Friday, August 26, 2011
By Katie Graham
Southeast Community College
Today I will inform you about the efforts to conserve the grasses and forbs, or flowers, of the prairie. I will speak about why it is important to conserve this quickly fading ecosystem, what is being done at the Homestead National Monument to conserve the prairie, and what is being done right here on our own campus [Southeast Community College] to conserve a piece of history.
Countless prairie restoration projects exist over all of North America today. Conservationists are trying to restore an ecosystem that is quickly fading. Once this natural habitat is destroyed completely, none of us will be able to enjoy what we never appreciated as being there in the first place. The tall grass prairies, which use to cover billions of acres, has now become the most extinct ecosystem in all of North America according to Sarah Osterhoudt and her article A Prairie Primer in OnEarth an online journal from the fall of 2001.
There is debate over what constitutes being restored, though. It can take many centuries to bring back the original assortment of soil, plants, and animals. It is not enough to throw down seeds and hope they produce a prairie. According to John Carey and his article Little Habitat on the Prairie Only Remnants Remain of the Nation's Original Prairie, and Biologists Are Scrambling to Understand and Restore What is Left from National Wildlife (2002), the hand of humans is needed first to replant the original vegetation where needed and then to keep it healthy, along with the occasional need for orchestrated fire and grazing.
Now that I have told you a little about trying to restore the prairie ecosystem, one that has become the most extinct in North America, and how the grasses and forbs have begun adapting to harsh conditions, let’s talk about what we are doing here in Nebraska to conserve the prairie we have.
Nebraska is home to the second oldest prairie conservation in the United States which started in 1939. And while we may not all come from Nebraska, conserving any prairie in North America should be something we all care about. Through the restoration project at the Homestead National Monument, park staff has been able to bring back many of the original and diverse plants of the prairie (National Park Service, 2011).
On the National Parks Service website for the Homestead National Monument of America, James and Debacker in their Plant Community Monitoring Trend Report from 2007, state that currently there are 116 different species of plants present at the Homestead.
In an interview on August 14, 2011, with Jesse Bolli, who is a Resource Management Specialist at the Homestead National Monument, about 60 acres of the land is native trees, 100 acres is the prairie, which is broken into 20% for thicket, 25% for grasses and roughly 55% for forbs and other plants. The main ways they help control and encourage the prairie growth is through controlled burns, some mowing, and little herbicide. Controlled burns at the Homestead started in 1970. In 1990 the rotation was changed to a three year rotation and again in 2004 to burn 2/5 every year, taking the 4 year to rest. The Homestead uses herbicide only when needed and on a low level setting so as not to spray a large area.
Now that I have told you about the efforts at the Homestead National monument in restoring and conserving the prairie, let’s take a look a little closer to us and see what SCC is doing to conserve the natural prairie. Southeast Community College started its restoration program in 2007 to conserve what they can of the original plants. In an interview on August 14, 2011 with Nate Walker, who works here on the SCC campus in the Prairie Partnership office, SCC began with a high diversity planting with seeds from the Prairie Plains Resource Institute. Only local seed from around Nebraska was chosen to be planted, because plants outside Nebraska may affect other plant species growth or may be too weak to thrive under our soil conditions.
There were 16 species of grasses, five species of sedges