Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center will receive a $117,421 grant from the Nebraska Environmental Trust for the second year of the “Launching Spring Creek Prairie as a Demonstration Site for Tallgrass Prairie Conservation - Denton Hills” project. It’s one of 113 projects receiving $18,350,515 in grant awards from the Nebraska Environmental Trust this year.

Prairie historically covered approximately 170 million acres of central North America creating the continent's largest continuous ecosystem, but this ecosystem has been largely converted, fragmented, and altered.

Ed Hubbs, habitat and private lands manager at Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center (SCPAC), explains how Nebraska’s prairies are primarily stewarded by private landowners, so conserving this important habitat requires “rapid and concerted action” among all the actors that value this landscape.

The Denton Hills landscape is an intact prairie system in southeast Nebraska that is approaching a tipping point as threats such as encroaching cedars increase, while highly variable management among landowners contributes to habitat decline. The NET grant will assist SCPAC with expanding its mission to be an anchor for tallgrass prairie conservation and collaborative prairie management on private lands within the Denton Hills landscape. SCPAC will serve as a key node for habitat management experimentation and demonstration, prescribed fire, collaboratively driven landowner engagement and education, and will provide an exemplary sense of ownership of these grasslands by landowners and the general public. This project will result in improved habitat quality and management practices for the at-risk species and people dependent upon the remaining tallgrass prairie.

Learn more about the conservation efforts at Audubon’s Spring Creek Prairie at springcreek.audubon.org/conservation.

About the Nebraska Environmental Trust

The Nebraska Legislature created the Nebraska Environmental Trust in 1992. Using revenue from the Nebraska Lottery, the Trust has provided over $349 million in grants to over 2,400 projects across the state. Anyone – citizens, organizations, communities, farmers and businesses – can apply for funding to protect habitat, improve water quality and establish recycling programs in Nebraska. The Nebraska Environmental Trust works to preserve, protect and restore our natural resources for future generations.