American Prairie is building one of the largest nature reserves in the United States, a connected landscape of more than 3.2 million acres in Montana’s Great Plains. Founded on the vision of reconnecting an already-fragmented prairie ecosystem, the organization assembles land through a patchwork of ownership models and then manages it as a single, continuous wildlife reserve.
The foundation’s work rests on five pillars: assembling the land, focusing on biodiversity, collaborating with non-profits, Indigenous communities, neighbors, and federal and state land managers, and sharing the landscape with the public through the National Discovery Center and a robust field school. Temperate grassland prairie is one of the most endangered ecosystems in North America, and the reserve aims to demonstrate that it can still be preserved at scale. American Prairie is also setting what it describes as the gold standard for bison conservation in North America, with active bison restoration, swift-fox reintroduction work, and ongoing partnerships with Tribal Nations on cultural and ecological restoration.
The organization is donor-funded and headquartered in Montana.
