“Plant trees,” she said.

     In the current issue of Woodlands & Prairies we pay tribute to the late Wangari Maathai, the environmental activist and humanitarian who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004.  Ms. Maathai died of cancer in September of this year.   She was the one who, in the early ‘70s, suggested to a group of rural women in Kenya that they plant trees.  The simple act of planting fruit and other trees had far-reaching results.  It provided the women a source of nutritious food, wood for cooking, fodder for livestock, and cleaner water as the roots stabilized the soil. That was the beginning of the Green Belt Movement founded by Ms. Maathai in 1977.  It led to the planting of more than 40 million trees in Kenya alone and many millions more as the basis of a worldwide environmental movement.  www.greenbeltmovement.org   

 
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Drawing: John Mundt

     It’s interesting how the tree planting by the Kenyan women not only benefitted the environment, it also changed their lives.  Improved access to food, fuel, fodder, and clean water empowered the women economically and politically.  Doing good for the environment rewards the caregivers in many ways.

 

     In the post below, we explore some of those ways. 

New life for the land and for the stewards

       The oak savanna famously restored by Sibylla and Bill Brown brims with life, from the microbes in the soil to the profusion of flora and fauna on the forest floor. The savanna has also given the Browns a new lease on life in their retirement years.  Sibylla Brown radiates the vitality of the ecosystems she cares for as she joyfully shares her story with a steady stream of visitors. She also reaches out through her blog: www.timberhilloaksavanna.com  “Our lives have true substance,” Sibylla told me.  “We’re actually accomplishing something.”

                                        Sibylla Brown: Sharing the joy of a restored savanna.

  

     I see this same spirit in the faces and voices of the many people I’ve interviewed over the years about their work on the land.  Of course, nature has stirred the soul of man since time immemorial. The people featured in the pages of this magazine are no different.  But what is different, I like to think, is that these people are at the grassroots of the ecological restoration movement. They roll up their sleeves and get the job done. It may not be the magic that draws them to their tasks. God knows, it’s hard work.  But then the magic happens, and lives change. 

   
      The story about the Browns and their Timberhill Oak Savanna in southern Iowa appears in the fall issue of Woodlands & Prairies.

 

Feeling hopeful about savannas. Then again...

Gregg Pattison: Sharing good news and bad news.

      We felt hopeful about the future of oak savannas after visiting with Gregg Pattison last month.  Pattison, who’s with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, is helping landowners in southern Iowa transform degraded woodlands back into healthy oak savannas.  Pattison is rounding up financial and technical support for landowners in Decatur County through a group called the Southern Iowa Oak Savanna Alliance.

       We’ll be reporting on the restoration work of several of these landowners in a future issue of Woodlands & Prairies.  

      If only more landowners understood the importance of these rare ecosystems.  Pattison shares this horror story about a landowner who wanted him to look at a “weed” that was giving him trouble.  “It keeps plugging up my plow,” the landowner said.  Pattison found that he was trying to plow up a virgin stand of big and little bluestem in an oak opening as a food plot for deer.  

      “He was having the same problem as the pioneers who tried to break prairie sod with roots 6-foot deep,” Pattison says.  "But this time it was for trophy bucks." 

     The story is enough to bring tears to the eyes to savanna and prairie lovers everywhere.

Déjà Vue for a Blacksoil Prairie

Phillip Cox: Now on the outside looking in.    

     Prairies of any size are rare enough, but those on deep, black soils ideal for agriculture are rarest of all. Such a prairie grows on 336 acres of former corn and soybean fields near Newport in west-central Indiana.

     The problem is, this blacksoil prairie might meet the same fate as its predecessors more than 150 years ago.

     Phillip Cox, who's in the photo above,  is among those trying to prevent that from happening.

     He took me out to see the prairie last month.     We couldn’t get very close, as it was on Army property on the other side of a 7-foot chain-link fence.  We were looking in at a decommissioned U.S. Army ammunition plant near the Vermillion County Seat town of Newport.   Known as the Newport Chemical Depot, the plant sprawls over some 7,000 acres of land, much of which it was used as a buffer zone for its operations (the plant once made chemical weapons).  Nearly 3,000 acres are prime agricultural land still being leased to farmers.

