It’s a foggy October morning at The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies, located in south central Nebraska.  I’m struggling to keep up with Mike Schrad as he treks through tall, shirt-soaking grasses in search of the Sherman live traps he placed the night before. Schrad picks up the first four of these small, aluminum boxes […]

The barn is dusty. And cold. It’s winter at The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC) Platte River Prairies near Alda, Neb. Chris Helzer orients a group of staff and volunteers to the day’s task: mixing seed for grassland restoration.

The Platte River Basin is expansive and diverse. One of my favorite parts of this geography is Phantom Canyon, a small preserve nestled into the land where the mountains meet the plains, in the Laramie Foothills of northern Colorado. Driving in, we nearly always spot pronghorn moving across the land, their soft brown eyes and […]