Many thanks to everyone who submitted questions in response to my last post celebrating 10 years of this blog. I got enough questions that I’ve decided to split my responses into two batches. I’ll do one here and save the others for later this week or early next.

Before I get to the questions, here’s a quick notification. Tomorrow night (Thursday, September 24) I’ll be a featured speaker for a conservation webinar hosted by Pollinator Friendly Alliance. The session begins at 6pm Central Time and you can find out more at this link. I’ll be talking about how plants, insects, and other small organisms are really what make ecosystems resilient and functional, regardless of how much attention gets paid to birds, big mammals, and other large charismatic animals. If this sounds interesting to you, please consider joining in! (You can pepper me with hard questions afterward if you want.)

Ok, here is the first batch of questions and answers. I hope you find them interesting.

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Angie Miller asks: Aside from reading The Ecology and Management of Prairies in the Central United States (which is a given), what advice would you give to folks who would like to learn more about practical ecological restoration and land management techniques? Any other book recommendations? Conferences? Professional organizations? Thank you

Well, I wrote the book precisely because I was having trouble finding published materials on those topics.  I think there is a lot of local knowledge, but it’s often not easily accessible by people other than by finding local experts.  I’m hoping others will chime in here with suggestions. 

In some parts of the country, there are local clubs/associations (Prairie Enthusiasts, Wild Ones, Audubon Chapters, etc.) that do fantastic work and have lots of knowledgeable people to learn from.  Volunteering for a local non-profit or government agency who is doing the kind of work you’re interested in is another great way to learn. The North American Prairie Conference is always a great one to go to if you’re looking for non-technical (as well as technical) information and advice.  If you tell me where you’re from I might be able to help connect you with some local expertise.

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John Helzer asks: Where do you see this blog in another 10 years?

Thanks for asking.  In ten years, this blog would like a position with more responsibility and a considerably higher salary.  It enjoys its current role, but feels like it could contribute more to the organization if it was given a broader reach, and maybe a few interns to help cover basic tasks.  It thinks its track record so far has shown that it can handle additional responsibility.  As an aside, this blog would like to inquire about its 401k options.  The writer of this blog, however, is very happy in his current job and would like to continue splitting his time between research, advising land stewardship, and communication work.

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Lisa asks: When I attended University of Nebraska many years ago, I took a class from Paul Olson called The Literature of Agriculture. We read Willa Cather, Mari Sandoz, Ole Rolvaag, Wendell Berry, and others. Are there books of fiction or non-fiction that have particularly influenced your work or your interest in Midwestern landscapes and culture? Or your philosophy of land management?

I’ve always appreciated Willa Cather’s accurate and effective portrayals of prairies in her writing.  She put the right plants in the right places and had them blooming at the right times of year, which is impressive.  When I was college age, I read most of the authors you listed there, as well as William Least Heat-Moon and some others.  I would say, though, that Aldo Leopold is and was the most influential in terms of my overall approach to conservation – especially his writings about a land ethic. 

Having said all that, I’ve found that I’ve learned most from direct interactions with people who have been thinking about and working in land management for a long time.  Riding around in a truck and walking side by side through prairies with people like Bill Whitney, Gerry Steinauer, and Al Steuter, in particular, has taught me more than any book.

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Anna Helzer asks: Who is your favorite child? (Other than your square meter photo book)

On a less serious note, do you have a favorite blog post or conversation from the last decade?

My favorite child would never ask that question.  Also, did I tell you about what the square meter book did when we were at the park the other day?  It was adorable…

The river otter running gag has been fun – I probably need to revisit that again soon.  I also love photographing, learning about, and sharing images and information about insects most people have never heard from.  I really enjoy it and don’t imagine I’ll ever run out of material for that kind of post.

Apart from that, I hope one of my more productive messages has revolved around the idea that prairies are more resilient than many people give them credit for.  I’ve advocated for the importance of habitat heterogeneity and the idea that it’s ok to manage in ways that temporarily set back the vigor of plants, including the ones with pretty flowers, in order to create that suite of habitat conditions.  I know I’ve made people uncomfortable by expressing opinions on that topic, but I hope that discomfort has led to helpful conversations and experimentation.  Local expertise should absolutely drive how prairies are managed, but I’m proud that I’ve helped push people consider a broader set of options as they make local decisions.

Bruce Morrison asks: I just discovered your blog this past winter/spring – you do a great job! I live on a very small remnant (3 acres of pasture), surrounded by crop and other pasture ground. We have found many native plants here – both grasses and forbs. We try and burn parts of the small pasture ground we own and leave parts for 2-3 years between. We do worry about invertebrate diversity and I have seen changes over the past 18 years here, for instance we used to see 2 different species of Argiope spiders fairly regularly, but have not seen any the past 6 years. They even used to be in our gardens and yard, but no longer. We do not spray any gardens or orchard trees – never. However our neighbors spray their crops which surround us on all sides. I worried about our burning frequency causing invertebrate population drops – but suspect the crops are a larger issue. Is breaking a tiny space into 4 sections and burning one or two sections every 2-3 years still too much for invertebrate pressure in your opinion?

