‘Rewilding the West’ for Eco-Tourists

Travel Blog  •  Joanna Kakissis  •  06.11.08 | 11:00 AM ET

imageThe Great Plains may be regarded as something of an “emptied prairie,” at least in my under-appreciated childhood home of North Dakota, but conservationists are transforming the land into an American steppe wonderland for nature lovers, Joshua Kurlantzick writes in The New York Times. The revived prairie is already attracting thousands of tourists keen on prairie wildlife safaris to spot American bison, mountain lions and pronghorn antelope.

I love it.

I just wish we would have thought of this 20 years ago, when I spent my teen years in eastern NoDak thinking that my thrill-seeking options were limited to riding oil rigs and cranking up Journey while driving along yellowy flatlands almost swallowed up by the big sky. I would have dug a bison safari.

Photo by Nicholas_T via Flickr (Creative Commons).

Tags: Eco Travel, News and Briefs

Joanna Kakissis's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The Washington Post, among other publications. A contributor to the World Hum blog, she's currently a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the University of Colorado in Boulder.


1 Comment for ‘Rewilding the West’ for Eco-Tourists

Jack from eyeflare.com 06.11.08 | 2:01 PM ET

Hopefully this endeavor will be met with an influx of eco-travelers as well.

There’s far too few places in the world where we can still see wild nature and most is certainly more difficult than North Dakota to reach. I’m thinking Russia’s Kamchatka, Brazil’s Pantanal, etc.

Maybe I’ll even visit the Mid-West again after this!

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