Tag Archives: how to manage prairie

How to Recognize Bad Prairie Stewardship Advice

Posted on by
7

Public Service Announcement: There are lots of good ways to restore and manage prairies for biodiversity, wildlife habitat, livestock productivity, or other objectives. Beware anyone who says otherwise.

Prairies can be managed in many different ways and maintain their resilience, diversity, and beauty.

You’ve likely come across people, either in person or online, who confidently proclaim that they know the best way to manage land. Often, their proclamation is accompanied by derogatory remarks about people who choose not to follow their recipe. It’s very frustrating. It’s also dangerous because people with loud, assertive voices can be very convincing to people looking for advice or exploring ideas. If you follow current events, you may have noticed this phenomenon in other contexts besides just land management.

Anyone who tells you they know the best or only good way to do something is usually trying to sell you something, trying to get you to join their cult, or is delusional and/or misinformed. In fact, all those may apply simultaneously.

In terms of grassland stewardship, I often see this sort of blanket statement made with regard to fire or grazing strategies, prairie restoration/reconstruction techniques, or invasive species management approaches.

“There’s only one correct time of year to burn.”

“This is the best grazing system to build soil health.”

“Your prairie planting will absolutely fail if you don’t mow weeds twice during the first field season.”

“Only my particular herbicide recipe and approach will control that invasive plant.”

And so on.

As someone who is frequently asked for advice and sometimes gives it unsolicited, I try hard not to make those kinds of statements. There are many times I’ve talked about strategies we’ve had good luck with, or the reasons we are adopting or testing a particular approach. I hope I’ve always couched those statements in ways that don’t make it sound like our way is the only or best way to do things. I’ve definitely gotten better at it as I’ve gotten older and more experienced, continuously learning how complicated prairies really are. Please call me out if I don’t follow my own guidelines.

Summer fires can produce very different results from spring or winter fires, but those results can vary widely between sites. They can also vary between years at the same site. Prairies are complicated.
There are definitely ways cattle grazing can degrade the health of prairies but there are also many different ways cattle grazing can increase or sustain plant diversity, soil health, and wildlife habitat.

There are obviously some wrong ways to manage prairies, but you’ve got to get pretty drastic before I’d toss you in that category. Spraying an entire prairie with a broad spectrum herbicide might be one example. Plowing the prairie and planting soybeans might be another. Short of those, I would hesitate to automatically characterize many actions as wrong or catastrophic. I might express some serious concern, or raise some issues to consider, but who am I to tell you what’s right or wrong in your situation?

Experienced land managers know it takes a lot of trial and error and close observation of results to find effective management or restoration strategies at a particular site. It takes multiple points of evidence to see a pattern. Even then, most of us are frequently surprised by the results of a treatment, even if we’ve used it many times before. Individual results may vary, etc.

There are lots of reasons that what works at one place might work differently for you. Sites vary in soil type, topography, plant and animal composition, past management history and size, just to name a few. In addition, the surrounding landscape has a huge impact on what happens within a site. Is the site adjacent to land with lots of trees, shrubs, or invasive plants crawling over the boundary? Is it ensconced within a matrix of cropland where it could be difficult for most animal species to repopulate your site if they are locally extirpated? Or are you fortunate enough to be in a landscape with lots of other prairie habitat around?

In addition, objectives can vary between sites. You might have a very different vision of what you want your prairie to look like than the person trying to sell you their particular brand of snake oil. (Tangentially, you never see snake oil on the market anymore, do you? The world has sure changed, huh?) Anyway, the point is that you might be aiming for different outcomes than the person giving you advice.

For example, you might have a particular bird, wildflower species, or insect that you really care about and/or that is rare elsewhere. If so, you might want to tailor your management to make sure you meet the needs of that species. Alternatively, you might have an affinity for pollinators, song birds, or slugs (no judgement), any of which might affect how you decide to manage and evaluate the results. If you’re a livestock producer, you likely have strong opinions or needs related to weaning weights, calving dates, marketing strategies, labor availability, and/or many other factors.

