Tag: <span>Prairie restoration</span>

Speculations on Natural History

The Gravel Pit

About 50 years ago there was some gravel mined from a small pit in the corner of my prairie restoration field. I don’t think there was a seeding made afterwards, but it soon grew up to bromegrass, with a few willows and cottonwoods in the lowest area of the pit where there is a perched water table. I often use the pit to store my trailer and ATV and finally took a closer look at it last week when I was up gathering seed from the existing prairies. What I saw was a bit surprising.

The pit from 200 yards away. The water in the front is in the restoration; the gravel excavation was done in the hill behind.
A group of leadplant (Amorpha canescens) on the edge of the cottonwoods in the lowest part of the pit.

While the majority of the vegetation that has reclaimed the disturbed area is bromegrass, there are about 20 native species which have found their way to the site from nearby pastures. Some of these are the typically weedy species which blow around and colonize bare spots everywhere, such as Missouri goldenrod (Solidago missouriensis) and heath aster (Symphyotrichum ericoides), but many aren’t. There is a sizeable colony of leadplant in a protected area under the edge of the excavated hill. There are many dotted gayfeathers (Liatris punctata) which have blown in and colonized some of the poorest soils. There are bits of big bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) and plains muhly (Muhlenbergia cuspidata) fighting the good fight against the brome on appropriate sites. I found a couple prairie onions (Allium stellatum) which have somehow made their way over from my pasture. I even gathered seed for an hour or two from the gravel pit that I am spreading on the prairie restoration.

What will the gravel pit look like in 50 or 100 years? Will we have continued progress of the natives spreading from the prairies nearby, and from the restoration which now surrounds the site? Or will the brome push everything back out, perhaps advantaged by our increasingly wet climate. Even without the gravel excavation this is a xeric site, so it would be reasonable to hope that the more drought hardy native plants should have an advantage. Does this provide any lessons for the restoration field?

I think that one lesson is patience. Life will find a way to reach a new home. All the richness of our prairies developed over about 10,000 years since the glaciers melted and the climate stabilized at something approaching recent conditions. I am sure some researchers have determined about when our plant diversity reached maximum levels through pollen analysis, but my uninformed speculation would be that most of the plant community development occurred in no more than 2000 years. My restoration will be evolving to some sort of stability over the rest of my life, but will continue for long afterwards. I will obviously not know the final outcome of my restoration seeding, because there is no such thing. Which leads to the next lesson.

I need to be humble about my abilities to “create” a prairie. It has been suggested by multiple authors that those of us seeding restorations shouldn’t focus on the unattainable goal of a perfect, or an authentic restoration, but rather on the ecosystem services we wish to provide. What the hell would an “authentic” prairie restoration look like, anyway? Nobody truly knows. My stated purpose at the beginning of this process was to enlarge and buffer existing Dakota skipper butterfly habitat. That can fit under the broader umbrella of pollinator support. Then there are all the other insects, birds and mammals which will use the area (I have already been kicking up sharptail grouse and various sparrows, probably eating the weed seeds which I have grown. Carbon storage, water quality improvement and providing good habitat for bird hunters all add to the benefits. One benefit I personally care about is to increase the local genotypes of the xeric prairie species I have been gathering the seed of and spreading over the 100 acres. It pleases me to have an opportunity to give them a new home on the restoration prairie. I don’t think it helpful to have an image in my head that the restoration should match, because I doubt that I have enough imagination to see any image other than a pale approximation of the nearby prairie in my pastures. Rather, I will hope to see what develops over the next couple years and manage for my enjoyment, and to achieve some of these goals.

And this leads to the third lesson, which is that I already should be planning for management on the restoration. The gravel pit has developed some species diversity and distribution without any management. Could we have done better with active management? I will probably find out in a few years, because the gravel pit will probably get burned with the restoration field in a few years. In eight years, when the CRP contract has ended it will likely become part of a grazing system with the adjoining restoration. In the meantime I will be doing some weed control, both mechanical and chemical, and perhaps some remedial seeding. But I need to remember the second lesson, humility, as well. Perhaps the changing climate means that brome and Kentucky bluegrass are integral parts of the restoration 100 years from now, or perhaps some invasive grass that has not even yet reached South Dakota. I am 64 years old with health issues. I may not even see the end of the CRP contract and management will then move to other family members or to someone who buys the land, something over which I will likely have no control. In the meantime I will humbly do my best to guide the management to accomplish some of the goals I mentioned and perhaps some other goals I haven’t yet discovered. Its going to be a lot of fun!

