People and Nature Restoring Each Other
Ecological Health is the Interdependent Health of People, Animals and Ecosystems.
Our Mission
Great Plains Restoration Council is the founder of the Ecological Health model, which is defined as “the interdependent health of people, animals and ecosystems.” Based in America’s damaged, traumatized and forgotten Great Plains but expanded to other ecosystems, GPRC blends restoration ecology with social work to restore and protect damaged native ecosystems while simultaneously nurturing the mental, physical, emotional, economic and spiritual well-being of individuals, particularly youth and young adults facing social and emotional distress. Through our work, safer places are created both in the natural world and within ourselves, where we are no longer visitors to our own lives, and no longer victims to the ecological collapse crescendoing around us. Instead, ecological vitality and human health thrive as part of each other.
Current Project Locations
Ecological Health Initiatives
At Large
Great Plains Restoration Council — End of 2025 Prairie Restoration Season
“By taking care of others we take care of ourselves”
You can also share this video by copy/pasting this link: https://gprc.org/end-of-2025-prairie-restoration-season
About Ecological Health
GPRC’s Twelve Components of Ecological Health
Create Safe Places for people and wildlife
Protect, teach and serve young people
Understand consequences of actions
Strive to cause less pain to others
Embrace vitality
Embrace earned confidence and humility
Live like a watershed
Embrace physical work; fear no mental challenge
Fight Environmental Injustice
Seek peace and health-based solutions over endless conflict
Give thanks; get outdoors
Seek silence, wisdom, deeper thought and personal growth
Download GPRC’s Ecological Health Life Wheel
A Visual Journey Through Restoration
Latest Newsletters
Join Us in Living the Future Today
Conservation, Restoration, and Social Work: Become a vital part of our mission to restore and protect the natural world, especially America’s legendary but nearly lost Great Plains, through providing paid outdoor green jobs and nature-based work therapy for youth and young adults. Your support transforms lives and provides refuge for both people and wildlife, helping struggling youth and young adults become more unbreakable while giving highly threatened populations of native animals, such as rapidly declining grassland nesting birds, prairie dogs, Monarch butterflies, and very rare Southern bison, more vital habitat to roam and thrive. Native prairies are the most endangered and least protected ecosystems. And your support helps expand GPRC’s Ecological Health healing model to help people and wildlife in other regions, especially the ocean.
