Tough Challenges In America's Heartland

National Wildlife, June-July, 2000

Over the years, Jim Brandenburg has gone to remarkable lengths to photograph wild wolves and other creatures in some of North America's most rugged terrain. So what does he consider his most difficult pictorial challenge?

"Wildlife is never easy, but I think grasslands just may be the toughest subject I've taken on," says the celebrated photographer. "Unlike more majestic scenic places such as the Rocky Mountains, prairies have an elusiveness and a subtle beauty that is hard to capture on film. I know. I've been trying on and off for the past 40 years to tell the story of America's vanishing grasslands with my camera."

Brandenburg (left), who now lives in Minnesota's North Woods, grew up in the southwestern corner of the state where prairie grasses once dominated the landscape. "Like elsewhere in the nation's heartland, much of the grassland habitat where I was born is now gone," he says. "It breaks my heart."

In this issue, you can see some of the results of Brandenburg's photographic efforts in the article "Little Habitat on the Prairie" on page 52. "It was once the country's largest ecosystem," he says. "Now it may be the most endangered."

You can also read about another unique American ecosystem in this issue: the bottomland hardwood forests of the lower Mississippi River Basin, which support some of the nation's richest wildlife habitat. Three quarters of a century ago, author William Faulkner immortalized these so-called Big Woods in novels set in the region.

As the article "Where River Flows Through Forest" on page 38 explains, however, only about a fifth of the original 24 million acres of these seasonally flooded woodlands still remain. And some of that remaining acreage is now the target of proposed federal water projects that could dramatically alter the landscapes. "We're talking about irreplaceable resources," says one wildlife refuge manager. The Editors