Ecosystems cross political boundaries, as did the Americans who showed their passports to customs authorities at the Canadian border and went on to attend the North American Prairie Conference in Winnipeg Aug. 6 to 10 in the upper reaches of the tall grass prairie.   Held every two years, this marked the 23rd such conference, and its first time in Western Canada.  
     Members of the non-profit group Nature Manitoba (formerly the Manitoba Native Plant Society) were the primary hosts, and they made the conference one to remember. With 225 people registered, the conference didn't set any attendance records, but what it lacked in quantity it made up for in quality.
     In the keynote addresses we were captivated by the gripping personal story of hardship, tragedy, and discovery on the grasslands of Saskatchewan by author Sharon Butala. 
     The wit and wisdom of Canadian Candace Savage, another keynote speaker, showed why her scholarly book on the natural history of the North American Prairie turned out to be anything but dry. 
     David Young, another Canadian, wove human history into the story of the prairies with an account of the Selkirk settlers. 
     These Canadians are a literate bunch! 
     Not to be outdone, Wes Jackson of the Land Institute, Salina, Kans., and the hopeful father of a new green revolution based on the prairie model, was as articulate and inspirational as at past prairie conferences where he's spoken.   
     Keeping conference goers hopping from one building to another on the University of Manitoba campus were more than 40 oral presentations on new research findings in ecological restoration.     


Volunteer big bluestem enhances a monument to the
Manitoba Tall Press Prairie Preserve.
 Delegates (from left):
Daryl Smith, Iowa, and Mike Pekarek, Ohio.

   
One of the bus tours took us into the Manitoba Tall Grass Prairie Preserve in the Red River Valley, where we saw the results of years of land aquisitions and painstaking renewal work by the Manitoba prairie community. This mostly volunteer effort, bolstered by charitable donations, has resulted in the preservation of 12,000 acres of tall grass prairie in the Red River Valley.   Catching everyone's eye was a granite monument commemorating the Preserve. A clump of big bluestem grew from a crack in the giant glacial remnant as if it didn't want to be left out. The prairie never ceases to amaze. 
    It was just one of the many highlights at the 23rd edition of the North American Prairie Conference. We came away charged up to restore and protect native ecosystems no matter which boundaries they cross.   
    

At the tip of the Tall Grass Prairie

    Once every two years members of the prairie community gather to compare notes and celebrate the landscape they love and care for.   This year all roads lead to Manitoba, at the northern tip of the Tall Grass Prairie. The 23^rd North American Prairie Conference will meet Aug. 6 to 10 in Winnipeg.  We preview the conference in our spring issue.  In fact, we’ve put those stories into a special online edition available for download. 

    Here’s the link:  http://www.woodlandsandprairies.com/2012-spring.pdf.

    The conference isn’t just for serious students of prairies.  There will be topics of interest to anyone who wants to know more about prairies. Activities for children are included.  On one of the field trips you’ll see big bluestem and many wildflowers at their peak in a tall grass prairie preserve in the Red River Valley.  You could make the conference part of a fun and fact-filled family vacation.   Even if you can’t go, our preview could add to your appreciation of the incredible biodiversity of this continent shared by Canadians and Americans and our neighbors to the south.          

Will another grassland bite the dust?

A recent series by National Public Radio on the mining boom in Mongolia brought to mind the story in our winter issue by Kayla Koether, who in 2010-11 spent five months in the country living with nomadic herders.  In her story she mentions the mining industry as one of the threats to a way of life and to the health of the grasslands that have supported herdsmen for centuries.   NPR’s series tells how mining jobs are drawing young people away from herding in a country where traditionally two out of every five Mongolians make their living herding goats, sheep, and camels.  Meanwhile, competition increases for underground water.  Herders need the water in times of drought, and the mining industry needs it to process its minerals.  Fears mount that an industry that might last no more than a hundred years will destroy grasslands that have endured for thousands of years.  A way of life would bite the dust as well.   Kayla lived with herders in the steppe region north of the main mining activity in the Gobi Provinces, which are a mix of desert and grasslands.  However, the effects of the mining boom reverberate through all of the grasslands.  We’ve made Kayla’s story available in a special reprint that you access online.

 http://www.woodlandsandprairies.com/Mongolia-reprint.pdf

Here is a link to the NPR series.

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/24/152842270/old-ways-disappearing-in-the-new-mongolia

“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.