Great Plains Restoration Council

Great Plains Restoration Council

Our once 1.3-million-acre Fort Worth Prairie ecosystem is now one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America.  The Fort Worth Prairie Park (FWPP), led by Great Plains Restoration Council (GPRC) is a public-private initiative that protects and restores the endangered native Fort Worth Prairie system, its globally threatened biodiversity, and its long-term health and viability for people and wildlife, where people can hike in an easily accessible, wild open prairie perserve safeguarding the natural "Where the West Begins" ecosystem values upon which Fort Worth was founded.

Playing a vital role in this protection are Restoration Not Incarceration™ participating youth who are provided paid outdoor green jobs and natured-based work therapy, Ecological Health Education, and life and job skills training to help them build the personal tools to “become more unbreakable” and navigate forward past social and emotional distress. Ecological Health, the innovative education model that GPRC created with the help of national funders, is defined as “the interdependent health of people, animals and ecosystems.” 

Ecological restoration of existing conserved lands plus preservation of new adjacent lands in the Benbrook Lake area in southwest Fort Worth is allowing the creation of a large public Fort Worth Prairie preserve in North Texas with thousands of acres for the community to enjoy. The FWPP is preserving one of the largest remaining tracts of native tallgrass prairie in North Texas and further establishes our community as a leading national epicenter of Ecological Health, where people take care of their own mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health through taking care of the living Earth.

Using education and advocacy, community engagement, and literature, film, and the arts, we advance the national conversation around protecting the Earth as a matter of our own health and well-being. GPRC combines three elements in our program:  1.)  trust-and-motivation based social work  2.) skills training in nature 3.)  ecological recovery and protection and personalizing the meaningful nature of all three. Program participating youth are the essential drivers in the restoration of the Prairie, especially the federal lands component, through their clearing of choking trees and overgrown brush, removal of invasive species, propagating plantings of natives, streamside, and watershed work. 

Migrating grassland nesting birds and recently Endangered-listed Monarch butterfly populations are crashing, and resident native Fort Worth Prairie wildlife have less and less habitat. The native Fort Worth Prairie ecosystem is critical to the intercontinental spring and fall bird and Monarch butterfly migrations and unique biodiversity that come together here. Eastern meadowlarks, dickcissels, grasshopper sparrows, loggerhead shrikes, Audubon caracaras (Mexican eagles), bobwhite quail, nearly extirpated prairie Fort Worth Prairie beaver, bobcats, aquatic wildlife like narrowmouth toads, other amphibians, warm water fishes, reptiles, turkeys, bobcats, and so many others all thrive here in a unique prairie plant community that itself is highly biodiverse, with sub-habitat communities of Southern Tallgrass Prairie, Mixed Grass, and shallow-soils Prairie Barrens that explode in waves of wildflower super blooms each spring. The Fort Worth Prairie Park (FWPP) conservation area is still large enough for full ecosystem processes and larger wildlife.

Looking ahead to 2025, with supporting funds and other collaborators, GPRC will continue to hire, train, and support local adjudicated youth involved with the Tarrant County justice system and social & emotional-stressed youth from Everman ISD’s Pathways Program, as well as youth participants from our 2024 crew to participate in the restoration of the FWPP.  GPRC will also continue public education and advocacy for the important community values of taking care of the Fort Worth Prairie as a matter of our own health.