We are BCA.
We are the human lovers of the landscape from which we came
and for which we speak.
We embrace the joy in the morning and the grace at nightfall.
We are the dreamers of ancient dreams that course through our blood
and draw us purposefully toward a future of renewal and restoration.
We are the ones that speak for those that carry a voice so powerful
yet so humanly unarticulate.
We laugh in exuberant fullness of life while weeping
for that which is unknowingly lost, and doubtfully saved.
We are the children birthed from this landscape,
called by its mystery and bound by its secrets.
If not us, then who? And, so we carry on.
The Badlands Conservation Alliance is A Voice for Wild North Dakota Places. Founded in 1999 during the early public planning process for the Forest Service’s Land and Resource Management Plan for the Dakota Prairie Grasslands, we rallied alongside local neighbors and friends to speak out for conservation concerns in western North Dakota’s 1 million acre Little Missouri National Grassland. A tight core of charter members united to raise local voices, insuring that government agencies and leadership could not deny our call for ecologically functioning landscapes, protection of roadless areas, and designation of Wilderness in our beloved Badlands.
Founding members recognized their unique responsibility grounded quite literally in local heritage. Many had grown up on ranches or in small surrounding towns. To some the Badlands were the quintessential destination for family excursions – to hunt, to hike, to camp, to connect with each other and the Wild. For still others, rugged buttes and vast horizons of sky and grass meant solitude, a physical and spiritual renewal.
Raised in a cultural setting where out-spoken behavior is less than the norm and advocacy for changing values on public lands is seen as a threat to traditional livestock leadership and the energy industry, the Badlands Conservation Alliance concentrates on developing a support system amongst its membership while focusing on a new paradigm for ecological well being. We are a family.
In the late 1970’s, over a half million acres of the Little Missouri National Grasslands were inventoried as roadless. That number has decreased by half – mostly due to oil and gas development. The Record of Decision for a new Dakota Prairie Grassland Plan was signed in July of 2003. Only 41,000 acres will be protected as non-motorized, with an additional 102,000 acres as backcountry where motorized travel is the rare management exception. Not a single majestic sweep is enrolled under the Wilderness Act of 1964.
We grew up on these lands. Our kids attend local schools, we shop at local stores, we depend on local health care facilities – and we watch all threatened by continued loss of both resources and population. Our future will be that of our neighbors. BCA believes it is time to re-evaluate the status quo and look to the quality of our natural landscape to find new answers for tomorrow’s brighter day.
You, too, have a stake in these public lands.
Join us – and help speak for this magnificent landscape.
