In 2005, the Comanche and Cimarron National Grasslands (CCNG) of southeastern Colorado and southwestern Kansas, respectively, began the process of revising their land and resource management plan. GIS mapping supported by the Denver Zoological Foundation helped develop a Conservation Alternative for the CCNG. The CCNG represents important ecological hotspots in the Great Plains because they provide some protection for wildlife and their habitats against native grassland conversion to cropland or human housing and business developments. 
Concentrations of several shortgrass prairie species were mapped on the CCNG; such maps indicated where to focus conservation attention. One of these species, the lesser prairie-chicken, is one of the many imperiled species that are native to the Southern Great Plains, and is classified as Vulnerable by The World Conservation Union (IUCN). The birds declined dramatically once humans began farming the plains in the late 1800s due to habitat loss and hunting. Part of the new management plan recommends that the U.S. Forest Service protect the southwest region of the Comanche for this species.
Forest Guardians, a nonprofit organization, launched the Southern Prairie Conservation Initiative in 2005 with a vision toward restoring and protecting functional prairie ecosystems. The long-term goals of this initiative include reconnecting now fragmented habitat, re-establishing populations of imperiled species, returning extirpated species such as wild bison, black-footed ferrets, and wolves, and establishing a greater appreciation for the prairie as a wild place within the human community.
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