Badlands National Park Information Guide
Welcome to the Badlands National Park Information Guide.
Here you will find all you need to know about the natural history of the park.
Learn about the geology, trees, mammals, birds, or other plants and wildlife of the area.
Here you will find all you need to know about the natural history of the park.
Learn about the geology, trees, mammals, birds, or other plants and wildlife of the area.
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Establishment
Authorized as Badlands National Monument on March 4, 1929, President Franklin Roosevelt issued a proclamation on January 25, 1939 that established Badlands National Monument. In the late 60's, Congress passed legislation adding more than 130,000 acres of Oglala Sioux tribal land, used since World War II as a U.S. Air Force bombing and gunnery range, to the Badlands to be managed by the National Pakr Service. An agreement between the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the National Park Service governing the management of these lands was signed in 1976. The new Stronghold and Palmer Creek units added lands having significant scenic, scientific and cultural resources. Congress again focused it's attention on the Badlands in 1978 on 10 November, it was redesignated as Badlands National Park.
Size and Visitation
The park consists of nearly 244,000 acres of sharply eroded buttes, pinnacles and spires blended with the largest, protected mixed grass prairie in the United States. Sixty-four thousand acres are designated official wilderness, and is the site of the reintroduction of the black-footed ferret, the most endangered land mammal in North America. The Stronghold Unit is co-managed with the Oglala Sioux Tribe and includes the sites of 1890's Ghost Dances.
The majority of park visitors come June through September, lowest visitation is in November through March.
Geology
Over 11,000 years of human history pales to the eons old paleontological resources. Badlands National Park contains the world's richest Oligocene epoch fossil beds, dating 23 to 35 million years old. The evolution of mammal species such as the horse, sheep, rhinoceros and pig can be studied in the Badlands formations.
Approximately 75 million years ago Earth's climate was warmer than it is now, and a shallow sea covered much of the region we know as the Great Plains. Stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada and from western Iowa to western Wyoming, this sea teemed with life. In today's Badlands the bottom of that sea appears as a grayish-black sedimentary rock called the Pierre (pronounced "peer") shale. This layer is an incredibly rich source of fossils, for creatures sank to the bottom of the sea when they died and over a long course of time became fossils. Within the park, the fossilized remains of a variety of animals have been found. Baculites, an extinct cephalopod, had a squid-like body with a long cylindrical shell tightly coiled at the one end. Inside the shell were individual chambers containing either gas of liquid for buoyancy control. Clams, crabs and snails in great numbers have also been found. Outside the park, the Pierre shale has yielded abundant remains of ancient fish; mosasaurs, giant marine lizards; pterosaurs, flying reptiles; Hesperonis, a diving bird something like a modern loon. Why have the rocks inside the park, which are so rich in invertebrate fossils, yielded so few marine creatures with backbones? Questions like these puzzle paleontologists and earth scientists who continue to search in hope of answering some of the questions about the park's and Earth's rich past.
Land Emerges
Eons pass. The pushing and shoving of continental plates leads to an active period of mountain-building in the ancestral Rocky Mountains.This causes the land under the inland sea to rise, and in turn, the sea retreats and drains away. In time, the area that we now know as the Badlands is exposed to air and sunshine, yet it looks nothing like the landscape that we are familiar with today
The climate is humid and warm, and rainfall is abundant. On the new land a subtropical forest develops, dense and dark. It flourishes for millions of years. Eventually, though, the climate slowly grows cooler and drier and the forest gives way, first to savannah, then later on to grasslands so much more like the present landscape.
Today, after a heavy rainstorm in the Badlands, vivid red bands stand our against the buff tones of the buttes. Geologists and paleontologists tell us that these are fossilized soils, which make up much of the Badlands rocks. Fossil soils can tell us a great deal about the climate history of the Badlands; they also impart much of the colorful banding to Badlands rocks. Perhaps the best of all, the loose, crumbling rocks formed from these ancient soils hold one of the greatest collections of fossil mammals on Earth.
