Prairie Chicken Project Wisconsin

10/07/2026

Congratulations to Carl Flaig and his family on earning Audubon’s Bird-Friendly Land Certification!

Flaig Family Farm, home to the Prairie Pastured Beef business, provides crucial habitat for several grassland bird species in Rudolph, Wisconsin, including Upland Sandpipers, Bobolinks, Eastern Meadowlarks, and Grasshopper Sparrows. Carl Flaig is also working hard to bring a Greater Prairie-Chicken lek back to the farm, with one remaining active today just across the county road from his family’s pastures.

The farm joins a growing network of seven Audubon-certified ranches in Wisconsin, spanning more than 2,000 acres of bird-friendly habitat. By choosing beef and bison products that carry the seal for Audubon Certified Bird-Friendly Land, consumers can support the recovery of grassland birds—some of North America's fastest-declining bird species.

Interested in learning more about Audubon Conservation Ranching? Click the link in our bio to read the full story! 🐮

📷️ Photos:
Greater Prairie-Chicken. Photo: Sydney Walsh/Audubon.
Greater Prairie-Chicken grassland habitat. Photo: Sydney Walsh/Audubon.
Bobolink. Photo: Brady Karg/Audubon.
Ashly Steinke and Carl Flaig. Photo: Sydney Walsh/Audubon.
Greater Prairie-Chicken. Sydney Walsh/Audubon.
Grasshopper Sparrow. Photo: Karen Brown/Audubon Photography Awards.
Short-eared Owl. Photo: Alex Kravchuk/Audubon Photography Awards.

10/02/2026

The first submission for the 2026 We are Grasslands tour. A big thank you to everyone that has sent us pictures and captions from their Prairie Chicken Project hat adventures this fall.

From long time friend and grassland mentor Kelly VanBeek

"We are grasslands.

Our evolutions are inseparable, invoking the phrase that we need grasslands, and grasslands need us.

And yet our influence, our recent generations' obsession with dominion over all other life, is what is most apparent on the grasslands of today.

Brome instead of bluestem

Pheasants and partridge instead of prairie grouse. Cattle instead of bison

Barbed wire. Endless barbed wire

Scrap metal and livestock tanks

Oil wells and transmission lines

All examples of us thinking our cog in the wheel of grassland systems is somehow more important than the rest. I like to think the chuckle of a sharpie is their gentle reminder of persistence, and resistance, in the face of all our attempts to undermine our collective relationships to this landscape.

Following a dog has a way of calling my attention away from grief over what's been lost to what still exists. The rusty colored prairie remnants with little bluestem and stout coneflower. The deep red of low growing rose hips. Weathered shed antlers during a water break that we surely would have missed in our hustle to the next rise, the next covey, the next field. Roosting locations of ghost birds, perfectly selected based on the nighttime wind and morning sunshine. To notice the smallest of details is to receive the gifts of grasslands.

Communities keep grasslands green side up. Humans deciding that our place in these landscapes is not one of dominion, but of reciprocity. Our collective actions now, our shared sense of place and responsibility, give grasslands their best chance of surviving. May we all feel compelled to restore the grasslands that have been lost from our eyes but still remain beneath our feet.

We are grasslands. Long live the prairie."

09/30/2026

We are big fans of human art and photography over the AI slop we continue to see more of in the conservation space.

If we are to have hope of improving our natural places for future generations we believe the stories and inspiration will come from real people living on the land.

With that we want to congratulate our local buddy for being selected for the Clean Wisconsin
2027 calendar. Joe is involved with the annual Prairie Chicken Festival and shares his amazing photography with us for our grassland habitat fund.

If you're looking for a 2027 calendar and supporting a great org look no further!

📸 And the winner is… Joseph Riederer!

Joseph’s “Lone Sandhill in Fog” got the most votes and will be featured on the cover of Clean Wisconsin’s 2027 calendar. Taken at Leola Marsh Wildlife Area on a foggy August morning, the photo shows a lone sandhill crane watching over a field as its partner tends to a young c**t in the tall grass.

Want your own calendar? Donate $45+ to become a Clean Wisconsin member and get the calendar for free. Claim yours today at
https://secure.givelively.org/donate/clean-wisconsin-inc/giving-tuesday

Thanks to everyone who entered and voted, and to The Camera Company for helping make this contest possible!

09/29/2026

ATTENTION BOOMERS

The historical kiosk mural has been found!!

