"A new book traces the environmental collapse of a crucial ecosystem and how its return could fight climate change."
"The American prairie was so vast, so alien, it shattered comprehension.
Newcomers to the seemingly endless grasslands that once spanned approximately a quarter of North America often hit a psychic wall, descending into fits of mania. Prairie madness, as the phenomenon came to be known, was recorded by the journalist E.V. Smalley in 1893 after a decade of observing life on the frontier: “An alarming amount of insanity occurs in the new Prairie States among farmers and their wives.”
America’s treeless, isolated expanse put early European settlers to the test. Drought, loneliness, and debt drove many to failure, forcing the homesteaders to retreat East.
But those who stayed unwittingly launched one of history’s largest terraforming projects, rewiring the land, the climate, and the future of the continent.
In Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie, longtime Minnesota journalists Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty trace this staggering transformation.“ The Europeans who colonized North America in the 19th century transformed the continent’s hydrology as thoroughly as the glaciers,” they write. “But, remarkably, they did it in less than 100 years instead of tens of thousands.”"
Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco interviews authors for Grist July 2, 2025, in partnership with WBEZ.
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