Category Archives: Prairie Management

Grandpa’s “Accidental” Prairie Restoration Project

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In the late 1950’s, my grandfather bought a quarter section of farmland just southwest of Stockham, Nebraska.  At the time, all but about 26 acres of that 160 acre land parcel was in row crops.  The unfarmed areas (the steepest slopes and wettest draws) were a combination of native prairie and other “waste” ground.  From what I understand, Grandpa’s intent was to buy the land and put much of the cropland back to native grass pasture, keeping only the flattest areas and most productive soils to farm.  Regardless of whether or not that was his initial intent, he did indeed do that restoration project in 1962 – using the Soil Conservation Service’s Great Plains Program to provide cost-share for the seeding and construction of a livestock dam.  Approximately 87 acres of cropland was planted with a mixture of native grasses, including primarily big bluestem, indiangrass, switchgrass, little bluestem, side oats grama, and western wheatgrass – with a little blue grama thrown in too.  (We still have the receipts from the seed company.)

Starting in 1964, Grandpa started grazing the new pasture – including the unfarmed portions – and it’s been grazed annually ever since.  The pasture grazing was designed to be both profitable and sustainable, and as far as I can tell it has been.  There is no evidence of chronic overgrazing, and a number of “grazing sensitive” plant species are still abundant, especially in the old remnant areas.  My grandpa died in 1990, and Grandma died earlier this year.  After Grandma’s death, most of the other family farm land was sold, but after some long discussions, we kept the ¼ section in the family.  My wife and I now own a 2/3 interest and my aunt and uncle own the other 1/3.  Although I was helping Grandma manage the pasture for more than a decade before her death, actually owning the land makes me see the pasture in a much different way.  Before we shelled out our hard-earned money to buy it, the pasture was an interesting place to go cut cedar trees and walk around, and I tried to help Grandma set up the grazing leases to ensure that the land stayed in good condition while bringing in a reasonable income.  Now, as an owner, that lease income means a whole lot more, as does the current and future condition of the grassland.  Decisions about how to balance stocking rate and income with plant community impacts are a little more real!

I bring all this up as background discussion for the real subject of this post.  Though I’m sure it wasn’t Grandpa’s intent when he seeded the site back to grassland in 1962, he actually did some pretty great prairie conservation work.  He took a series of very small isolated remnant prairie islands and filled the space between them with grassland habitat.  It’s hard to know how many plant and insect species populations have larger and more viable populations now because of his work.  Certainly the site has improved habitat conditions for the grasshopper sparrows, western meadowlarks, and other grassland birds that are nesting there.

A portion of remnant (unplowed) prairie on our farm. It has retained a good mixed-grass plant community, with fairly abundant leadplant, stiff sunflower, prairie clovers, and other characteristic prairie plants. Shown here are Missouri goldenrod, white sage, stiff goldenrod, and many others.

While any grassland is better than no grassland, the re-seeded areas of the prairie are still distinct in appearance and composition from the unplowed areas.  Many of the prairie remnants contain fairly abundant populations of conservative forb species, including leadplant, stiff sunflower, prairie violet, prairie clovers, and many others.  A few of those species have moved into the re-seeded areas, but mostly at low abundances.  The re-seeded areas are dominated by grasses, but also have an abundance of many common forb species such as goldenrods, white sage, ironweed, hoary vervain, yellow prairie coneflower, dotted gayfeather, yarrow, and others – along with strong populations of sweet clover.

This photo shows some of the re-seeded prairie. Many native forbs have moved into the stand of grass that Grandpa planted, but others are still rare or missing.

I only recently found some hand-drawn maps showing the exact locations of the unplowed areas, and was able to cross-check those with old aerial photos from before and after the 1962 seeding.  Now that I know those locations more exactly, I’ll be able to start making even better comparisons between the remnant and re-seeded areas.  I started that process this last weekend, taking an inventory of plant species in the re-seeded areas (I found 65 species).  I’m sure I’ll add to that list over time, but that’s not too bad, considering only 6-7 grasses were planted there initially.  I don’t know yet how many plant species are in the remnant portions – I’m still working on that.

