Very successful work day in Austin. Just got two big breakthroughs. First I got the Texas General Land Office to agree to give us at least 3 years for the critically endangered tallgrass Fort Worth Prairie Park if we can find the anchor buyer. What that means is our team doesn’t have to come up with the whole $21 million all at once to save it from the developers. The Fort Worth Prairie Park is part of the most endangered major ecosystem in North America, and serves as a vital refuge for severely impacted and threatened wildlife and children.
The other, even bigger success is we just got Texas Parks and Wildlife to finally agree to take the first steps toward freedom and clemency for the surviving imprisoned native Texas buffalo (not that they ever did anything wrong except want to be left alone to roam, but that is another story). Imprisoned are 63 individual animals with ancient, purebred lineage, all that is left from the 4 million member herd, stuck in a 330 acre cage and losing their ancestral herd culture and behavior, not to mention going crazy from the confinement. The fact that the old hook-and-bullet agency, now headed by a new E.D., Carter Smith, is ready to partner with GPRC on landscape-scale protections and acknowledges the value of GPRC’s work to blend social work with ecological recovery and protections shows major progress for Texas
As for the buffalo, those big beautiful black animals who have suffered so much, at least one family group (for starters) will soon have thousands of wild acres to stretch their legs and souls and heartbeats again after they are released into a first portion of our new 12,000 acre Cynthia Ann Parker Wilderness preserve, which is about 200 miles northwest of Fort Worth. We’re partnering with Foard County and Pease Rivers Partners. We expect to be able to expand in size. This work is a step toward something much bigger, not just in additional acreage but cross-culturally among people, from rural and urban, people of many different colors, cultures, ages and communities coming together for some good hard work and exciting progress. And this summer, our hood kids and our rez kids will meet out there for the Youth Summit!
GHETTO PLAINSMAN is a "tough, beautifully written and deeply spiritual story of redemption and healing through America's underbelly and soul, from a rural childhood to the inner city streets to the even more violent outback of the American West. With comparisons to such classics as DOWN THESE MEAN STREETS and MANCHILD IN THE PROMISED LAND, GHETTO PLAINSMAN is not only a new literary classic, but has survival implications for everyone and our endangered Earth." 
April 2, 2008
blog