     In the mid-‘90s the Army allowed a small portion of that land to be returned to its original tallgrass prairie ecosystem.   Cox had a hand in the prairie reconstruction when he worked as a conservationist for the company that managed the land for the Army.   By 2005 experts had replaced row crops with tallgrass prairie on a total of 336 acres.

    But here’s what worries Cox and other conservationists.  In September the entire 7,000 acres are scheduled to be over to an ad hoc government agency known as the Newport Chemical Depot Reuse Authority.  Over the next 10 years the Reuse Authority will sell the land to the public for various uses according to a master plan.  Approved uses include agriculture and industrial development.  The plan also calls for 30 percent to be managed as natural areas.  However, these are mostly sloughs and woodlands and other untillable areas.  Nearly all of the 336 acres of blacksoil prairie that Cox and others planted years ago remain on land designated for agriculture, according to the master plan. 

    Cox and groups such as the Isaac Walton League and the Audubon Society want the Army to put a covenant on those 336 acres to ensure they won’t go back to corn and soybeans.  But the Department of Defense is dragging its feet because such a restriction could complicate transfer of the land.  The Reuse Authority has also rejected the idea despite testimony at public hearings in support of protecting the prairie.

    “These 336 acres represent the largest example of the blacksoil prairie in Indiana,” Cox said as he looked out over the yellow coneflower and other forbs and grasses on the other side of the fence.  “Its biodiversity offers habitat to rare grassland birds and other wildlife, not to mention the other environmental benefits it provides.  It’s part of our natural heritage, and it could be a place for the public to visit and appreciate,” he continued.  “And yet we might lose this priceless prairie for another 300 acres of corn and beans.”
    Cox added that about 1,900 acres in the Newport Chemical Depot are potentially restorable to blacksoil prairie.  “A restoration of that scope would have national significance,” he said.
    But for now, Cox and others are just trying to save 336 acres of prairie from being plowed up, reminiscent of the prairies’ fate in the 19^th century.  

A Petition to Save a Prairie

Here’s a petition being circulated by friends of the blacksoil prairie near Newport, Ind., mentioned in the previous post.   Copy the petition and sign and send it to the person designated if you want to help those fighting to save this piece of prairie from being plowed up.

   We, the undersigned citizens of the United States, do hereby petition the United

States Army to include a covenant extending permanent protection to the 336 acre

black soil prairie located at the former Newport Chemical Depot in Newport,

Vermillion County, Indiana, prior to turning the property over to the Reuse

Authority, Clinton, IN.

Name _________________________________

City___________________________________

 State___________________________________

The petitions need to be returned by August 15 to be effective. Return to:
Clara Walters, P.O.  Box 258, St. Bernice, IN 47875

   

   

Well Kept Secrets

Campers, don’t overlook county parks.  Though not shown on road maps, many of these lesser-known public parks feature facilities every bit as good as state parks, with lower fees.   I happened upon Otter Creek Park while on a recent swing through Iowa gathering stories for Woodlands & Prairies.  The Tama County Conservation Board operates this 529-acre park Near Toledo in east-central Iowa. It features 65 electric hookups, hiking trails, a 70-acre lake, a nature center, and even a 2-acre native prairie.   County parks in Iowa collaborated on a website that provides a very helpful state directory. www.mycountyparks.com   Excellent county and other local parks exist in all states, though it might take a bit of searching on the Web to find one near your destination.  Some are huge and well-known, but most are well-kept secrets to all but the locals.  They’re worth a look whether you’re a tent camper or an RV’er.

So much for the real thing

We got the wrong message from this ad featuring a woman captivated by the wonders of wireless while nature’s wonders played out unnoticed in the background.  Used wisely, technology can help us understand and appreciate the natural world, and I imagine that many of us have taken laptops and wireless devices with us when exploring the outdoors.  You might be reading this over a wireless connection.  But how many times has the digital revolution drawn people away from experiencing the real thing?  The ad’s unfortunate juxtaposition only seems to affirm the cluelessness of its creators.       