This aerial photo from 1956 shows our 1/4 section just prior to Grandpa buying it. The darkest areas are the unfarmed portions. You can see how small and isolated many of them were. Only the steepest and wettest areas avoided the plow.

In some ways, it’s amazing to see the diversity of plants in those previously farmed areas.  If I took a botanist to the site without divulging its history, I’m pretty they’d have no idea it had once been farmed.  At the same time, while there is good plant diversity at the site, it’s interesting to see how few conservative plant species have made their way into the previously farmed areas.  I’ve seen a few individuals of leadplant, a few patches of purple and white prairie clover, some areas of purple coneflower, and a few stiff sunflower colonies.  Prairie violets have begun creeping from the remnants into the re-seeded areas too – but in 50 years, they’ve only made it about 20 or 30 yards.

All of this points out the importance of protecting and managing remnant prairies to avoid losing those conservative plant species.  Once they’re gone, it’s not realistic to expect them to just come waltzing back in from nearby sites.  During the last 10 years or so, I’ve been overseeding portions of the re-seeded prairie with locally harvested seed.  As is typical, the results of that have been fairly muted, but I’m hoping my work gets those plants to establish a little faster than they otherwise would have…

This false sunflower is one of a handful of species that is showing up here and there across the old farmed portions of the prairie as a result of our overseeding efforts. It's a slow process, but one that will, I hope, pay long-term dividends.

Of course, if Grandpa’s restoration project was being done today, and the main goal was really to ecologically reconnect those small prairie islands, the cropland around the prairie remnants would be seeded with a high-diversity mixture of prairie plant species.  That would help ensure that the seeded area facilitated a number of ecological needs, including the availability of host plants for a variety of insects and genetic flow between plant species.  In 1962, no one in Nebraska was even thinking about anything like that, and Grandpa’s goal was (I think) simply to take a piece of land that was being overused and make it into productive agricultural land.  I’m pretty sure he’d never heard of a grasshopper sparrow.  Regardless of his initial goal, there is now a 108 acre prairie in southern Hamilton County, Nebraska – and that’s a rare and valuable commodity.  The nearest prairie to ours is at least several miles away, across many acres of cropland.

I don’t know exactly know how to measure the ecological value of our prairie, but I’m sure proud to own it.

Patch-Burn Grazing in Missouri Prairies

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If you read this blog frequently, you know I manage many of our prairies with combinations of prescribed fire and grazing.  I like the heterogeneous habitat structure I get from patch-burn grazing, and have documented benefits to plant diversity in our prairies.  (I’ve summarized the experiences I’ve had with multiple variations of patch-burn grazing here.)

Patch-burn grazing with cattle is still viewed with skepticism by many people – especially some in eastern tallgrass prairies.  I can understand why people would be concerned about the potential impacts of cattle grazing on some plant species and prairie communities, and I certainly don’t advocate cattle grazing for all prairies.  However, I also think that many common concerns stem from limited experience with cattle grazing.  If the only cattle grazing I’d ever seen was the kind that annually beat grasslands down to the ground and resulted in soil erosion and a gradual loss of native plant diversity I’d be skeptical too – to say the least! 

When you see a prairie like this, it's easy to see how prairie enthusiasts could be nervous about cattle grazing. This Nebraska prairie has never been plowed, but it's missing many prairie plant species - though that is likely due more to past herbicide practices than cattle grazing.

However, chronic overgrazing is one extreme in a broad spectrum of grazing regimes, and cattle can also be used in ways that produce very positive results for plant diversity and wildlife habitat.  The first time I saw a prairie being stomped and chomped by lots of cattle it was pretty unsettling.  However, watching that prairie recover the next year after cattle had been removed gave me a much greater respect for prairies than I’d had before.  Over the last 20 years, I’ve seen that process over and over in many tallgrass and mixed-grass prairies, and the resilience of prairie plants never ceases to amaze me.  Of course, I’ve also seen instances where repeated overgrazing has degraded prairie communities, but that degradation has usually come from not giving plants sufficient opportunity to rest and recover from grazing bouts – not from grazing per se.  (And often because of a history of broadcast herbicide use as well.)

