The National Forest Service, from which many ranchers rent grazing land, may require them to graze fewer cattle, in order to encourage native grasses and wildlife.

ECONOMIST: Can the rules be bent just enough to keep them alive?

In recent years, the increasing awareness of the ecologies that once predominated has brought to light native grasses and sedges that make natural or meadow lawns, naturally.

NPR: Excerpt: 'The American Meadow Garden'

What was once sand or native grasses became fairway or very friendly short rough, to the point where there was a sea of green as far as the eye could see.

FORBES: The Biggest "New" Golf Course Opening of 2011?

It is a solid resort course, with ample fairways and little in the way of penal hazards, with water seriously in play on just one hole, but the tall thick native grasses are much tougher than the wispy rough of the British Isles, and while the greens are not crazily undulated, they have plenty of tricky pin positions.

FORBES: Another New Top 100 Golf Course For the Pacific Northwest?

The holes twist through a phantasmagoric landscape of sand dunes thrown up half a century ago when phosphate mines worked the site, and which native plants and grasses have since overgrown.

WSJ: Cabot Links, Streamsong, Bandon: When Building a Course Makes Sense | Golf Journal by John Paul Newport

In addition to grasses, each region of the country has its own native sedges that will make these natural lawns.

NPR: Excerpt: 'The American Meadow Garden'

The grasses, sedges and shrubs that have been brought to the island handily out-compete the native species, many of them ferns, that were making such a poor fist of greening the island before people came.

ECONOMIST: Ascension Island