Plains muhly working its way into a disturbed area
A lonely switchgrass plant in a sea of brome

Speculations on Natural History

The Ghosts of Evolution

About twenty years ago I read a book called “The Ghosts of Evolution” by Connie Barlow. It discussed evolutionary anachronisms, plant characteristics which no longer make sense because the plant species is missing a partner for which the characteristic evolved. Specifically, the book referenced several trees with large fruits which no longer have an appropriate animal partner to eat the fruits and disperse the seed. The book is based upon an influential paper written in 1982 by Dan Janzen and Paul Martin (of Pleistocene overkill fame) about fruits found in Mesoamerican forests. The evocative title was backed up by an interesting book I would like to read again.

At about the same time as I read the book we were renting a small native grass pasture and stocking it with a few horses. After renting it for several years I noticed several prairie turnips (Pediomelum esculentum) growing in low moist ground by the gate. Seed dispersal for prairie turnips is accomplished by tumbling; when the plants mature they form an abscission layer at ground level, break off, and tumble across the prairie dropping seeds as they go. I am confident these seeds did not get to the gate by tumbling. The nearest turnips were over a quarter of a mile away with two sloughs in between. My money is on the horses, who spent a lot of time near the gate.

I realize that the establishment of those turnips was probably a fluke. Prairie turnips are not normally found in such wet areas. Still, it made quite an impression on me. While I can’t identify anachronistic characteristics in prairie turnips – they tumble around quite well – there are almost inevitably other plants that had fruits made to induce bison or elk or perhaps even the horses that roamed our continent until 10-15,000 years ago, to eat and disperse their seed.

A beautiful, expansive blooming groundplum

One plant I wonder about in this regard is groundplum, or buffalobean milkvetch (Astragalus crassicarpus). Are their seedpods an evolutionary anachronism? The pods do not seem to be consumed by any animal other than me, with year old pods often still around when the plant is developing new fruit. Having me eat them is a waste of the plants energy because I eat them long before seeds are mature while they are still tender and sweet, making me a crappy seed disperser – pun intended. It is confusing that they seem best to eat when seeds are immature; most fruits are tastiest at maturity when seeds are ready to germinate. At maturity buffalobeans are locked away in a tough seed casing. Perhaps the partner they are missing is a rodent; a ground squirrel who caches them and perhaps fails to eat all of them. Buffalobean milkvetch is common, at least in my neighborhood, so I am probably missing something. Still it seems a waste to see the year old pods all dressed up with no place to go.

Seeds from year old pods gathered from 5-6 plants

As I have written before, one impetus for my project was the discovery of Dakota skipper butterflies (Hesperae dacotae) on my nearby prairie. Not only mammals have been and are being lost as reproductive partners. Most of my land qualified for the CRP program as pollinator habitat. The money for pollinator habitat restoration has been driven by worries about honeybees and monarch butterflies. I doubt there would have been much demand for restoring pollinator habitat if the symbols were the Dakota skipper butterfly and native bees. A small irony is that my prairie restoration is partially supported by “colony collapse” disorder of honeybees, a non-native species I would prefer not to have by my restoration to compete with native bees.

To get back on track, I wonder how many native prairie species are missing, or have an insufficient number of pollinators. Pollinator relationships are not necessarily exclusive and many plants can be pollinated by wind-borne pollen, or self-pollinate. Truly efficient pollination however, may require a specific partner species. Could 100 acres of restored prairie indirectly improve the fitness of native prairie species in a larger landscape?

If there were prairie species that had an exclusive pollination relationship with an extinct pollinator we might never know. They are gone. The very existence of the plants we see implies that any partners that are essential still exist. Still, there is obviously a middle ground or the phrase “evolutionary anachronism” would never have been coined. There may be species just hanging on with diminished populations because of a lack of pollinators or seed dispersers. I doubt there is a robust research literature for all the native prairie species whose seeds I gather. Even in an area with a lot of native grasslands such as where I grew up, it is impossible to walk around without feeling the presence of ghosts.

I always circle back to the value of my prairie restoration beyond that of a “vanity project”. What ecosystem services will it provide? As much as I love prairie, I also love farming. My career’s work is helping farmers to raise crops more efficiently while improving their land. Some of the land that is in the restoration, perhaps 40 acres, is productive farm ground and I struggle with whether those acres should have been included in the restoration. I have mentioned the Dakota skipper several times, but I would like to determine what other benefits might accrue past helping one species. Might this project extend habitats for local plant genotypes that I am gathering seed from? Might it help pollinator species that could go on to help native plant species in the larger landscape? And if I add in carbon sequestration and water quality improvement, does this start to add up to something significant? I’m writing this post (and I do actually write every post longhand, at least two written drafts before it is typed) during a February blizzard and I have a bad case of cabin fever. While I am not exactly in an existential crisis, I am questioning all my assumptions. Why am I doing what I am doing? What grassland birds will be able to use my restoration? What insects nearby could use a larger territory to establish a population? Hell, what soil microorganisms in my neighborhood are looking for a new place to stretch their metaphorical legs? What future “ghosts of evolution” can I provide succor to? Blizzard dreams; I may as well dream big.

