Buffalo Gap National Grassland is a vast protected prairie and badlands landscape in southwestern South Dakota, managed by the U.S. Forest Service as part of the Nebraska National Forests and Grasslands. The nation’s second-largest national grassland, it surrounds Badlands National Park and Minuteman Missile National Historic Site and stretches across parts of four counties. Its Conata Basin became a notable conservation success through the reintroduction of black-footed ferrets, restoring a species once lost from the area. The grassland has also figured in debates over wilderness protection and remains both a working grazing landscape and an important habitat and interpretive setting for the Great Plains.