At the tip of the Tall Grass Prairie

    Once every two years members of the prairie community gather to compare notes and celebrate the landscape they love and care for.   This year all roads lead to Manitoba, at the northern tip of the Tall Grass Prairie. The 23^rd North American Prairie Conference will meet Aug. 6 to 10 in Winnipeg.  We preview the conference in our spring issue.  In fact, we’ve put those stories into a special online edition available for download. 

    Here’s the link:  http://www.woodlandsandprairies.com/2012-spring.pdf.

    The conference isn’t just for serious students of prairies.  There will be topics of interest to anyone who wants to know more about prairies. Activities for children are included.  On one of the field trips you’ll see big bluestem and many wildflowers at their peak in a tall grass prairie preserve in the Red River Valley.  You could make the conference part of a fun and fact-filled family vacation.   Even if you can’t go, our preview could add to your appreciation of the incredible biodiversity of this continent shared by Canadians and Americans and our neighbors to the south.          

Will another grassland bite the dust?

A recent series by National Public Radio on the mining boom in Mongolia brought to mind the story in our winter issue by Kayla Koether, who in 2010-11 spent five months in the country living with nomadic herders.  In her story she mentions the mining industry as one of the threats to a way of life and to the health of the grasslands that have supported herdsmen for centuries.   NPR’s series tells how mining jobs are drawing young people away from herding in a country where traditionally two out of every five Mongolians make their living herding goats, sheep, and camels.  Meanwhile, competition increases for underground water.  Herders need the water in times of drought, and the mining industry needs it to process its minerals.  Fears mount that an industry that might last no more than a hundred years will destroy grasslands that have endured for thousands of years.  A way of life would bite the dust as well.   Kayla lived with herders in the steppe region north of the main mining activity in the Gobi Provinces, which are a mix of desert and grasslands.  However, the effects of the mining boom reverberate through all of the grasslands.  We’ve made Kayla’s story available in a special reprint that you access online.

 http://www.woodlandsandprairies.com/Mongolia-reprint.pdf

Here is a link to the NPR series.

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/24/152842270/old-ways-disappearing-in-the-new-mongolia