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Global Trends In Private Protected Areas And Their Implications For The Northern Great Plains, Jeff Langholz

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Like many parts of the world, the Northern Great Plains faces immense challenges to sustainable land use. Privately owned conservation areas have emerged as a potential solution. This article reviews five global trends in so-called private protected areas and discusses their implications for the Northern Great Plains. The trends point to five recommendations to the Northern Great Plains community: (1) act now to tap rapidly growing policy support; (2) combine many models, including private protected areas that are owned by individuals and groups, formal and informal, large and small, and are dedicated to strict protection as well as sustainable use; …

Cattle Ranching And Biodiversity Conservation As Allies In South America’S Flooded Savannas, Almira Hoogesteijn, Rafael Hoogesteijn

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Cattle ranching in Latin America supports wildlife conservation. Ranching probably represents one of the few land uses in which we can advance conservation goals. The approximately 950,000 km2 of Bolivian, Brazilian, Paraguayan, Colombian, and Venezuelan savannas that are privately owned and dedicated to meat production provide a model for conservation programs. We present a geographic and historical description that covers several centuries and ends with descriptions of seven successful cattle ranches (three in the Venezuelan Llanos and four in the Brazilian Pantanal) where cattle ranching, ecotourism, and wildlife conservation coexist. These three activities support each other: tourism creates additional income …

The Role Of Ecotourism In Biodiversity And Grassland Conservation In Botswana, Glyn Maude, Richard Reading

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Botswana has a variety of ecosystems, all of which support a multitude of wildlife species. The Kalahari is a vast semidesert that covers over 84% of the country. Grasslands along with scattered trees and drought-resistant undergrowth dominate large tracts of the Kalahari’s landscape. The northeastern Kalahari extends into the wetter environments of Botswana—the Okavango Delta, the Savuti, and the Chobe—within which grassland habitats support abundant wildlife species. Botswana is unique in that most of its biodiversity remains intact, with a higher percentage of its total landmass conserved than any other country. Botswana achieves this level of protection primarily through ecotourism, …

Conservation And Economic Lessons Learned From Managing The Namibrand Nature Reserve, Nils Odendaal, Danica Shaw

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The NamibRand Nature Reserve, located in southern Namibia, is a private nature reserve established to protect and conserve the unique ecology and wildlife of the southwest Namib Desert. At 172,200 ha, NamibRand is one of the largest private conservation areas in southern Africa. The reserve consists of 13 former livestock farms rehabilitated into a continuous natural conservation area and shares a 100 km border with the Namib-Naukluft National Park. The reserve is a model for private conservation in southern Africa, as it demonstrates holistic biodiversity conservation balanced with financial sustainability. Innovative approaches to resource management ensure that this critical area …

News And Notes Great Plains Studies (Spring 2010)

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

CONFERENCES

PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENT

CHARLES E. BESSEY AWARD

LESLIE HEWES AWARD

THE GREAT PLAINS DISTINGUISHED BOOK PRIZE

Conserving Mongolia’S Grasslands, With Challenges, Opportunities, And Lessons For North America’S Great Plains, Richard P. Reading, Don Bedunah, Sukh Amgalanbaatar

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Mongolia and North America contain expansive grassland ecosystems that remain sparsely populated, dominated by agriculture, and support relatively isolated human communities dependent on natural resources. Until recently Mongolians raised livestock using extensive pastoralism without seriously threatening most of the region’s biodiversity. Yet that changed rapidly following the recent transition from a communist, command-control economy to a democratic, free-market economy. The main challenges to protecting biodiversity on grasslands in Mongolia include overgrazing, poaching, mining, and inadequate management, training, and resources. Mongolia and the Great Plains both retain great opportunities for biodiversity conservation that could also benefit local people. Mongolia has begun …

Lessons Learned From Biodiversity Conservation In The Private Lands Of Laikipia, Kenya, Siva R. Sundaresan, Corinna Riginos

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Increasingly, private land around the world is being set aside for conservation. The Laikipia District in Kenya is one area where wildlife conservation has been relatively successful on privately owned lands. This region supports a higher diversity of large mammals than any other region in East Africa, yet only 2% of the district is formally protected. Land is mostly owned and managed by private ranchers or groups of Maasai families on “group ranches.” In most private ranches, wildlife conservation and tourism have become important sources of revenue over the last two decades. Wildlife, once merely tolerated, are now considered desirable …

The World’S Temperate Grasslands Conservation Priorities Great Plains Studies (Spring 2010)

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Plate 2. Identified priorities for conservation of the world’s temperate grasslands. Figure produced by Department of Geography, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, 2009.

