American Prairie

"I want my grandson, and his children, to be able to saddle up and ride across this ranch," he said. And he said he had come to understand that the wild creatures are a big part of what makes the land work. "Without them, it wouldn’t be the wild country that it is," he said.

"The Forbes family has managed the land for wildlife habitat for decades, and this will make it permanent," said Dan Pike of Colorado Open Lands.

A view of a road leading toward the 4,500-acre Phillips County ranch, purchased by the American Prairie Foundation. The recent purchase of a ranch in Phillips County is the first step in a conservation group’s…

Concrete grain elevators, steel silos, shelterbelts, and the neat imprints of irrigation furrows punctuate the shallow Milk River Valley. But north of the river, the square irrigated farms dissolve into a rising, uneven landscape. Vast…