WOODLANDS & PRAIRIES Editor’s Notebook

WOODLANDS & PRAIRIES Editor’s Notebook

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Filling in for wildfires and bison

Ecologists will tell you that natural areas need disturbance to stay healthy.  Wildfires and free-roaming graziers such as bison and elk once did the trick, but now the job falls to people like Jim and Rose Sime.  I caught up with them on a warm day last summer while they were cutting burdock, i.e. “disturbing” land they own in the rugged hills of southwestern Wisconsin north of Monfort.  The Simes, who are retired school teachers, do find time to relax and smell the (wild) roses on the properties they own, which include five parcels totaling several hundred acres.  But they also work their heads off to protect the native ecosystems in their care, including a pine relic, sedge meadows, fens, and prairie remnants. The plant communities contain some of the state’s rarest native species. That’s why you’ll often find the Simes, now in their 70s, conducting controlled burns and attacking re-growth of invaders such as honeysuckle and autumn olive.   The Simes often exchange work with other members of The Prairie Enthusiasts. 

Bottom line: It’s unnatural to leave natural areas undisturbed, and there’s no better way to make the point than by examples set by landowners such as the Simes.

Photo: © Woodlands & Prairies Magazine

The Simes at work "disturbing" a degraded sand prairie.

Jan Gibson and the Shack

Everyone who cares for a piece of land has a story to tell.  Jan Gibson told me about the shack she came across back in 1971.  It sat under an oak tree on 2 acres west of Toledo, Ohio.   At the time she was a single mother with six kids, one step from a homeless shelter.  She noticed it had a for-sale sign. Temporary shelter, she thought.  But the sign was for the entire lot, not just the shack.   The price was $6,000.  That gave Jan an idea. She offered all she had to her name; made the deal, and lived with the kids in the 10x20-foot shack, with no heat or running water, while the first stage of a modular house was being built on the lot.  Jan and I sat at the kitchen table of that house as she told me how she how she got on her feet after that first summer living in the shack with her kids.

This spunky woman not only saved her family, her maternal instincts led her to save a native plant community growing in the back of the lot. It was a black oak lupine barren, one of the rare ecosystems of the fabled Oak Openings region west of Toledo.    

 As a survivor herself, Gibson went on to become a leading advocate for saving the savannas, wet prairies, and other threatened ecosystems on private property in the region. 

Jan hadn’t read The Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, but I couldn’t help think about the connection between the shack where she once lived with her kids, and the shack where Leopold parked his family.  Natural resources benefitted in both cases.

Photo: © Woodlands & Prairies Magazine
Single mom Jan Gibson saved her family and the oak savanna in her back yard.



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Helping Hands

Going native is easier than it used to be, thanks to the growing sources of assistance.

A mentorship program in the northwestern suburbs of Chicago is one of the best examples we’ve seen.  Paul Costoff didn’t quite know what to do about a thorny runoff problem that was digging a gully in his front yard in Crystal Lake.  But then he met H. M. Hepperlen, another Crystal Lake homeowner, who took Costoff under his wing and helped him solve the problem with a rain garden filled with native plants.  Hepplerlen belongs to a local McHenry County group that helps members get their feet wet in natural landscaping.  Hepperlen serves as one of the mentors because of his experience with native plants in his own yard.  The mentorship is the brainchild of the Wildflower Preservation and Propagation Committee (WPPC), whose longish name pretty much sums up its mission.  Hepperlen helped Costoff every step of the way in establishing a rain garden that features edges along with deep-rooted native grasses and forbs.   A side benefit was how well the project clicked with Costoff’s sons, Mason and Wyatt, especially 10-year-old Wyatt, who taught himself to name and identify all of the some 40 species in the garden at any stage of growth.  For more on the WPPC: http://www.thewppc.org/
  

Paul Costoff got help with his rain garden while his boys cultivated a new interest in native plants