The British newspaper Independent has published a feature article about the threat faced by the remaining prairie in the state of Kansas. The article highlights the complex challenge that the transition from fossil fuel to biofuel represents.
Three years ago WWF placed the northern Great Plains on a list of threatened areas around the world which it pledged to help conserve in the next decade. But its efforts to increase the protected prairie from 1.5% to 10% seems doomed to failure.
The greatest loss of habitat has been in the Corn Belt, which takes in a vast stretch from Iowa, to Kentucky. There, some 5 million acres – about 25% of grassland – has already been lost to ethanol paid for by subsidies that cost the US taxpayer about $2.7 billion in 2006.
But the worst damage may be taking place in Montana and the Dakotas, where farmers who have been hurting economically are embracing King Corn with abandon. To the shock of environmentalists, between 2002-2007, more than 400,000 acres of prairie were ploughed under in these states.
