While natural phenomena have long shaped landscape composition, anthropogenic influences are increasingly dictating what lives where. Grassland ecosystems have taken the brunt of human agriculture and development, with the Great Plains losing millions of acres annually. Amid accelerating climate change and global extinctions, opportunities exist in the Northeast to provide long-term habitat for grassland birds - the most rapidly declining group of birds on the continent. Join us and speaker Kevin Tolan — staff biologist at Vermont Center for Ecostudies and graduate student at the University of Vermont — as we discover the origin of our North American grasslands, the pressing threats they experience, the local conservation opportunities that have arisen, and the uncertain future they face.

Photo: Susan Elliott