Fossils
An array of extinct animals, ranging from very enormous to very small, once ranged through the area now included in Badlands National Park. Some lived in the subtropical forests that flourished after the retreat of the shallow inland seas, while others inhabited the savannahs and grasslands that came in the years afterward. Some of these creatures, whose fossils have been found in the Badlands, based on the best scientific knowledge from the geologic epoch known as the Oligocene, that lasted from 23 to 35 million years ago. As scientists conduct research into the past and the fossil record reveals more about those bygone times, we can be assured that our knowledge will change. The details of vegetation and animal structure will be viewed differently in the years ahead. Leptomeryx, small, fragile and deer-like, had even-toed hooves and browsed on the stems and leaves of early Oligocene vegetation. Oreodonts, sheep-like in appearance, were extremely abundant. Their name means "mountain tooth." Archaeotherium, a distant relative of modern pigs, had sharp canines and fed on both plants and carrion. An ancestor of modern horses, Mesohippus, had three toes instead of one hoof. Hoplophoneus, one of the earliest of the mammals to be called a saber-tooth cat, was about the size of a leopard. An agile rhinoceros, Subhyracodon was a plant-eater. Ischromys, a small squirrel-like rodent probably lived in trees and ate a diet of fruits and nuts. Metamynodon was a massive rhinoceros that, like the hippopotamus, spent much of its time in the water. Paleolagus, perhaps an ancestral rabbit, nibbled on plants.
History
For centuries humans have viewed South Dakota's celebrated Badlands with a mix of dread and fascination. The Lakota knew the place as "mako sica". Early French trappers called the area "les mauvaises terres a traverser". Both mean "bad lands." Conservation writer Freeman Tilden described the region as "peaks and valleys of delicately banded colors - colors that shift in the sunshine... and a thousand tints that color charts do not show. In the early morning and evening, when shadows are cast upon the infinite peaks or on a bright moonlit night when the whole region seems a part of another world, the Badlands will be an experience not easily forgotten." Paleontologist Thaddeus Culbertson has another reaction, "Fancy yourself on the hottest day in summer in the hottest spot of such a place without water - without an animal and scarce an insect astir - without a single flower to speak pleasant things to you and you will have some idea of the utter loneliness of the Bad Lands."
The peaks, gullies, buttes and wide prairies of the Badlands can be challenging to cross, yet they have long attracted the interest and praise of travelers. "I've been about the world a lot, and pretty much over our own country," wrote architect Frank Lloyd Wright in 1935, "but I was totally unprepared for that revelation called the Dakota Bad Lands.... What I saw gave me an indescribable sense of mysterious elsewhere - a distant architecture, ethereal..., an endless supernatural world more spiritual than earth but created out of it."
"Tell me the landscape in which you live and I will tell you who you are." Through seemingly inhospitable at first glance, the Badlands have supported humans for more than 11,000 years. The earliest people to come into this area were ancient mammoth hunters. Much later they were followed by nomadic tribes whose lives centered on bison hunting. The Arikara was the first tribe known to have inhabited the White River area. By the mid 18th century, they were replaced by the Sioux, or Lakota, who adopted the use of horses from the Spaniards and came to dominate the region.
Through the bison hunting Lakota flourished during the next one hundred years, their dominion on the prairie was short-lived. French fur trappers were the first of many European arrivals who, in time, would supplant the Lakota. Trappers were soon followed by soldiers, miners, cattle farmers and homesteaders who forever changed the fact of the prairie. After 40 years of struggle culminating in the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, the Lakota were confined to reservations. Cattle replaced the bison; wheat fields replaced the prairies; and in time, gasoline powered vehicles replaced the horse.
White homesteaders and Lakota have shaped this land in terms of the impact that human beings have had here. Late 19th century photographers have captured on film the images of all these people as they created new lives for themselves and came into contact with one another, showing, unwittingly, the poignancy and hard work that typified the process. The bison that had played such a vital role in the Lakotas' way of life were eradicated with the arrival of the white hunters, leaving only the paintings and drawings that they had earlier made to continually remind them of long-gone patterns of life and of ways that they related to their environment.
Building a log house, cutting sod bricks from the prairie and collecting cow chips for fuel were just a few of the backbreaking tasks that the homesteaders faced as they worked to make the land their own. By contrast the Lakota touched the land differently, recording on a buffalo robe that was itself a product of the prairies, chronicling the nomadic way of life that the settlement of the land would end forever.
Wildlife
"The prairie is not forgiving. Anything that is shallows--the east optimism of the homesteader... the trees whose roots don't reach ground water--will dry up and blow away," wrote Kathleen Norris in Dakota. Badlands prairie contains about 56 species of grass, which are the anchor species for a complex community of plants and animals. The prairie once sprawled across one-third of North America. Today, the patchwork remnants of native grasslands represents adaptations to millions of years of changing conditions and sustain a diverse citizenry.
