A couple months ago, I wrote a post asking you how you evaluate your prairies as you walk around them.  I appreciated the thoughtful responses you shared.  This week, I’ll be facilitating a discussion on the same topic at the Nebraska Natural Legacy Conference.  As I’ve been preparing for that discussion, my mind keeps returning to a brief conversation I had at the end of this year’s Patch-Burn Grazing Workshop.

The annual workshop is hosted at different sites each year.  This summer, we hosted it at our Platte River Prairies.  As we were finishing the last tour of our site and walking back to the vehicles, Wayne Copp, of the Tall Grass Bison Ranch in Auburn, Kansas, caught up with me.  He told me how much he had enjoyed the tours and that he thought our prairies looked great.  I thanked him, of course – it’s always nice to hear that.  But then he went on…

“A lot of prairies I visit,” he said, “look pretty dead – there’s not much going on. But your prairies are really alive, and they’ve got the three things I always look for in grasslands.”

“Which are?” I asked.

“Color, movement and noise.”

And there you go.  I’ve not heard a more concise, all-encompassing description of a good prairie.  Even better, you don’t have to be a botanist or ecologist to recognize color, movement and noise.  Anyone, regardless of age or background, can walk through a prairie and judge whether or not that prairie has those qualities.

Color is easy to find in many prairies. Wildflowers are an obvious source of color, but not the only one.

A closer look at most wildflowers reveals abundant movement – much of it by visiting insects, such as these pollinators on a native thistle.

Birds such as this dickcissel can provide color, movement and noise all by themselves, but a site needs more than just birds to be a prairie.

Of course, some of you are already asking, “How MUCH color, movement and noise should there be?”

But Wayne’s criteria for judging prairies (at least as I understand them) are not meant to be quantitative.  Sure, more is better, but that’s not really the point.  I think he’s just saying that a prairie without color, movement and noise is deficient.  Clean and simple.

Much of the “noise” in prairies is created by insects, though they are far from the only sources, which can include birds, mammals, wind, and many others.

A great deal of the movement, color and noise in prairies can be hidden from those who just drive past at 65 miles per hour.  However, anyone who takes the time to walk out into the prairie will have no trouble finding it.

Sure, we still need other indicators and measures that can help us identify trends in plant diversity or species’ population viability.  We still need to figure out what to look for as we evaluate past management actions and plan the next ones.   And we still need to better understand what factors can indicate whether a prairie is ecologically resilient.

Unfortunately, only those of us who spend the majority of our time working in prairies can get much good out of those highfalutin indicators, measures, and factors.  They are important, but only to a small subset of people.  For everyone else – and us prairie wonks too – Wayne has already figured out the three essential qualities every prairie should have.

Color, movement and noise.

Brilliant.