America’s national grasslands dodge controversy, but for how much longer?

The United States’ network of federally managed grasslands has largely stayed out of the headlines as environmental battles rage elsewhere. But that could soon change.

Pawnee National Grassland is one place to keep an eye on as population and development pressures mount.

Few areas in the contiguous United States are more isolated than the far northeastern corner of Colorado, at least among those accessible by road.

By traveling straight north from Fort Morgan on Route 52, you quickly enter sparsely populated agricultural land and little else. You need to exercise additional caution in winter here—signs warn that the snowplows don’t cover this stretch of shoulder-less highway during the evening hours. If you get stuck in a snowbank, you’ll be spending the night there.

Things perk up somewhat when you hit Highway 14 and turn left into the tiny hamlet of New Raymer. By now, you have arrived at the official southern boundary of the eastern section of the Pawnee National Grassland. But your likely destination is still a ways away.

If your GPS is still working, it will direct you to zig-zag through the National Grassland, a route that takes you over patches of federal and private land and past the ghost town of Keota, until you’ve finally arrived at the Pawnee Buttes Trailhead an hour after setting out from Fort Morgan. This is where the vast majority of visitors to this section of the Grassland will be headed.

Vast, very windy, quiet (except for the wind), and hardly anyone else around, the Pawnee National Grassland was a lonely and somewhat unsettling place the December day Public Parks paid a visit.

Despite this impression, Pawnee is among the most heavily visited national grasslands under the National Forest Service’s care. The crowds are growing, and the National Forest Service thinks that this trend will continue for years to come.

“I grew up in rural Kansas,” said Reghan Cloudman, a public affairs specialist at the United States Forest Service, in an interview with Public Parks. “When I go out there…to me, it feels like you’re stepping back in history a little bit, like in talking about that isolation.”

Cloudman is the public affairs lead for the Arapahoe and Roosevelt National Forests and Pawnee National Grassland (PNG). She said she mainly keeps busy dealing with issues concerning the forests. The Pawnee National Grassland is comparatively sleepy, especially the eastern segment.

“The Buttes are really the only thing on the east side of the grassland, but on the west side we have that campground, we have a designated shooting area,” she said. The eastern segment hosts the Pawnee Buttes, the trail that leads to them, some picnicking and wild camping, watering areas for cattle and horses, and little else.

America’s National Grasslands are not exactly known as centers of hot environmental debate.

Hikers, campers, hunters, birders, photographers, oil and gas interests, and tribal authorities have all learned to use the Pawnee National Grassland and other such federally managed prairies harmoniously for decades. Thus far, this detente seems to be holding.

During our discussion with Cloudman, she left the impression that there are very few if any disputes at Pawnee National Grassland pitting energy developers against conservationists or recreation advocates.

Whether this peace holds, only time will tell.

The buttes that stand out of the plains like sore thumbs at Pawnee National Grassland are critical nesting grounds for hawks and eagles. Far to the north sit hundreds of wind power towers. Conservationists worry that any further expansion of wind energy north of these buttes could threaten species of raptors.

Another concern is habitat fragmentation. And with rising numbers of human visitors also comes the potential for human-wildlife conflicts.

There were preciously few humans or animals at Pawnee when Public Parks paid a visit. Cloudman assured us that this isn’t always the case. The number of human visitors is on the rise, she said.

More interest from commercial recreation, and conservation corners could follow. Energy developers have always had their eye on Pawnee.

“We continue to see all along the Colorado front range, the increase in recreational usage, along with the population growth,” Cloudman said. “We’re going to continue to have, you know, more and more recreational use on all national forest system lands here.”

Multiple uses, multiple claims to the land

The interior of North America was once dominated by huge swaths of prairie that stretched seemingly endlessly in every direction.

This was North America’s savanna, a biodiverse ecosystem dominated by shortgrass prairie at higher elevations, waist-high tall grass prairie at lower elevations.

Megafauna like bears and cougars hunted in portions of this vast prairie before humans chased these and other predators to higher ground. Most famously, the prairies were the domain of huge herds of bison.

All that has been lost. Today, agriculture has almost completely taken over.

