Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie
The Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie (MNTP) is a tallgrass prairie reserve and similarly preserved as United States National Grassland operated by the United States Forest Service. The first national tallgrass prairie ever designated in the U.S. and the largest conservation site in the Chicago Wilderness region, it is located on the site of the former Joliet Army Ammunition Plant between the towns of Elwood, Manhattan and Wilmington in northeastern Illinois. Since 2015, it has hosted a conservation herd of American bison to study their interaction with prairie restoration and conservation.
Tallgrass prairie and woodlands
Flora of the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie
MNTP entrance
Bison at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in June 2016
The tallgrass prairie is an ecosystem native to central North America. Historically, natural and anthropogenic fire, as well as grazing by large mammals provided periodic disturbances to these ecosystems, limiting the encroachment of trees, recycling soil nutrients, and facilitating seed dispersal and germination. Prior to widespread use of the steel plow, which enabled large scale conversion to agricultural land use, tallgrass prairies extended throughout the American Midwest and smaller portions of southern central Canada, from the transitional ecotones out of eastern North American forests, west to a climatic threshold based on precipitation and soils, to the southern reaches of the Flint Hills in Oklahoma, to a transition into forest in Manitoba.
Flowering big bluestem, a characteristic tallgrass prairie plant
Bison grazing on the 158 km2 (39,000-acre) Tallgrass Prairie Nature Preserve in Osage County, Oklahoma
A pink wild onion (Allium stellatum) — blooms in the tallgrass prairie of Waubay Wetland Management District in South Dakota.