Book Review: North For The Harvest: Mexican Workers, Growers, And The Sugar Beet Industry By Jim Norris, Maria S. Arbelaez

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

From its origins at the end of the 19th century, the American sugar beet industry has been linked to Mexican immigrant labor. Moreover, the painstaking job of thinning, topping, and harvesting the large and heavy beets became an almost entirely Mexican labor specialty by the turn of the 20th century. Betabeleros, as the Mexican and Mexican-American laborers were and are known, sojourned north from the borderlands to Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, South and North Dakota, Michigan, and Minnesota fields. In each of these states, the sugar beet industry willingly pursued immigrant labor to do the work while immigrant networks did …

Book Review: Prairie Dogs: Communication And Community In An Animal Society By C.N. Slobodchikoff, Bianca S. Perla, And Jennifer L. Verdolin, Daniel T. Blumstein

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Prairie dogs (genus Cynomys) are midsized ground squirrels and a sentinel of the Great Plains’ health. Where there are prairie dogs, there are predators. Where there are prairie dogs, the soil is turned over and aerated. Where there are prairie dogs, plant biodiversity is maintained by their intermittent disturbance. Sadly, prairie dogs are vilified by humans: they are shot, poisoned, drowned, sucked out of their burrows with high powered vacuums, and their habitats paved over and converted to housing and shopping centers. In this book, the authors tell us about their studies of social behavior and communication in Gunnison’s …

Book Review: Health Care In Saskatchewan: An Analytical Profile By Gregory Marchildon And Kevin O’Fee, Kelly Chessie

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Marchildon and O’Fee set out to provide a detailed description of the Saskatchewan health care system, integrating details of how health care is organized, funded, and delivered in this Canadian prairie province. To accomplish their goal of fostering a better understanding of the provincial health system and its inputs and outcomes, they walk their readers through a thicket of details, including standings on health status indicators; macrolevel organizational structures; financing and expenditures; range of services, resources and technologies; and a sample of semirecent health reforms. They then close with a brief assessment of the system’s performance.

What the authors attempt …

Book Review: Spirited Encounters: American Indians Protest Museum Policies And Practices By Karen Coody Cooper, Majel Boxer

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

In recent years a number of related academic fields have explored the connections between museums and Indigenous peoples. The growth in published monographs and edited volumes has in part been spurred on by the 2004 opening of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. This monograph raises significant questions and reveals numerous debates surrounding such issues as ownership and access to museum collections and archives; the repatriation of human remains, funerary items, and cultural patrimony; Native American traditional and modern art and art museums; the need for consultation and collaboration with Indigenous peoples and communities; and the …

Book Review: The Power Of The Texas Governor: Connally To Bush By Brian Mccall, Sean P. Cunningham

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

According to Brian McCall, a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives since 1991, the governorship of Texas is an office designed for individuals with the ability to project power in creative ways—beyond the mere execution of expressed authority, and with the complementary skill of a strong vision-casting and agenda-setting leadership style. Put another way, in The Power of the Texas Governor: Connally to Bush, McCall, who equates power to “a social game,” boldly claims that the Texas governorship stands as among the best laboratories for any study of human behavior. McCall attempts to use that laboratory to …

Book Review Of James Lovelock: In Search Of Gaia, By John Gribbin And Mary Gribbin, Robert F. Diffendal Jr.

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

My book review editor asked me what might be relevant to the Great Plains in a biography of James Lovelock, a book I’d suggested as worth reviewing in Great Plains Research. I assured him that much in it either is or should be relevant to the Great Plains and to science researchers working on studies of aspects of the Great Plains.