These comparatively small and disassembled patches of federal grassland are all that remain of the once mighty North American savanna, and even these protected patches are turned over to cattle ranchers for grazing in warmer months. Pawnee also hosts cattle grazing for a fee.

It’s been a long, hard haul getting the public and lawmakers to value the importance of grasslands.

The Pawnee National Grassland was established as a soil conservation initiative following the 1930s Dust Bowl. It wasn’t originally intended as a shortgrass prairie conservation refuge per se, though that’s what it has evolved into.

Public sentiment for America’s grasslands is now fast changing.

Last October, the North American Grasslands Conservation Act was introduced to the US House of Representatives. A coalition of environmental interest groups pressed for its passage, arguing it would “kickstart the voluntary protection and restoration of grasslands and sagebrush-shrub steppe ecosystems—and the livelihoods and wildlife dependent on them.”

Some 45 separate organizations endorsed the Grasslands Act.

Interest in grasslands and the federal National Grasslands is clearly on the rise.

Thus far, these patches of protected zones have stayed out of the headlines, but that could change in the coming years.

There are competing demands on PNG and other national grasslands in the United States and with them the potential for conflict over public access, user rights, energy development, and more.

Cloudman said the mixed-use nature at Pawnee has been the reality there for some time.

Oil and gas companies need not drill directly on federal land. There are plenty of adjacent private patches to set their drilling rigs on, and horizontal drilling technology means these companies can access hydrocarbons underneath any part of the Pawnee. They are allowed to do so under permits provided that they pay royalties to the government.

Some legacy oil and gas infrastructure remains. But Cloudman said the last drilling activity at Pawnee occurred in 2013 when four wells were drilled.

Interest boomed at the height of the horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing revolution but quickly died out after an oil price crash. Most of the legacy wells at PNG have been plugged and abandoned, Cloudman said.

Oil and gas activity hasn’t come roaring back, not yet anyway. It remains to be seen whether future policies implemented by the forthcoming new White House administration will change things.

But so far, any politics involving the Pawnee National Grassland and others like it are as quiet and peaceful as this wind-swept prairie itself.

In our interview, Cloudman gave little indication of any conflicts underway or bubbling up between environmentalists, energy interests, tribal authorities, or other stakeholders interested in PNG. There were no major past controversies that she could point to, either.

“Unlike the park service, with this multiple-use mandate we have things like timber sales and grazing, along with recreation and protecting the wildlife,” she explained. “So we have all of these very different things that we’re out there managing for.”

Image: Pawnee National Grassland, Colorado. Nathanial Gronewold, Public Parks.

Keeping an eye on PNG

Representatives from various regional environmental groups have confirmed that they are unaware of any pressing controversies involving PNG or other national grasslands. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have their eye on these public spaces.

Environmental advocates are paying attention to how the national grasslands are or are not being effectively managed.

PNG is popular with birders. Birds of prey nest in portions of the Pawnee Buttes area not far from the main trail. Signs warn that some of the side trails are closed in spring to protect nesting raptors.

The existence and possible expansion of wind power farms so close to PNG is leading some to worry about negative consequences for birds of prey.

The wind towers that can be seen in the distance just north of the Pawnee Buttes sit on private land; thus, the Forest Service is powerless to do anything about them.

Others expressed concern over prairie dog colonies that call the prairies of PNG home. They may be less than pleased to learn that the Forest Service regulates seasonal prairie dog hunting, though fall pronghorn hunting is far more popular, Cloudman said.

The main concern over PNG and other federally protected grasslands involves habitat fragmentation, an ongoing problem for habitat and species conservation globally.

A 2017 study of the energy and road infrastructure at the Pawnee National Grassland, led by Chris Baynard of the University of North Florida, concluded that the energy development there hasn’t necessarily devastated wildlife habitat. However, that same study found that energy infrastructure and the road network have left PNG badly fragmented, leaving very few uninterrupted swaths of grassland habitat.

“While oil and gas and wind energy development has resulted in a relatively small amount of habitat loss within the study area,” Baynard wrote, “the footprint stretches across the entire zone, fragmenting this mostly grassland habitat.”

Fragmentation is particularly pronounced in the eastern segment where the Pawnee Buttes are found.

