The Neighborhood

A big impetus for the prairie restoration, as I’ve discussed before, was the discovery of the Dakota skipper butterfly (Hesperae dacotae), a federally threatened species, on my adjoining native prairie. I hope to expand potential skipper habitat, as well as provide a buffer between the skipper habitat and farmed acres. This will double the grassland on this part of my farm to 200 acres. What makes this more interesting is the surrounding neighborhood. The reason for the native prairies on my farm is a terminal moraine, the dump of piled up materials left by a glacial advance, just to the west of my land. This strip of land runs north and south for about twenty miles, generally a couple miles wide, and is almost all in native grass. Though my farm is not actually on the moraine, it is in an area of glacial outwash, sand and gravel laid down by the melting glacier. The west half of my farm, and the west half of the restoration field, is in this area of outwash. While some of this is farmed, much is in grass, as shown in the map below.

In the nine square miles shown, almost 6000 acres, there is about 3500 acres of grass, 1500 acres of farmground and 1000 acres of water. Most of the grass is native pasture though there are about 800 acres of public land in low diversity prairie restorations. Extend this landscape north and south and you end up with a fair amount of grass. My restoration field is highlighted in the upper right.

A little aside I may elaborate on in a future post: on the west side of the map you can see the east edge of a large lake. When I was growing up the lake was a salt lake (it is the final home of the water in a drainage area with no outlet). In the drought of 1974-1976, and again in 1988 it was almost completely dry, a muddy, foul smelling salt flat. It was surrounded by several thousand acres of salty grassland, much of it owned by the state as a game production area. The grass is all underwater now as the extremely wet years of the 1990’s filled the basin. 3000-5000 acres of shallow salty water which held no fish is now a freshwater lake of 15000-20000 acres up to thirty feet deep and a magnet for fishermen from far and wide. It blows my mind, but for now I will close off this tangent and return to the main topic.

Connectivity is a buzzword of the conservation community of late, the physical connection of habitats which allows the movement of species across landscapes. My neighborhood has excellent, though not perfect connectivity. In looking at Google Earth one day I estimated that because of the moraine there was about a 25 mile stretch of connected grass (with one or two very small gaps) connecting perhaps 25,000 acres of grass in total. I wonder about the significance of this to the long term value of my restoration. To put it another way, is my project more worthwhile because of the surrounding neighborhood? Much of the grass in the area is overgrazed pasture, some has had herbicides applied to rein in the weeds that are the inevitable result of that overgrazing. I would like to assess the neighborhood to ponder its relationship to my restoration, though I obviously can’t trespass over all of it (I’m not above trespassing on some of it to look around).

One indicator is the presence of the Dakota skippers. Individual skippers have a limited range, reputedly reluctant or unable to travel over a half mile. There is obviously a large enough block of grass which has sufficient nectar and larval food sources in the area to sustain a small population. And in my immediate vicinity I know there is a connected block of at least 1000 acres that shows no history of significant herbicide history. If I can go to the border of the pasture and see black samson (Echinacea angustifolia) heads I am confident there are other wildflowers.

There are also both sharptail grouse and prairie chickens in the neighborhood. I regularly kick up sharpies on my prairies and have seen a covey of chickens a couple miles south of my land. Prairie grouse need a landscape of several thousand acres of grass and we have that. I don’t know if there is a lek nearby or if the grouse are part of a population from a much larger area of grass a few miles to the east. It certainly would be fun to find a lek in my immediate area.

Other grassland birds such as bobolinks, upland sandpipers, grasshopper sparrows and marbled godwits are reasonably common in the neighborhood. One of the joys of late spring is listening to the sound of upland sandpiper flights as they establish territories and try to impress potential mates. I am not skilled enough at bird identification to know whether there might be more unusual birds such as a Baird’s sparrow or a Sprague’s pipit, birds of similar habitat mostly found farther north and west. I would like to learn of other biotic indicators to monitor, perhaps entomological ones.

Until a few years ago I considered almost all the grass in my neighborhood as very “safe” from conversion to farming. Any area that made sense as farmground was already farmed. Actually, there is probably more grass now than when I was a kid, and more grass then, than right after the turn of the century. Just as the poor farm fields of the Appalachians have gone back to trees, many small farm fields broke out over 100 years ago were allowed to go back to grass. But a few years ago a 240 acre piece near my farm was bought by the local owner of a sizable gravel business, just to the southwest of my restoration. I assume that no mineable gravel was found, so the owner decided to improve the value of his investment by breaking some of the grass. This was not a fancy bit of prairie; I am pretty sure the 60-80 acres he broke out the first year were farmed at one time. Then the next year another sizable chunk of the farm was worked up right over steeply sloping hills I am confident were native grass. It was appalling. Even the hard core farming neighbors thought it a bit unethical.

Very little crop has come off this land since it was broke, though we have had decent rainfall the past two years. In a drought most of the farm will raise nothing. During heavy rainfall events it will wash like a bastard. At some point in the future the land will likely get planted back to grass after a great deal of erosion and loss of organic matter. The hubris is breathtaking. This instructive little example shows the purpose of US Fish and Wildlife grassland easements. In the past I had considered easements on unfarmable land a waste of taxpayer resources. I was wrong.

While much of the grass in the area is under easement, I hope others consider that path. The neighbors I have talked to invariably think that farming the steep, rocky hills is foolhardy, but many are very uncomfortable with the idea of a perpetual easement. Though I have been willing to place my grass under easement, I understand their concern. Forever is a long time. In an ironic twist I think the perpetual easement program is aided greatly by our inherent short term focus. Wave some money in front of our faces and “perpetual” becomes a less scary term.

There was a point to this digression. If my restoration is effective in providing a helpful addition to the prairie landscape in my neighborhood I am planning to offer it for a perpetual easement, and have an indication that it will be accepted. I have 100 acres of adjoining prairie in the program, and two of the nearest neighbors have another 500. There will be a great deal of satisfaction in expanding the prairie habitat in the neighborhood, and if the government will wave some money in front of my face, I will gladly take the money and run. I can use the exercise.

Looking at pasqueflowers on Easter Sunday