To Save a Prairie

To Save a Prairie

For more than 20 years, wildlife photographer Jim Brandenburg has traveled the globe, preserving on film those special moments in nature that touch the heart and capture the imagination.

Now, as one of the world’s premier natural history photographers, Brandenberg, 56, is working to preserve a piece of that natural world—contributing money from sales of his photographic work to save one of the last vestiges of native tallgrass prairie in America.

Just north of Luverne, Minn., on a high ridge near Brandenburg’s great-grandfather’s homestead, the Brandenburg Prairie Foundation has set aside 360 acres of prairie that have never been tilled. In the coming years, the land—along with additional acreage as it is purchased—will be restored to its original grandeur.

The foundation receives its funding from the Brandenburg Gallery on Luverne’s busy Main Street where Brandenburg’s photographs and books are sold. All profits are plowed back into the foundation, which was formed in 1999 to promote, preserve, and restore native prairie in southwest Minnesota.

“It wouldn’t have been possible without him,” says Dave Smith, Brandenburg’s longtime friend, foundation treasurer, and executive director of the Luverne Chamber of Commerce. “His fame, reputation, and devotion to prairie restoration give the project credibility when we talk with people about what we hope to do.”

Tallgrass prairie once covered more than 400,000 square miles in North America—an area larger than Texas and New Mexico combined—with hundreds of wildflower and grass varieties growing up to 8 feet tall. Less than 1 percent of the prairie remains, although efforts such as Brandenburg’s are under way in many states to re-establish the ecosystem in smaller pieces to give us a glimpse of what once was.

The first parcel of native prairie in Luverne was acquired last year in conjunction with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It will undergo a 15-year restoration, including the eventual addition of buffalo on the land.

A second project is to restore 11 acres owned by the Luverne Public Schools. Starting next year and continuing each year thereafter, first-graders will be assigned a 20-by-20-foot garden on part of the land until each grade has a plot. Students will select, plant, and care for a native grass or flower throughout their 12 years of school. As seniors, they will harvest and replant the seeds on the 11-acre outdoor prairie classroom.

Both projects excite Brandenburg, who lives in Ely, Minn., as much as when he lived among—and made his famous photographic essay on—wolves. One poignant photo is of a curious gray wolf peeking with one eye from behind a tree.

Brandenburg recalls that as a youngster he was a dreamer. “I wasn’t a very good student, either,” he admits. He has since learned that he had, and still has, attention deficit disorder (ADD). It is, he says, “my gift.” He tells young people in lectures and commencement speeches that ADD allows him to view his surroundings in different, creative ways.

In his youth, Brandenburg hunted and trapped until one day when he was about 14, he bought a $3 plastic camera on sale at the local drugstore. “It changed my life.”

His first wildlife picture was taken with that little Argus camera. He coaxed a red fox into range by hiding behind a rock and imitating the sound of a mouse. That grainy black and white is still one of his favorites and is featured in one of his books.

After college, Brandenburg became a photographer for the Worthington (Minn.) Daily Globe. In 1978, he became a contract photographer for the National Geographic Society and has 18 society magazine photo essays under his belt.

On his wall of honors and awards is the World Achievement Award from the United Nations Environmental Programme, presented in 1991 in recognition of Brandenburg’s “use of nature photography to raise public awareness of the environment.”

As his busy photo and writing career winds down, Brandenburg is finding life’s circle is closing. “Though my work has taken me all over the world, I still feel the pull of home—the urge to explore what is left of the American prairie and to play a role in its restoration.”

Chuck Cecil is a freelance writer in Brookings, S.D.

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