James Ephraim Lovelock, born on July 26, 1919, of fairly humble origins, did not do well in school, partly because he was dyslexic. In spite of this and other health problems over the years, he went on to …

Book Review: One Hundred Summers: A Kiowa Calendar Record By Candace S. Greene, Phillip Earenfight

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

In One Hundred Summers, Candace Greene examines a recently discovered bundle of heavily worn Kiowa calendar drawings by one of the great Kiowa calendar keepers, Silver Horn, now in the collections of the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (SNOMNH). The loose drawings, once bound in a ledger book, document events from 1828 to 1929, a period that brought unprecedented change to the Kiowas.

Greene opens her study with an introduction to the Kiowa calendar tradition, followed by two shorter chapters dealing specifically with Silver Horn’s calendar at the SNOMNH. Chapter 4 presents the 64 surviving sheets that …

Book Review: Strengths And Challenges Of New Immigrant Families: Implications For Research, Education, Policy, And Service Edited By Rochelle L. Dalla, John Defrain, Julie Johnson, And Douglas A. Abbott, Katherine Fennelly

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Strengths and Challenges of New Immigrant Families is a multidisciplinary compendium of articles and essays about immigrants and refugee families. Most (but not all) of the studies were conducted in the Great Plains states. The authors include academics, providers, and policy advocates. The work is well intentioned, but demonstrates the risks of compiling conference papers into a book; the result is a tome of variable quality. Indeed, in the introduction the editors acknowledge that it was a challenge “arranging the final manuscripts into a coherent whole.” That said, one value of the book is the inclusion of research on a …

Book Review: Transplanting The Great Society: Lyndon Johnson And Food For Peace By Kristin L. Ahlberg, R. Douglas Hurt

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

In 1954 the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act, commonly known as Public Law 480, established a new food aid program designed to eliminate agricultural surpluses and improve farm prices. Although Congress also intended it to expand foreign trade, encourage foreign economic development, and enhance the foreign policy of the United States, Lyndon Johnson used Public Law 480 as a political tool to extend the principles of the Great Society internationally and, most importantly, fight Communist expansion. Rechristened as the Food for Peace program in 1959, Lyndon Johnson later transformed it from a domestic agricultural policy to a foreign policy …

Book Review: Rewilding The West: Restoration In A Prairie Landscape By Richard Manning, Mace Hack

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Rewilding the West gives a first impression of being the story of an innovative conservation project—creation of a 3.5 million-acre wildlife preserve from both public and private lands, restocked with bison and other traditional Plains wildlife—in the Missouri Breaks of eastcentral Montana. However, Manning only devotes thirteen pages to the project at the end of the book, with a few additional references to it scattered throughout. Instead, he traces the history of the site, from the days of the bison to modern times. In doing so, he provides a fascinating and useful frame of reference for current conservation efforts in …

Book Review: Cranes: A Natural History Of A Bird In Crisis By Janice M. Hughes, Paul A. Johnsgard

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Janice Hughes’s research has mostly involved evolutionary studies of cuckoo-like birds. Thus I would not have expected her to produce what is easily the best account of America’s effort to save from extinction the whooping crane, one of our rarest and, arguably, most beautiful birds. Over the years there have been several book-length accounts of these efforts, by authors such as Robert Doughty, J.J. McCoy, Faith McNulty, and Jerome Pratt. None of these is as complete, as well written, or as compelling as this book. Additionally, it is the most up-to-date, bringing the story of the whooping crane’s recovery program …

Book Review: Lost Tracks: Buffalo National Park, 1909-1939 By Jennifer Brower, Alan Maceachern

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

Buffalo National Park stands as both a high and a low point in the history of the Canadian national park system. In 1908, it was created near Wainwright, Alberta, as a reserve, and soon a park, to house Plains bison being shipped from Montana; the park’s existence helped to restore the near-extinct species. The bison population grew too swiftly, in fact, leading to deteriorated range conditions and rampant tuberculosis. In a misguided attempt to alleviate this pressure, the Parks Branch in the 1920s shipped tubercular Plains bison to Wood Buffalo National Park, consequently infecting and hybridizing the purebred wood bison …