Wildlife, of course, have lived on the margins in Nebraska for decades.
Nineteenth-century hunters tried to shoot as many buffalo as crossed their gunsights, bringing the once great herds almost to extinction.
The farm plows that followed cut through thousands of acres of rich soil, turning under habitats for burrowing owls and black-footed ferrets. City expansion and urban sprawl sliced and diced habitats even further.
Even so, the state with the most river miles among the Lower 48 supports more than 350 types of birds, tens of thousands of white-tailed and mule deer, and a rich variety of fish.
But ecosystems are already starting to shift under the stress of a warming planet.
A UNL study released in June 2019 said that ecosystems in the Great Plains have moved hundreds of miles north in the past half century, a consequence of climate change, land development and other human-related factors.
Wildfires, more frequent in a warming planet, have reduced the acreage of pines on the Pine Ridge to less than 100,000 acres from 250,000 in 1994, according to a 2014 UNL climate change report.
The Russian olive, an invasive species, is pushing out the cottonwoods in riparian forests, the UNL study said. Woody eastern red cedars are encroaching on grasslands. The coarse conifers push out native species that prefer flat open habitat like swift foxes in the process.
“Every species, every plant, every insect, amphibian and mammal are an important integral part of the ecosystem,” Ferraro said. “We lose one, the integrity of the ecosystem falls.”