Roads, oil and gas infrastructure, and wind towers combined “fragment the entire Pawnee National Grassland’s eastern side, leaving very few large, intact, core or roadless areas,” Baynard said.

Cloudman conceded that PNG is heavily fragmented. The maps she provided to Public Park confirm this. It’s the consequence of how the federal government acquired tracts of land for the purpose of soil conservation—some landholders sold, others didn’t.

Today, the Pawnee National Grassland is comprised of a checkerboard of federal, state, and private lands. The publicly accessible buttes trail even crosses private property at one segment.

The Pawnee Buttes are the main attraction in the eastern segment of PNG.

The trail, adjacent areas, the Buttes themselves, and the picnicking facilities found at the trailhead sit on federal land. The exception is the farthest eastern butte, as a map provided by NFS shows that at least half of it sits on private land.

Wild camping is permitted here, as well, but campers are warned to keep far enough away from the trail and scenic buttes without inadvertently straying onto private land.

The boundaries between public and private lands aren’t marked anywhere, further complicating things. NFS recommends taking a map with you.

All quiet on the prairie?

America’s national grasslands are more than just stores of energy resources or fun places to hike and view wildlife.

Federally owned grasslands “provide ecosystem services worth trillions of dollars,” George Washington University law professor Robert Glicksman wrote in a 2018 edition of the Kansas Journal of Law and Public Policy.

Glicksman’s article provides a laundry list of ecosystem services PNG and other protected grasslands have to offer.

“These include seed dispersal, mitigation of droughts and floods, nutrient cycling, control of pests and disease-carrying organisms, maintenance of biodiversity and wildlife habitat, soil preservation, climate stabilization, watershed and water body protection, pollination, carbon sequestration, and recreational opportunities,” he said.

His paper emphasizes the threats climate change poses to the grasslands.

Cloudman mentioned the potential for wildfires in PNG, a threat that her colleagues must keep vigilant about. She estimated that barely five people at the NFS office in Fort Collins are responsible for managing the nearly 200,000-acre (81,000 hectares) Pawnee National Grassland full-time, but they get help when needed.

Glicksman argues that the federal government must organize grassland management strategies with climate change at the center of the picture.

He suggests establishing protected zones at national grasslands completely off-limits to any activities that may exacerbate global warming, a clear allusion to oil and gas extraction, though his paper doesn’t directly call out the oil and gas industry.

“Management strategies under consideration should include exclusion of or restrictions on uses likely to exacerbate the threats posed by climate change to healthy grasslands,” Glicksman wrote.

Cloudman said there are to date no strict off-limits areas in PNG.

Surface disruptions to the grassland are regulated and restricted, but oil companies can avoid the red tape necessary to cut through these restrictions by simply drilling horizontally from private lands.

She said there are no mechanisms in place to set aside strict conservation-only areas of the grassland to compensate for portions lost to energy development.

Though the National Forest Service is the main authority at the grassland, the actual management of it is shared.

NFS works with Weld County to control invasive plants threatening parts of PNG. Maintaining wildlife habitat in the grassland is the Forest Service’s responsibility, but the management of the wildlife is the purview of Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

Federally led conservation of America’s grasslands is a mixed bag, and this situation is likely to persist for some time. The Pawnee National Grassland is the embodiment of this approach.

Mixed recreation and hunting use is the norm at PNG. Energy development has a place, though it’s moribund there for the time being.

For years, private landholders and the State of Colorado have learned to get along with the National Forest Service as their neighbors at the Pawnee. Outdoor enthusiasts and oil and gas workers come and go as needed without any fuss.

Will this peace last?

The world is facing a biodiversity crisis. The US population is rising, and the crowds are getting larger at the Pawnee and other national grasslands. Oil prices may tick up, or newer technology and more industry-friendly regulations could see Texas oil companies once again turning their attention to this corner of northeastern Colorado.

But for now, there are no signs of stormy political weather appearing on the horizon.“It’s not like anything new is that is happening on necessarily national forest system lands,” Cloudman said. “We don’t really have any proposals coming from, you know, outside entities, proponents, saying, hey, we want to do this project.”