Thanks very much, Bruce. It sounds to me like your approach to reducing impacts to invertebrates is sound.  Have you seen changes in the plant community over those 18 years?  I wonder if the invertebrates are potentially responding to plant community changes, though there are a lot of reasons you could be seeing fewer Argiope spiders, using your example.

Pesticides could certainly be an issue, but so could isolation/fragmentation of habitat.  If the other pastureland around you has decent species diversity, maybe it’s not an issue, but having only 3 acres of isolated habitat can make it hard to maintain healthy communities, despite your best efforts.  If a species has one bad year, either because of something you’ve done or for other reasons, it could easily blink out and never return, especially if there is no connection to other good habitat. 

Regardless, I think what you’re doing makes sense.  You might consider augmenting your fire regime by creating habitat heterogeneity with some small patch mowing. That could be a way to give inverts and other small animals some habitat choices. It could be as simple as mowing a variety of patches at different times of year and at different heights.

In September 2010, I launched The Prairie Ecologist blog. My book on prairie ecology and management had just been published and, though I was proud of it, I was frustrated by not being able to update it as I learned more and developed new ideas. I also wanted a more interactive forum for discussing ideas about prairie management and restoration. A book can transmit information but it’s one-way communication. I really wanted to learn from others and get their responses to some of my ideas and experiences.

In addition, I wanted to share the beauty, diversity, and resilience of prairies with a general audience – one that might be interested in nature, but not necessarily in grasslands. I felt my combined interests of photography and writing might lend themselves to that mission, and a blog seemed like a reasonable platform to try. I had only a vague idea of what a blog was at the time, but with the help of Bob Lalasz (The Nature Conservancy) and others, I started to learn.

I hope those of you who have been around since the early days still find the blog engaging and worth your time. The number of people who follow the blog, or at least check in regularly, is pretty staggering, given my low expectations and inexperience when I started. Over 5,000 people are currently subscribed, but many others are regular readers. Some of you also follow my Instagram account (@prairieecologist), where I post lots of photos and natural history blurbs.

While the blog has been running for 10 years, I know that quite a few current readers have only been aware of the blog for a few years at most. Because of that, I wondered if you might have questions for me, either about prairie topics or about me, personally. This might turn out to be a terrible idea, but I figured maybe I’d solicit questions and try to answer as many as I can.

Here’s what we’ll do: If you have a question for me, ask it in the comments below and I’ll try to answer it in one of three ways. I’ll either answer directly in the comments, answer it in a blog post later this week, or try to incorporate an answer into a blog post in the future. Questions can be about whatever you like (within reason, of course). As an attempt to get you started, I’ve invented a few questions and answered them below.

Above all, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart for supporting this goofy blog and for helping me justify my blogging time to my bosses…

Ok, here are my answers to a few example questions. I’m sure you can come up with better ones.

Question: How do you know so much about invertebrates when you studied birds in graduate school and focused on learning plant identification/ecology during your early career?

As I’ve said many times, I’m not an entomologist, I’m an insect enthusiast. I’ve learned most of what I know about invertebrates by photographing them and then trying to figure out what I just photographed and learn about its back story. I use Bugguide.net and an assortment of very generous friends to identify species. Once I know what it is, I go looking for whatever information I can glean from online and print sources, as well as from those generous friends I already mentioned. Often, I use my own blog as an information source to help me remember facts I know I’ve previously learned and reported!

Question: You’ve written several times about river otters, mostly complaining about never seeing one at the Platte River Prairies, despite it being one of the places in Nebraska with the highest density of otters. It’s been 10 years now (and more than 25 years that you’ve been working on the Platte River). Surely you’ve seen one by now, right?

Next question.

Question: You write a lot about cattle grazing as a prairie management tool. Are you getting paid by the livestock industry?

I’d like to say this is a goofy question, but I’ve actually been accused of this. No, I’m not getting kickbacks from anyone for talking about cattle. The truth is that I think cattle (and bison) grazing creates some unique habitat structure and provides some prairie management options that can’t be replicated through other approaches. Grazing is not appropriate in every prairie, but where it’s feasible, I’ve not found a substitute that can create the kind of habitat heterogeneity that helps many prairie creatures thrive. In addition, the vast majority of prairie acres remaining in North America are on ranches, so developing and testing approaches to grazing that promote plant and animal diversity has obvious (I think) relevance to conservation.

Question: I bet you haven’t changed in appearance at all in the last 10 years. Is that true?

Absolutely. The difference between 38-year-old Chris Helzer and 48-year-old Chris Helzer is nearly impossible to see. Here are two photographs that demonstrate that.

Question: Gosh, I love what you’ve done with your hair. How do you get it to do that??

I have a very rigorous hair care routine. I don’t want to brag, but I’ve been known to spend as much as $3 for a bottle of shampoo. I think I’m worth it.

Ok, those are examples of the kinds of pithy questions you can ask me. If you have any actual questions, please submit them in the comments section.. Thanks!