Pawnee National Grassland is a protected federal grassland on Colorado’s Eastern Plains in the South Platte basin between Greeley and Sterling, covering 193,060 acres in two parcels, including a larger eastern unit that reaches Nebraska and Wyoming. Managed by the U.S. Forest Service with the Arapaho-Roosevelt National Forest, it preserves a major expanse of shortgrass prairie, notable geology, and important wildlife habitat in a remote part of the Great Plains. Its landscapes include Pawnee Buttes, Chalk Bluffs, mixed prairie, shrub steppe, and rare scarp woodlands with limber pines. Though shaped by past cultivation and current energy development, it remains valued for hiking, bird watching, native vegetation, and open plains scenery.