Thank you all for your efforts in spreading the word!

This was a great example of community power. Between the various groups the missing mural post was shared over 1000 times. Enough pressure and awareness to get the foolish thief to return an iconic piece of Wisconsin grassland history.
🪶
Long live the prairie and human art!

09/24/2026

ATTENTION PRAIRIE BOOMER COMMUNITY

We need all the help we can get with this unfortunate recent event.

We wanted to share the news that one of the cedar murals at the Buena Vista Wildlife Area kiosk at County F and W was taken.

Staff noticed the prairie chicken mural was missing on Tuesday. The mural has been a monument of Wisconsin grassland conservation for more than 20 years.

It is possible it was taken sometime between last week Friday and Monday. Dane County Conservation members and family had recently contributed the funds to have the panels refurbished in memory of Greg Dahl, former DNR Wildlife Supervisor.

Please share this news!

Maybe someone knows what happened and can encourage the return of the panel.

You can message us on social media or email [email protected]

09/21/2026

A big thank you to everyone that supported our habitat fund by purchasing one of our first Prairie Chicken Project hunting hats!

We have loved seeing the first pics from the field!

If you ordered one please send us some tasteful pics with prairie in the background or your dogs.

If you didn't get a hat you can find one at a future event giveaway or you can support us with a habitat sticker donation, print order from or apparel order from our online store.

Links below!

HABITAT DONATION MEMBERSHIP (sticker will be mailed)

https://cfcwi.fcsuite.com/erp/donate/create/fund?funit_id=4214

P*P PRINT

Look what I found on Etsy:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/4331 280223/prairie -chicken-dance?ref=share_v4_Ix

P*P MERCH STORE

https://www.bonfire.com/store/prairiechickenproject/
🪶

09/14/2026

One of the reasons we do what we can to help Wisconsins prairie chicken population...to continue to inspire generations of people to dance like a booming prairie chicken!
❤️💃🕺

09/05/2026

We had a prairie chicken packed post ready for national wildlife Day in national public lands week but then the Prairie Reserve ruling was announced and their bison grazing permits for BLM are still active.

A wild dream of ours is to one day get pictures from an active booming grounds near grazing bison in Wisconsin...until then we will celebrate every conservation bison and public land win we get.

Thank you to
For making our bison habitat sticker for this year. We have gotten so many compliments. We even know of a DNR employee that wants their basement wall painted with the design 😂
🦬
Bonus throwback to the bison and prairie chicken painting we commissioned To make us for a fundraising event.

"A world without huge regions of total wilderness would be a cage; a world without lions and tigers and vultures and snakes and elk and bison would be - will be - a human zoo. A high-tech slum." - Edward Abbey

09/01/2026

The conservation world lost a powerful voice yesterday, but thankfully his words and thoughts carry on for generations willing to read and dirty their hands in the soil.

At Pheasant Fest this past year I quoted him during my North American Grouse Partnership How to Start a Grouse Project talk and afterwards an old timer rancher approached me to shake my hand. He told me he appreciates the work ethic of our group and that a young person reads Wendell Berry. This guy manages A LOT of land and had met Wendell. He shared a few more stories and I appreciated connecting with someone from a very different part of the country. The idea of good work and cultivating our own land ethic brought us together.

Sharing a few of my favorite Wendell quotes starting with the one I use in the P*P talk.

"The name of our present society's connection to the earth is "bad work"...it means only that there is much good work to be done by every one of us and that we must begin to do it." -

"I now suspect that if we work with machines the world will seem to us to be a machine, but if we work with living creatures the world will appear to us as a living creature."

"A person who is willing to undertake the discipline and the difficulty of mending their own ways is worth more to the conservation movement than a hundred who are insisting merely that the government and the industries mend their ways."

"It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are."

"To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark.

Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings."

"You can best serve civilization by being against what usually passes for it.

"It is alive itself. It is a grave, too, of course. Or a healthy soil is. It is full of dead animals and plants, bodies that have passed through other bodies. For except for some humans-with their sealed coffins and vaults, their pathological fear of the earth-the only way into the soil is through other bodies."
🙏🏽
Welcome back to the soil Wendell.

08/30/2026

Make a stop at the The Corny Fish Shed every time you visit the South shore for birding.
🔥

Suprise stop in from good friend Bill. Always love seeing you 2 basking in Mother Superior.