By Laura Hendrickson Bison at Prairie State Park depend on the various grasses there for more than 90 percent of their diet.
Grazing is essential to the preservation of the prairie ecosystem.
In 1820, the population of the Missouri Territory was around 67,000. As As early settlers pushed westward, leaving the familiar eastern forests behind, they encountered a new and mystifying scene - a boundless sea of grass that stretched beyond the horizon. They had heard much about these great grasslands called prairie, but could not have imagined the vast treeless expanse before them. Not all accounts of prairie were complimentary. For some, the prairie was an overwhelming, monotonous and lonely landscape.