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.
Incredibly sad to still hear stories like this about property owners who haven't a clue...sad, sad, sad!
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