Road Trip Adventure- The Badlands

This week’s Nature Minute is the final story from the road. This week we take a look at Badlands National Park in South Dakota. The dazzling colorful rock formations here remind me of the Grand Canyon, though not as grand. I didn’t have time to explore, so I took in as much scenery as I could while cruising through. 

The mixed grass prairie doesn't betray what lies beneath

The first thing I saw when I entered the park was a prairie dog. Despite being known for the rock formations, there is a considerable amount of prairie here, complete with bison, prairie dogs, and reintroduced black-footed ferrets. Shortly after seeing the prairie dogs, I took the first turn (a right, if you’re keeping score) to see just how bad the lands are. There was a bighorn ewe keeping watch over the parking lot, my second critter of the morning. A quick scan of my surroundings revealed a few more sheep picking their way along just beneath the ridgeline.

Bighorn ewe

Like a gaping wound, an opening in the prairie
exposes the colorful bands of sedimentary rock

For being such a bad land, the Badlands hosts an astounding amount of wildlife. According to the National Park Service, 39 species of mammals, 9 reptiles, 6 amphibians, and 206 birds have been documented in the park. In addition to those listed earlier, there are coyotes, bobcats, foxes, two deer species, and pronghorn. Bird species include cliff swallows, horned larks, and northern harriers. Herps include rattlesnakes, snapping turtles, chorus frogs, spadefoot toads, and blotched tiger salamanders.

How did the Badlands form? Layers of sediments were deposited over a period of about 40 million years, beginning 67 to 75 million years ago. The oldest (and bottom) layer is muddy sea floor, complete with ocean fossils. Other layers were deposited by flooding rivers (when the area was a tropical forest), or most recently, ash from volcanic eruptions. These sediments all compressed into sedimentary rock and each layer is its own color. Erosion gives us the shape of the formations. Modern rivers scoured away at the layers of sediments, creating the peaks and canyons that we see today.

Badland formations

Badland formations

Here we can see where a river is
still carving out a canyon

Badland formations

Badland formations

That’s it for this year’s Nature Minute road trip. I hope to more travelling in the future and share more stories from the road. I encourage you to go seek your own adventures in the wild. This week’s information comes from the National Park Service (wildlife and geology).