Speculations on Natural History

Prairie Dreams

I am a 63 year old businessman/farmer who decided to create a 100 acre prairie restoration in 2017. It was seeded last year, and has prompted a great deal of reflection and conversation which has culminated in the decision to start a blog to document the process and results, and to reflect on many things related to the restoration, and to prairies and the natural world. I do this primarily as an exercise to clarify my own thoughts and feelings, but if it is of interest to anyone I welcome your own thoughts, observations and ideas. And so we begin.

Prairie Dreams

When I was a teenager out picking rock or digging summer fallow there was a lot of time to daydream. A teenager lives so deep inside his own head that he needs a ladder to enter the world. Then, put that teenager in a job that takes no thought or intention and leave him alone for hours. Flights of fancy swirl and cycle, multiple iterations of whatever scenario has gotten stuck in his mind circle till an appropriate ending appears, and the successful/heroic/tragic scenario is perfect.

One of those recurring fantasies I had was imagining what heaven would be like. I must have had full confidence in my personal sanctity as it was obvious to me that heaven was my eventual destination. And to my 15 year old self, heaven would manifest itself in whatever form I wished, so the daydreaming task was to decide what manifestation best satisfied my desires. There were different answers on different days, but the one I remember the best was to be wandering the pre-European settlement prairie. There was nothing but five foot tall big bluestem to the horizon. I still can see the image of myself in a sea of grass.

Now I wonder if that memory has risen from my subconscious to inform my conscious brain’s desire to do a prairie restoration. I hadn’t remembered that daydream until recently, but I don’t think a memory or desire has to be conscious to drive thoughts and decisions. Our brains all have multiple drivers working simultaneously.

However, we still need to create a conscious narrative as well, if only to tell our friends and family. My younger daughter, Diane had surveyed and characterized prairies in northeast South Dakota for an MS thesis project, with special emphasis on prairies with a record of harboring Dakota skipper (Hesperae dacotae) butterflies. Though my land was outside of her study area I had a friend, Dennis Skadsen, scout my prairies and he found a Dakota skipper butterfly. The Dakota skipper has recently been listed as a threatened species, so I was thrilled. Restoring a prairie adjacent to one harboring a threatened prairie species might provide an extension of habitat that would allow a larger, more stable population to develop. Though no skippers have ever been found in a restored prairie, I doubt the sampling population of restored prairies next to skipper occupied habitat is very large, and a man can dream. And even if they cannot be tempted to feed on the black samson (Echinacea angustifolia) that I plant, there will at least be a buffer created between the occupied habitat and farmed ground. Few insecticides are used in my area, but infestations of grasshoppers, soybean aphids and other crop pests occur occasionally and a buffer from potential insecticide drift seems prudent.

To extend the reasoning, I am close to retirement with health problems related to collateral damage from cancer treatment. Increasing retirement income to supplement Social Security is a goal. The restoration is occurring on poor farm ground with below average rental income. I was able to enroll the field in the continuous Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) signup, primarily as pollinator habitat, at a rental rate above what I was receiving for it as farm ground. The CRP program also provides cost share for seeding, providing some help towards the substantial cost.

If I haven’t tied this up in a tight enough package there is a fourth benefit to me from the project. As I slow down in the career that I have been working at for almost 40 years I need something new to be moving towards. I have spent my entire life working outside. To retire to an east chair sounds more like the third circle of Hell in Dante’s “Inferno” than a goal to aspire to. Every week during the growing season for 38 years I have visited 25 farmer clients who are also some of my best friends. I need to have a chance to continue to interact with interesting people, talking about important things. I am rich in having a great many people to consult with on the restoration project; people I can ask questions of and hopefully brag to with pictures of my successes in its development. This will be a wonderful excuse to visit with them.

So the plan brings forth the subconscious memory of the wandering mind of a fifteen year old boy. It develops from the experiences chasing cattle, fixing fence and making hay in our prairies while growing up. The subconscious melds with the conscious desire to create a project to share with my daughter, something to look forward to working in and enjoying with her. It draws in the desire to support a threatened species and to still be a vital, contributing member of the human race. And I am doing it in such a way that it will support my and my wife’s retirement financially as well as spiritually. Art and commerce, science and industry, yin and yang. The circle may not be complete, but it begs the question, “How can I not do this?”

So I did. And I still am.

And this blog will follow the story.