The Southern High Plains Initiative

The Southern High Plains cover a staggering 71 million acres (that’s slightly larger than the state of Colorado). Home to pronghorn, bighorn sheep, grassland birds and more, the Southern High Plains contains large, connected natural areas and watersheds. The region includes more than 30 million acres of intact prairie grasslands, cliffs and canyons, forests and riparian corridors along rivers and streams with high conservation value. TNC is working with partners to conserve a network of lands and waters across state boundaries that will boost climate resilience, preserve biodiversity and support sustainable agricultural communities.

Grasslands May Be Underappreciated—But They’re Critical for Life

As a result of grasslands being less loved than some of their more dramatic counterparts—picture the craggy peaks of the Rocky Mountains—there is often less funding, support and excitement around protecting grasslands. This has led to wide-scale disruption and conversion of native grasslands. While there have been dedicated efforts across the country to preserve these places, it hasn’t happened at the scales we need to protect the diversity of life that thrives in grasslands.

Chris Hise, associate director of conservation for TNC in Oklahoma, agrees. “There's a tendency to look at grasslands as a resource to be exploited and not one that needs to be protected,” says Hise. “We've seen pretty tremendous losses over the years, and the time is now to circle the wagons and protect them at a scale that we haven't done so far in the Great Plains.”

Finding Solutions to Shared Challenges

Of course, there are challenges to conserving land at a large enough scale to make a difference. Landscapes, ecosystems and wildlife do not adhere to state boundaries. The Southern High Plains Initiative brings together TNC leaders and partners from across five states.

“What we’re focused on in this landscape is that 20% that’s left,” explains Matt Bain, Western Kansas Conservation Manager for TNC. “That 20% fuels a multi-billion-dollar beef industry in Kansas and is critically important to ranching economies. It's the ranchers who are taking care of what’s left of the last wild places in Kansas. You can’t go on conserving that 20% without partnership with ranchers.”

People who work on the land have strong connections to it and are critical to any successful conservation strategy. 

Partnerships are what will power this initiative to reach its ambitious goals. By working closely with local communities, land trusts, and others who know and depend on the land, we can support projects already happening on the ground and link them together as part of a broader vision.

“Being able to work across borders on these projects and take advantage of the staff capacity and funding to get a broader regional ecosystem approach is essential to the success of protecting this area,” says Bob Findling, director of conservation projects for TNC in New Mexico. 

A Turning Point for Conservation

This opportunity to work together in the Southern High Plains comes at a key time in the history of land protection. The world is suffering massive ecosystem degradation, unprecedented wildlife decline and extinctions—all in the face of climate change. This has spurred a large movement for land protection.

Through protecting habitat, we can help the world’s species be more resilient to climate change and other human disturbances, such as pollution or agriculture. To have the greatest impact on biodiversity, we need to protect lands with a variety of habitat that support wildlife now and into the future. TNC has developed a mapping tool to identify exactly those places in the U.S., called the Resilient Connected Network.

The Southern High Plains is a high priority within the Resilient Connected Network. This region has the most opportunity for conserving large, connected landscapes that can allow flora and fauna to move and adapt to climate change. The resilient areas in the Southern High Plains are only 11% conserved today.

By building on TNC’s work around the globe, we can make a big impact in the Southern High Plains.

Connecting the Dots for Conservation and Climate

As we focus on land protection at a massive scale, climate change is at the forefront of planning. In this region, more renewable energy development is on the horizon. A major piece of the puzzle in protecting connected lands will be to plan strategically where the best places are for renewable energy to be built.

Protecting land at this scale would also help ecosystems build resilience to climate change impacts. By focusing on current and future wildlife migration corridors and dispersal patterns, we can provide wildlife the space and variety in habitat that they need to adapt to changing climate conditions.

“In a dry climate like the Southern High Plains, nature doesn’t work at the level of a single property. You need acres and acres to create corridors for plants and animals to change with the climate, to ebb and flow, to provide nature what it needs,” says Matt Moorhead, with TNC in Colorado.

For the benefits to wildlife, the climate and the communities that live in the region, it is crucial to come together and conserve the Southern High Plains. With TNC staff in all five states working together, we have already accomplished some big successes that would not have been possible without this combined effort. This opportunity for conservation at the scale of the landscape is unique, and our efforts are gaining momentum.