In Prairie City, Iowa, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is undertaking one of the most ambitious prairie restoration projects in history, transforming farmland back to prairie at the 5,000-acre Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge. A few years ago, biologists crisscrossed the state searching for prairie remnants where they could collect seeds of native prairie plants; they found 2,000 remnants of native prairie and savanna and enough seeds to do the job. A herd of 42 buffalo now grazes on the refuge, nine elk have been brought in from out of state, and all sorts of other wildlife are thriving on the land.