I don’t think I’ve yet met someone who is catering their prairie management around slug habitat needs but I bet I’ll enjoy talking to that person if I ever do meet them.

The people giving you advice almost surely don’t share all your precise objectives or limitations. Because of that, feel free to experiment. It’s always a good idea to talk to experienced people, both locally and otherwise, to learn what others are doing and what has and hasn’t worked at their places. That’s a great way to get ideas that can help you solve a challenge you’re facing, or to consider something you’d previously ignored. But you absolutely shouldn’t feel obligated to simply copy and paste their approaches. In fact, I’d encourage you not to.

If you have an idea you think might be risky, don’t dismiss it out of hand. Just experiment with it on a small part of your site before you scale it up. It’s no different than testing a new wood stain in an inconspicuous area or trying out a new hair dye on your little brother or sister before applying it to your own head. Please don’t be afraid to try new ideas though – it’s how we learn.

Most importantly, be a good observer. Pay attention to what happens after each restoration or management action. Learn as much as you can about different species and groups of plants, animals, fungi, etc., so you can better evaluate habitat and treatments through their eyes. Read, listen to, and talk to experts coming from lots of perspectives and ask hard questions. Then adapt, adjust, and tweak your strategies every year based on what you see and learn.

If you do this well, you’ll probably enjoy land stewardship and keep improving your expertise and abilities, though you’ll almost surely never feel like you’ve got everything figured out. This is a good thing. It’ll keep you humble and hungry to keep learning. If you’re lucky, it might also prevent you from starting a cult or trying to hoodwink people into joining it. Thank you in advance for that.

So Similar, Yet So Different

Posted on by
13

It’s wrong to assume that successful restoration or management tactics from one prairie will work in another.  Instead, every prairie has its own “personality” and responds accordingly.  The key to success is experimentation and adaptive management.

Bill Kleiman is one of my favorite people.  We have much in common: a love of prairies and restoration, a drive to learn from our mistakes and share what we learn with others, and a strong belief in the importance of conservation.  We’ve both worked for The Nature Conservancy for a long time (he’s got a couple years on me) and have been co-leading the Grassland Restoration Network for the last several years.  He’s also a great guy and a good friend.

Bill Kleiman (white hat) leads a tour of a restored prairie at The Nature Conservancy's Nachusa Grassland.

Bill Kleiman (light-colored hat) leads a tour of a restored prairie at The Nature Conservancy’s Nachusa Grasslands.  2014 Grassland Restoration Network workshop.

However, despite the fact that Bill and I are friends and have a lot in common, there are some big differences between us as well.  Bill is much more patient than I am, and better at the social niceties needed to build close relationships with neighbors and volunteers.  I tend to say what I think – sometimes inappropriately.  Bill is not shy about expressing his opinion, but does it less frequently, and usually with kindness and self-deprecation.

Bill and I both manage grasslands for The Nature Conservancy, but just as there are differences between us as people, there are also some stark differences between our sites and the approaches we take toward prairie restoration and management.  Bill’s site, TNC’s Nachusa Grasslands, is located in rolling hills about two hours west of Chicago, Illinois.  My Platte River Prairies are on mostly flat alluvial (river-formed) soils in south-central Nebraska.  As a result, the soils, topography and climate vary greatly between the two sites.  Moreover, our sites each have unique land use histories, invasive species legacies, and social and cultural contexts.

Bill again, talking to a tour group - with the Nachusa Grasslands in the background.

Bill again, talking to the same tour group, with Nachusa Grasslands’ undulating topography in the background.

I was thinking about all of this last month as our Platte River Prairies crew traveled to Nachusa Grasslands where Bill and his team were hosting this year’s annual Grassland Restoration Network workshop.  It was fascinating to compare the land management and restoration strategies we each use, especially knowing that both of us have diligently tested and refined our methods to meet the individual challenges of our respective sites.  Below are some of the similarities and differences between our approaches.

