
When Reed Cammack hears the first meadowlark of spring, he knows his family has made it through another cold, snowy winter on the western South Dakota prairie. Nothing’s better, he says, than getting up at sunrise as the birds light up the area with song.
“It’s part of the flora and fauna of our Great Plains and it’s beautiful to hear,” says Cammack, 42, a sixth-generation rancher who raises cattle on 10,000 acres (4,047 hectares) of mostly unaltered native grasslands.