Threatened temperate grassland habitats

Steppe savannas are areas of grassland with hot summers and cold winters found in the continental interiors. The major manifestations of steppe grasslands are the veldts of South Africa, the puszta of Hungary, the pampas of Argentina and Uruguay, the steppes of the former Soviet Union, and the plains and prairies of central North America. Rainfall is moderate: 250 to 500 mm of rainfall a year.

Few natural prairie regions in North America remain (only 1%) because most have been turned into farms or grazing land. This is because they are flat, treeless, covered with grass, and have rich soil. Conversion to agricultural land has been aided by the development of the steel plough. In the 1970s the USA deliberately reversed longstanding policy that favoured conservation practices such as fence rows, windbreaks, crop rotation and fallow land, and advised farmers to plough fence row to fence row and blanket the grasslands with wheat and corn. In Iowa, for example, less than 1 percent of the original tall-grass prairie and savannah habitat survived in 1995.