1. Seed Mixtures and Seeding Rates

Both Nachusa Grasslands and the Platte River Prairies have been actively restoring cropland to high-diversity prairie habitats.  At both sites we broadcast our seed (as opposed to drilling it).  The seed is broadcast either by hand or with a drop spreader – a fertilizer spreader that drops seeds onto the ground.  In fact, broadcast seeding is the technique of choice for the vast majority of sites that participate in the Grassland Restoration Network.  (You can learn more about fairly universal strategies and tactics in the “Lessons from the Grassland Restoration Network” document several of us put together.)

However, while we both broadcast seeds, Bill has found that successful prairie plantings at Nachusa require much heavier seeding rates (around 50 bulk pounds of seed per acre) than we use along the Platte River (8-10 bulk pounds).  Bill’s seed mixes include lots of seed from wildflowers, sedges, and “subdominant” grasses such as little bluestem, prairie dropseed, and sideoats grama, but almost no seed from more dominant grasses such as big bluestem and indiangrass.  In our Platte River Prairies seed mixtures, dominant grasses make up about half of the weight of the mixture.

James Trager (Shaw Nature Reserve) and Nelson Winkel (TNC Platte River Prairies) look over a restored prairie at Nachusa Grasslands. This prairie was relatively unique in that it had a fair amount of indiangrass in it. Most of the seed mixtures have none, or very little, seed from big grasses such as indiangrass and big bluestem.

James Trager (Shaw Nature Reserve) and Nelson Winkel (TNC Platte River Prairies) look over a restored prairie at Nachusa Grasslands. This prairie was relatively unique in that it had a fair amount of indiangrass in it. Most of the seed mixtures have none, or very little, seed from big grasses such as indiangrass and big bluestem.

Both Bill and I have experimented with many variations of these seed mixtures and have settled on these broad recipes as appropriate for our respective sites.  Though we do things differently, we both end up with very diverse prairies that meet our objectives.  When Bill uses lighter seeding rates, his new prairies get swamped out by invasive species before native plants become well established.  He’s also found that adding dominant grasses to the initial seed mix leads to plant communities that become overly grassy and not very diverse.  In contrast, using lighter seeding rates on the Platte allows us to plant more acres per year with the same seed harvest effort, and while it takes longer for our plantings to establish, they still end up being very diverse.  As our plantings mature, fire and grazing management helps suppress the dominance of big bluestem and indiangrass and maintain high plant diversity.

2.  Weed Control in New Restored Prairies

Weed control strategies for new plantings also vary greatly between Nachusa Grasslands and the Platte River Prairies.  At Nachusa, Bill and his crew walk every inch of new plantings multiple times each year until the native plant community is well established.  They remove (by pulling or spraying) every invasive plant they find – focusing mostly on perennial legumes such as birds foot trefoil, crown vetch, and sweet clover.  Once the native community is established, they can relax a little, but they still watch each site very closely.  In some cases, they’ve not been able to keep up with the pressure from invasive plants and they’ve made the difficult decision to just give up and start over, rather than fighting a losing battle for years.

The soybean field on the left is a former restored prairie that just never established as Bill hoped, so he and his crew made the decision to start over. After it is farmed for a few years, they'll try again.

The soybean field on the left is a former restored prairie at Nachusa Grasslands that never established as Bill hoped, so he and his crew made the decision to start over. After it is farmed for a few years, they’ll try again.  While it’s a lot of work to start over, it’s less work than many years of fighting weeds and never winning.

Our weed control on the Platte River Prairies looks much different.  We don’t really have problems with perennial legumes or other non-native forbs.  In fact, we pretty much ignore sweet clover, and most other “weeds” during the establishment phase of a new prairie are annuals such as foxtail, marestail, and annual sunflower that just fade away as perennial prairie plants take over.  Our major fears have to do with perennial invasive grasses, such as smooth brome and Kentucky bluegrass, and we deal with those mainly by suppressing them with fire and grazing management.  We also worry about deciduous trees, such as Siberian elms, that we have to control with herbicides because fire and grazing don’t do the job.  However, during the first few years of establishment, while Bill and his crew are painstakingly patrolling their sites, we can mostly ignore our new plantings – except for an occasional prescribed burn to limit the buildup of thatch.

