The Grasslands of the United States. No other natural environment has enjoyed such a revered status in the history of the North American continent. From Texas to North Dakota, throughout the desert grasslands of the Great Basin, the tallgrass prairies of the Flint Hills, the lands where buffalo once roamed remain a powerful symbol of all that is America, yet they are one of the most endangered ecosystems on the continent.

This unique survey of the environmental history of the grasslands in the United States explores the ecological, social, and economic networks enmeshing humans in this biome over the last 10,000 years.

"Treeless, level, and semi-arid." Walter Prescott Webb's famous description of the Great Plains is really only part of their story. From their creation at the end of the Ice Age to the ongoing problems of depopulation, soil erosion, polluted streams, and depleted groundwater aquifers, human interaction with the prairies has often been controversial.

Part of ABC-CLIO's Nature and Human Societies series, The Grasslands of the United States: An Environmental History explores the historical and ecological dimensions of human interaction with North America's grasslands. Examining issues as diverse as whether the arrival of the Paleo-Indians led to the extinction of the mammoth and the consequences of industrialization and genetically modified crops, this invaluable reference synthesizes literature from a wide range of authoritative sources to provide a fascinating guide to the environment of this biome.

• 44 pages of original documents such as the Homestead Act (1862) and the Taylor Grazing Act (1934), Yellow Wolf’s concerns with the disappearance of bison (1847), testimony of Kiowas as they sought to protect their reservation, to excerpts from Ron Arnold, one of the main advocates of the Wise Use Movement
• Each chapter and case study comes complete with corresponding illustrations, maps, charts, or tables