Most of my personal experience with grazing (and patch-burn grazing in particular) has come from mixed-grass and lowland tallgrass prairies in east-central Nebraska.  I’ve also seen a lot of grazing on western tallgrass prairies in Kansas and Oklahoma.  However, my experience with cattle grazing in eastern tallgrass prairies is much more limited – mostly because it is such a rarity.  This summer has given me two chances to observe the impacts of patch-burn grazing on eastern prairies in Indiana and Missouri.  I wrote briefly about the Indiana experience in a previous post, but I want to spend more time on what I saw in Missouri last week.

The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) began a research project on the use of patch-burn grazing on public lands prairies back in 2005.  One of their hopes was to increase the habitat quality of those grasslands for prairie chickens and many other grassland species without hurting the diversity or quality of the plant communities.  Many of the prairies they grazed during the project were considered to be some of the higher-quality prairies in Missouri (botanically speaking) so protecting the diversity of those plant communities – and the rare and conservative plant species in them – was extremely important.  Several people, including me, with prior experience using patch-burn grazing provided input to MDC as they designed the project.  During the summer of 2007, I finally got the chance to see some of the grazed prairies during the third year of the research project.  One of those prairies was Taberville Prairie, north of Eldorado Springs.

The burned patch of Taberville Prairie in 2007 (part of the MDC's patch-burn grazing research project). The grazing was pretty intensive in the burned patch, with only a few plant species remaining ungrazed. Even I was a little unsettled by the way the prairie looked. (Sorry about the photo quality, the tour was during the middle of a bright sunny day...)

I remember being a little shocked as I walked around Taberville Prairie back in September 2007, because the cattle had grazed it much harder than I’d expected to see.  The most recently burned patches of the prairie were nearly universally cropped close to the ground, with only a few plant species remaining lightly grazed or ungrazed.  That was pretty different from my own sites, where our relatively light stocking rates lead cattle to graze pretty selectively in burned areas, leaving many forb species ungrazed – even many that are typically considered to be favorites of cattle.  At Taberville, even unburned portions of the prairie showed evidence of moderate grazing, and it was difficult to find conservative plant species such as compass plant, purple coneflower, blazing star, and leadplant.  What I was seeing at Taberville made me wonder whether MDC had pushed the prairie a little further than was prudent.  Of course, the plan was to rest the prairie for several years following the three years of patch-burn grazing, so logic and experience told me this was something the prairie could easily recover from – but even so, I’ll admit it was a little disturbing to see.

This photo shows the patch that was burned in 2006 (the year before the photo was taken). Though grazed less intensively than the 2007 burn patch, there are still few conservative plants visible.

Since my 2007 trip there has been considerable discussion (to put it mildly) among prairie enthusiasts and biologists in Missouri about the impacts of cattle grazing in those prairies where patch-burn grazing was tested, especially on conservative plant species.  I can easily understand why people were concerned – especially after my own experience at Taberville.  I was anxious to see for myself how the prairies had recovered, so I was glad to accept an invitation from MDC to participate in a grassland ecology workshop last week.  The day before the workshop started, I got a tour from Len Gilmore and Matt Hill of MDC, and made my return to Taberville prairie.

MDC's Len Gilmore manages Taberville Prairie. In this photo, he's showing me the kind of vegetation structure favored by nesting prairie chickens. This is a portion of the prairie currently open to cattle - but is not the most recently burned patch.

We started the tour in a portion of Taberville than had not been included in the grazing back in 2005-2007, but that was currently in year three of a patch-burn grazing rotation.  Len, who manages Taberville Prairie, showed me the kinds of habitat structure they’re trying to create with patch-burn grazing, including nesting habitat for prairie chickens.  We also discussed other aspects of patch-burn grazing MDC is concerned about (and testing) – including potential impacts to headwater streams, most of which are currently fenced out.  The overall look of the prairies under patch-burn grazing this year was similar to those I saw in 2007.  This time, however, I looked harder for conservative plants, and was able to find them in the patches that weren’t the most recently burned.  Most weren’t blooming, but they were certainly alive and well.