3. Overseeding

A third difference between our sites has to do with overseeding.  In both remnant (never plowed) and restored prairies, we occasionally want to add missing plant species.  At Nachusa, they just burn the prairie and throw the seed out on the bare ground – and it works!  In our drier Platte River Prairies, we’ve not had very much luck with that strategy.  Using grazing to weaken the dominant grasses seems to help us get better establishment of new plants because it suppresses competition for moisture and other resources.  Bill’s crew doesn’t seem to have to worry about that – even in sites with lots of grass.

Bill (left) oversees some "data collection" during this year's Grassland Restoration Network, which was done to help tour participants evaluate an overseeding project. Becky and Hank Hartman (volunteer stewards) have used repeated overseeding to transform an area from exclusively grasses to one with very nice wildflower diversity.

Bill (left) oversees some “data collection” during this year’s Grassland Restoration Network, which was done to help tour participants evaluate an overseeding project. Becky and Hank Hartman (volunteer stewards) have used repeated overseeding to transform an area from exclusively grasses to one with very nice wildflower diversity.

 

Mike Konen (in orange) from Northern Illinois University talks about soils during this year's workshop at Nachusa. He is standing in prairie that is going to be grazed by the newly introduced herd of bison. Grazing will give Bill and I one more thing to compare notes on...

Mike Konen (in orange) from Northern Illinois University talks about soils during this year’s workshop at Nachusa. He is standing in prairie that is going to be grazed by a newly-introduced herd of bison (the bison should knock the height of that indiangrass down some…) Now that Nachusa is using grazing  as a management too, Bill and I will have one more thing to compare notes on…

Bill and I have done extensive experimentation to come up with effective prairie restoration and management strategies at our respective sites, and we continue to adapt as we go along.  We can learn from each others’ experiences, but there is also much that doesn’t translate well between sites.  Some of that is due to the distance between Nachusa and the Platte, and the corresponding differences in climate and soils.  However, even prairies that are much closer together can respond very differently to management and restoration tactics.  Soil types, seed banks, topography, management history, landscape context, and many other factors combine to give every prairie it’s own “personality”.

It might seem overwhelming to learn that every prairie requires a unique set of restoration and management strategies, but it’s really not that bad.  There are a still a lot of commonalities between prairies – just like there are many similarities between Bill and me.  However, just as you would need to consider differences between Bill’s personality and mine in terms if you wanted a positive response from us, the same holds with prairies.  (If you want a favor from Bill, you might want to invite him to a little gathering and serve good beer.  On the flip side, if you want something from me, pizza would make a better bribe, and while I’m not against parties, the less small talk needed, the better…)

Above all, beware of anyone who tells you’ve they’ve figured out the magic formula for how to manage or restore prairies.  It’s just not possible.  Instead, take a look at what others do, learn from their experiences, and then experiment with a variety of techniques at your own site.  It won’t take long to figure out what moves your prairie in the direction you want.   Fortunately, unlike Bill (I’m kidding!) prairies are pretty forgiving, so if you try something and it doesn’t work, they aren’t likely to hold a grudge.

P.S. Bill will be appalled that I’m giving him so much credit for the work at Nachusa.  Clearly, both Bill and I have crews of staff and volunteers that do most of the work and much of the thinking.  For this post, however, I was trying to build an illustration of personalities in people and personalities in prairies.  It was a lot easier to do that by focusing just on Bill and me.  Please understand that the ideas and work of Nelson, Cody, Mardell, Hank, Becky, Karen, Al, Bernie, Jay, Susan, Leah, and many others are represented here as well.  (There, does that make you happier Bill?)