Grasslands, or prairies, occur in areas that are too dry to support trees, but too wet to be deserts. Badlands National Park contains mixed-grass prairie, meaning that it contains tall-grass, such as big bluestem and prairie cordgrass, and short-grass species such as blue grama and buffalograss as well ashundreds of species of wildflowers and forbs. The landscape, which was once forest, now contains a multitude of plants and animals uniquely adapted to what appears to be unforgiving and harsh conditions. Grasses, able to withstand high winds, long spells of dry weather and frequent fires, thrived. Grazing animals became abundant and grasses, better suited to withstand constant trampling and grazing, spread and overtook ancient forests. Today, many animals--black-tailed prairies dogs, mule deer, pronghorn (commonly call antelope), bison, coyotes, and bighorn sheep--adapt to, and even thrive under the conditions in Badlands National Park.
Black-footed Ferret
A secretive, playful member of the weasel family, the black-footed ferret is North America's only native ferret. The Lakota people prized the animals, calling them "pispiza etopta sapa," meaning "black faced ground dog". But as civilation progressed, over 90% of North America's prairie dog population has been eliminated, leaving the black-footed ferrets with nothing to eat and nowhere to call home. By 1987 only 18 black-footed ferrets were known to exist in the world.
Soon after the Wyoming ferrets were discovered, disease ran through the colony. By 1985 only 18 ferrets survived. Braving controversy and accepting the risks accompanying intervention, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists and State of Wyoming authorities captured ferrets and launched a campaign to save them. A measure of success came quickly. At seven breeding facilities, the ferrets flourished and multiplied. With high hopes and little fanfare, 36 black-footed ferrets were released in the park during the fall of 1995. A search in late summer of 1995 yielded two litters of ferret kits born in the wild, an important milestone on the road to recovery for this species. Additional captive-raised black-footed ferrets will be released through 1998 with the goal of establishing a self sustaining population. Like the reintroduced bison and bighorn sheep, the black-footed ferrets may again take their place and add their influence to the northern prairies.
In 1981 the scientific community received astonishing news. Black-footed ferrets, thought to have become extinct since the last captive specimen died in 1979, were discovered to be alive and well in the wilds of Wyoming. The news was encouraging, but the long-term prognosis for ferrets was not promising. Dependent on prairies as their prime habitat and prairie dogs as their food source, these relatives of the weasel remain the rarest mammals on the earth.
Shrinking prairie habitat, destruction of prairie dog colonies by humans, and the spread of diseases had left the ferrets one step from the brink of extinction.
A rescue effort was begun in an attempt to ward off certain extinction. Badlands National Park has become a primary reintroduction site with over 50 ferrets now finding permanent residence in Badlands' prairie dog town. (1995) Research on the the basic ecological role of prairie dogs in the park ecosystem also exists.
Bighorn Sheep
The Audubon bighorn sheep was a part of the Badlands ecosystem until its extinction in 1925. Today, their close relatives, the Rocky Mountain bighorn graze ready to flee to the safety of the nearby Badlands buttes. In 1964, twenty-two animals were brought to the park from Colorado to replace the sheep that had once prospered here. For thirty years the sheep have successfully reproduced, but they have only colonized one new area away from their release location.
Between 1992 and 1996 a large amount of research was conducted on the bighorn sheep population in the park. It was found that the stable population of about 150 animals was only using about 10% of the land suitable for them and their total numbers could be three to five times what they were. A decision was made to accelerate colonization of additional areas of suitable habitat. This would reduce the chances of a castrophic event that could eliminate the entire park population.
In October 1996, twelve ewes and four young rams were trapped and transported by helicopter, radio collarded, then moved about eighteen miles from their original location. Breeding activity was observed from late October through early December, including the mating of the moved ewes by at least four mature rams who came to visit from the core population. The chances for a stable and seperate population is promising.
Bison
Bison are the largest and dominat plant grazers of the Badlands mixed grass ecosystem. The 450 or so animals living within the Badlands Wilderness area of sage Creek drainage exert their influence on the landscape, defining the type and distribution of plant communities here. Their presence is critical, but too many bison be just as unbalanced as their absence. In the fall of 1996, the park conducted a roundup to reduce the herd size, with 180 animals sent to new homes outside the park.
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