Mixed-Grass Prairie Along Badlands National Park’s Northern Boundary

Badlands National Park sits at the edge of a mixed-grass prairie ecosystem, one of the largest protected tracts of this habitat remaining in the United States. The park's 244,000 acres include roughly 64,000 acres of designated wilderness, where grasslands like these transition into the eroded buttes and spires the park is known for. These prairies support bison, bighorn sheep, and the black-footed ferret, reintroduced here in 1994 after near-extinction. The grasses and wetland pockets also help anchor the fragile, fast-eroding sedimentary rock that defines the surrounding badlands terrain.

Taken July 2019