When I began the thought train that led to the decision to do a big prairie restoration, my goals were fairly well defined, and definitely prompted by my daughter’s master’s thesis characterizing prairies where Dakota skipper butterflies, a federally threatened species, had been found. I had a friend come out and a few skippers have been found on my prairies, and that cemented the idea that a legacy I would leave the world was enhanced and enlarged Dakota skipper habitat. As I have written before, in a post titled, “The Ten Year Plan”, the more comprehensive list of goals would include:

1. Pollinator Habitat. Much of this was planted as pollinator habitat under the federal Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) with emphasis from me on species used by Dakota skipper butterflies
2. Water Quality Protection. The 100 acre restoration is part of a closed drainage which ends up in Bitter Lake, a large (approximately 10000 acre) lake about two miles from the restoration. Because of the nature of the soils, though, most of the water which doesn’t leave through evapotranspiration or runoff actually ends up in the aquifer, so we are protecting both the aquifer and Bitter Lake with the project.
3. Erosion Control. This can obviously be a water quality issue, but the rolling sandy hills covering most of the site are clearly at risk from both water and wind erosion and productivity of those hills is predicated upon keeping and rebuilding the soil.
4. Wildlife Habitat. Grassland dependent birds including bobolinks, dickcissels, grasshopper sparrows, upland sandpipers, sharptail grouse (all of which I have already seen in the restoration) and others are a category that has been documented as generally declining, and the hope is to provide a boost to local populations.
5. Carbon Sequestration. The low tillage rotation used by the renter of my farmground is almost certainly already sequestering some carbon, but the use of the full growing season, the lack of disturbance, the absence of the use of fertilizer, tillage and other crop inputs and the buildup of perennial root growth will certainly create a more stable pool of organic matter to sequester carbon. Prairies provide climate change resilient carbon sequestration.
6. A place to wander and enjoy, perhaps to achieve peace.

This was all very salutory and a good story, but as time has gone by I have realized that I haven’t been thinking big enough, and there was more to gain from the restoration, and from other work that I was doing on the farm. Once more, some of this has gone into past posts, but I think it worthwhile to list and summarize my thoughts here. My goals have expanded to:

1. Extend the reach of local xeric-adapted biotypes of plants, especially forbs, and thus their attendant pollinators, seed predators, and perhaps microbial partners. A big revelation to me in the last ten years, and thus a big emphasis for my plans, has been the realization that forb diversity in most native prairies in my area is very low. This is true because of overgrazing, but even more true because of the resultant broadcasting of herbicides and the ultra-competitive nature of two introduced grasses, smooth brome and Kentucky bluegrass. Smooth brome, in particular, has the ability in mesic soils to form thick stands that approach monocultures. This is less true, however, in the xeric, gravel hills of my prairies. Even overgrazing, if not combined with flying on broadleaf herbicides, tends to leave a large amount of native forbs, though often in very subdued growth habit. I rather like my tough forbs, and like to think they have value out of proportion to their often humble size and appearance, and so I have been gathering significant amounts of native seed from both my prairies and a few others that I have access to and am attempting to give them some spiffy new “digs” in my restorations. A larger gene pool in proximity allows more possibilities for favorable mutations and crosses; it can in effect enhance the evolutionary capability of my local genotypes. And I am trying to be careful not to be too parochial in my approach, by bringing in seed gathered from other prairies which might provide valuable genetics.

2. To take this idea a step farther, I am looking to establish “Foundation Seed” plots of some of seed that I gather from some of these species to grow out and give the opportunity to harvest larger amounts of seed, potentially for use by other restorers of prairie. I have begun discussions with my young partner Ben to begin a business (though not a business I have any expectations of profit from) to accomplish this goal.

3. Develop an evolving plan to integrate this restoration with some other restoration work I am doing on my farm and with the native prairies and the crop ground. With a neighbor we can then add livestock (the neighbor is already grazing several pastures on my farm) and create a whole farm plan to maximize the various ecosystem services provided by the land. As confidence hopefully builds that we are on the right track we may be able to add some of the neighbor’s acres to the plan.

4. Use my 587acres, the entire farm, as a research/demonstration/educational site. This could be for conservation professionals; it could be for other farmers; it could be used for school groups; it could be a site for someone’s masters thesis research. I know that I am not going to be the person able to manage this aspect down the road; not having a voice anymore makes some of these tasks awkward, However, I can work toward presenting the work and the opportunity to interested parties, and some possibilities might come clear.

So here is the layout which I have to work with, which doesn’t include 62 acres of CRP and hayland in the section to the west which has been fenced in the last couple weeks and will be grazed very soon. There are management decisions large and small which I need to work through over the next few months. The actions I am taking this year are pretty well decided and in progress, but I am starting a discovery process which will hopefully include input from many other people to think through actions to be taken next year. The next post will be after a brainstorming meeting I am hosting at the site with several conservation professionals which may provide some insight into my future actions so I will end here and pick this up again in a couple weeks. Who knows what might be illuminated by the ferment of discussion and argument? A really crappy paraphrase of Socrates would be that “Wisdom is revealed in the dialectic,” which simply means that several minds working together in verbal give and take can sometimes do what individual minds can’t do. I end with the requisite pretty pictures of the goal. These were taken on a hill in my hayland which was burned this spring, just to the west of the restoration. I don’t know how long it might take to achieve this in my restorations, though I am confident that I will never see it. Still, it is a lovely image to dream about; a goal to aspire to.