List of protected grasslands of North America

The protected grasslands of North America consist of prairies, with a dominant vegetation type of herbaceous plants like grasses, sedges, and other prairie plants, rather than woody vegetation like trees. This ecosystem was generally dominant within the Interior Plains of central North America but was also present elsewhere. The protected areas include public nature reserves managed by American, Canadian and Mexican wildlife management agencies, Native American tribes and Canadian First Nations, state wildlife management agencies, non-governmental organizations, and private nature reserves.

The expanses of grass once sustained migrations of an estimated 30 to 60 million American bison which maintained grazing pressure as a keystone species. The indigenous peoples of the Plains occupied the land, hunting bison and pronghorn. The expansion of the United States onto the frontier decimated the population of the indigenous people and the bison. The tallgrass prairie, with moderate rainfall and rich soils, were ideally suited to agriculture so it became a productive grain-growing region. The tallgrass prairie ecosystem covered some 170 million acres (690,000 km²) of North America. Less than 4 percent of it is left according to most estimates.[1] Besides agriculture, much of the shortgrass prairie became grazing land for domestic livestock. Short grasslands occur in semi-arid climates while tall grasslands are in areas of higher rainfall.

Generally speaking, these regions are devoid of trees, except for riparian or gallery forests associated with streams and rivers. Although much of the grasslands are in the Great Plains ecoregion, protected grasslands can be found in other areas of Canada, Mexico and the United States. Studies estimated in 2018 that grasslands in the U.S were being lost at a rate of more than one-million-acre per year (0.40×10^⁶ ha).[2] Bison occupy less than 1% of their historical range with fewer than 20,000 bison in conservation herds on public or private protected lands as listed here. The roughly 500,000 animals that are raised for commercial purposes are not included unless the entity is actively engaged in conservation efforts.[3]