This is the most recently-burned patch in the current grazing area at Taberville Prairie. The grazing was obviously very intense (the cattle had been removed the week before my visit).

What I really wanted to see, however, were the portions of the prairie I’d seen in 2007 that had been rested (with one burn) since I’d last seen them.  When we arrived, I think I let out an audible sigh of relief.  The prairie looked great.  Even in what was a very dry summer, the prairie looked like my visual image of Missouri tallgrass prairie.  Lots of showy blazing star flowers and abundant conservative plants, including leadplant, compass plant, purple coneflower, rattlesnake master, and others.  Len took me to several locations where they had built grazing exclosures during the original patch-burn grazing research project.  The exclosures had allowed MDC researchers to compare the ungrazed plant community inside the exclosures to adjacent plots that were exposed to cattle grazing.  Even without seeing the data, being able to walk through and compare those areas that had never been grazed with those that had been exposed to three years of patch-burn grazing (the exclosures had been removed but their locations were still marked) was a powerful testament to prairie resilience.  I looked hard for differences, but the truth is, if Len hadn’t told me which areas had been the grazed areas and which had been the exclosures, I never would have known. 

This is the portion of Taberville prairie shown in my 2007 photo above when there was almost nothing taller than a couple inches. Several years of rest (and a fire) following the three years of patch-burn grazing changed the look of the prairie considerably. Even in a summer during which the prairie had almost no rain in June or July, the plant community looks tall and vibrant.

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The same portion of Taberville Prairie. Compass plant, and many other conservative plant species were abundant.

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Another photo from the same portion of Taberville Prairie (grazed 2005-2007, but rested since then.) Eastern gamagrass (the thick leafy grass with tall stems) was abundant and full of vigor across the prairie. In the burned/grazed patches of Taberville and other MDC prairies gamagrass was being grazed extremely hard - even to the point where I could see rhizomes the cattle had pulled out of the ground. Clearly, gamagrass recovers well from that kind of treatment...

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A final photo from the area grazed 2005-2007 but rested (and burned once) since. This photo shows leadplant in the foreground. Rattlesnake master and purple coneflower (two other conservative plants) were also abundant, but not shown in these photos.

During the next several days at the grassland workshop, I listened to MDC biologists from wildlife and fisheries divisions talk about what they like and don’t like about their experiences so far with patch-burn grazing.  One of the interesting issues they (and I) are wrestling with has to do with the appropriate length of grazing and rest periods.  Figuring out how to mix grazing and rest periods in a way that allows all plant and animal species to “win” periodically is a major challenge.  There was also considerable discussion about how to better evaluate potential impacts to plant communities and streams – as well as exploration of ideas about how to modify current management to better address needs of pollinators, amphibians, and other species.  I think those who are worried about patch-burn grazing in Missouri would have been comforted to hear the thoughtful discussion and see the obvious dedication of MDC staff to the prairies in their charge. 

This bush katydid was one of many insects I saw at Taberville Prairie. I don't think this species is necessarily rare or conservative, but the regal fritillary and Henslow's sparrow I saw nearby are (not that seeing one of each necessarily determines success...)

There are still plenty of important questions about whether, where, and how cattle grazing should be used to manage eastern tallgrass prairies, but the Missouri Department of Conservation is leading the effort to answer some of those.  Early results show improvements in habitat structure for many species of insects and animals, including greater prairie chickens – where they occur.  MDC has asked faculty from two universities to help evaluate impacts on streams, and is fencing out the majority of headwater streams until that evaluation is complete.   The responses of plant species and communities to various fire, grazing, and rest treatments is still being evaluated, and probably will be for some time.  In the meantime, it was good to see confirmation of the ability of plants to bounce back from periodic grazing, even in prairies that are pretty different from the ones I know best.  I think the knowledge that plants (even conservative species) don’t immediately die from being grazed for a season or two gives us a little cushion as we forge ahead with our attempts to find appropriate tools and strategies for maintain the broad array of biological diversity in what remains of tallgrass prairie.  If you live and/or work in the tallgrass prairie region, I hope you’ll be a productive part of that effort.  We need all the help we can get.