Theodore National Park South Unit

We are at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, South Unit this time, its beauty is just incredible.

As I took this photo of Pat I started to cry.

The Buttes and vast Badlands

 As we sat looking out at the beauty of the N. Dakota Badlands I could see how Roosevelt found solace here living in this stark vivid place. He left NY soon after his first wife and mother died on the same day and built a small ranch. Roosevelt as most of you know was a progressive Republican who established the US Forest Service and signed the 1906 Antiquities Act which proclaimed 18 National Monuments, he worked with congress to create 5 National Parks, 150 National Forests and dozen of federal reserves-over 230 million acres of protected land...Pat says he was the president who established Anti-Trust Laws; now we have a president and his big business appointees who wants to take away some of our children's future heritage and who ignore a promise we made to the rest of the world to fight Climate Change.  I am sorry but it makes me sad (and mad) and so I am speaking up again today. Unfortunately the hikes are out to the Petrified Forest because it is 100 degrees, going up to 102 today.  I understand the HOUSE did declare Climate change a real threat and they are using national security as the reason.  I celebrate that even though I think they should be using the fact that Climate Change threatens all Earth's biodiversity and so threatens all life on Earth.  Before we set up camp we drove around and found some great photos...someday I will get a zoom lens for my phone (no electricty or water so you can imagine how hot we were and the generator was still not working right.  You can only use generators during certain hours in parks. Eliza the cat and I were truly suffering.  I was worried my knees would start to swell.)
See the wild horses from the ranch in a prairie dog field.  A heard ob bison.  We had to follow one great ugly fellow down the road and Pat commented his ass was prettier than his face.

You can't see the yellow hats Nancy L, but they are there getting rid  of invasive plants.

We heard coyote cry at the moon last night and we know elk, mule and white tailed deer, badgers, bighorn sheep and pronghorn antelope are many of the other mammals that find refuge in this harsh land. Yesterday and today we saw two instances of science aiding the mission of National Parks.  National Parks are refuges for wildlife, places for adventure-wish it wasn’t so damn hot, preserving our heritage, our shared history and culture (if we ever get back this way, we aren’t going to miss Knife River Indian Villages north of Bismarck because they have the remains of Hidastsa Village and every year I worked at Hobbs I grew the 3 Sisters, children came and planted Red Popcorn or Blue Dwarf Hopi Corn (plot is small), various squash and a Native American Bean like the Cherokee Trail of Tears or the Hidasta Shield Bean.

I write a lot about history, culture and nature, but rarely about science so this is for Nancy Lynch, Nancy Hunter and all my science friends.

Nancy Lynch told me Katharine is working leading groups in irradiating invasive species in Colorado, a whole team of volunteers were out here today in this heat burning out something called spurge today and that is so native species will have a fighting chance to come back into the habitats that support the wildlife.

You saw the picture of the huge bison herd.  Bison almost became extinct in 1900s in North America; the herd at TR National Park came about from a relatively isolated group, this impacts the diversity of the bison gene pool. ( Over and over again, I have taught and talked about the importance of maintaining biodiversity in Nature.  It just doesn’t affect wildlife it affects us because we have lost so much biodiversity in nature, our vegetable crops, our medicine crops. ) Anyway the biologists in the Park system are taking blood, hair samples of the bison and geneticists will compare their DNA with the DNA in the centuries old bison bones from the Knife River Indian Villages. The results may help them to understand the history of the species better and so help them to ensure the future health of the species.

 There is more hope as 2 years ago when we drove through North Dakota we saw only fracking wells, but now we see more and more wind farms. One rancher had solar panels and old fashioned wind mill sitting on his plains land.  

There is a little wild west town here called Medora, founded in 1883, in the same year TR came to hunt bison, by a 24 year old French nobleman, the Marquis de Mores.  He named the town for his bride the former Medora von Hoffman, the daughter of a wealthy NY banker. The tales of his venture is interesting history.  Medora today has 32 attractions including the National Park which is a 5 minute drive from main street, musical shows, horse riding, stage coach rides, a museum about cowboys, ranching, rodeo and Native Americans, 18 eateries and 25 hotels and a bountiful number of shops.  People, Nature and Commerce. Got to go...will write more at Devil's Tower.