this work I hope that in some small way the collective spirit of the land and its inhabitants will never be forgotten: that the wild lands that still exist remain left intact and forever preserved: and that someday even more of its wildness may be restored.

- Michael Forsberg

To learn more about the Great Plains ,
visit our links and resources page.
There you will find numerous organizations dedicated to Great Plains education and preservation.