Amongst all the hubbub of road construction, utility installation, and bridge repairs on Highway 13, you might not have noticed a little bit of destruction along the Volga River floodplain at Osborne Park.
But we have just started the very early preparation phase of creating a new, diverse stand of riparian forest in what we call "The Old Buffalo Pen," even though only one of us has been here long enough for any direct experience with the area housing Bison. Time does fly.
For those who've been around here a little longer, they remember the Bison and the Elk and the campground down there, prior to repeated flooding events that forced the closure in 2007. So what do you do when you're a conservation board and you find yourself with a big open space? Plant a prairie, of course!
There's a lot of reasons to go that route - at least in theory. For starters, nature abhors a vacuum, and "waste ground" like that can quickly become a garden of undesirable species. Better to at least try to have some influence on what comes back when we walk away.
And of course, prairie is an iconic Iowa habitat, and what with how it's all but disappeared it makes sense to try to put some back. It's relatively inexpensive and, once established, relatively easy to maintain. So it can seem pretty simple.
But if there's anything a person can learn spending some time in Iowa's prairies, remnant or reconstructed, it's that the supposed simplicity of scattering seed and burning every few years is a mirage. The more prairies you visit, the more you learn that they are more than just assemblages of grasses and flowers.
It's a complex, dynamic, and importantly, vulnerable biome full of interactions between the soil and the climate and wildlife therein.
I used to think that plantings "fail" because something went wrong in the installation. Maybe the site wasn't adequately prepped, or maybe it was seeded at an inopportune time, or the weather didn't cooperate in those critical early seasons. The more I learn, the more I think a big problem with many plantings is the site itself. There are certainly hearty species, like the "big 4" grasses, Canada goldenrod, Bee Balm, and some of the sunflowers that will grow happily just about anywhere. And while they're more ruderal than a lot of the stuff that gets a prairie enthusiast really excited, they sure beat brome when it comes to wildlife habitat and pollinator provisioning.
However, they can't do everything. A handful of grasses and flowers cannot replicate the form and function of a healthy, diverse prairie, and establishing healthy, diverse prairies requires the right underpinnings: species adapted to the soil, the sun exposure, and the moisture regime of a given site.
It makes sense then that the wrong mix - even when installed correctly - can fail. If the soil biology won't accommodate 20% of your seed mix, then that's 20% of your seeded area where weeds will get a foothold. Once they do, getting them out is like trying to leave a party as a midwesterner - they're gonna stand in their doorway holding their coat for much, much longer than you'd anticipated.
Indeed they did in the old Buffalo pen. The site is a good example of a prairie, maybe, ending up in the wrong place. The soil is called Caneek Channeled, a soil type that is somewhat to very poorly drained (lots of clay), and the associated vegetation - when not cultivated - is "a mixed herbaceous and woody community commonly inhabited with Eastern Cottonwoods, Black Willows, Silver Maples, Green Ashes, American Sycamores, Rice Cutgrasses, Grays Sedges, Bushy Cinquefoils, Nodding Beggarticks, Swamp Docks, and Calico Asters," per the USDA soil scientists. Wanna guess what didn't get planted down there? Wanna guess what's volunteering through the patchy prairie seeding? Consequently, we've spent a lot of time fighting nature in an effort to keep the site a prairie, when that's not in step with what nature wants to grow there. The heavy, damp soil makes prescribed burning difficult (and the occasional flood depositing a pile of sand and a heap of new weed seeds doesn't help either), so in the summer we have to bushwhack our way through to go find the cottonwoods and elderberries and box elders that threaten to turn our prairie into a forest.
This spring, looking in frustration at the resprouts and new tree seedlings, I wondered if maybe we should lean the other way.
I've spent a lot of my time here at the CCCB cutting trees to rescue herbaceous vegetation, be it in prairies or oak savannas and woodlands. But, that's rescue, not reconstruction. That's just manipulating the sunlight, the one component I can really manipulate, to let what's already there get a little more food.
Meanwhile, in the old buffalo pen, I'm trying to make the site something it's not, which is a mesic, tallgrass prairie, something that historically would not have occurred on floodplains which would be some combination of wet prairie, or parched sand prairie, or riparian forest.
In deference to mother nature, I decided to ask the board to consider the unthinkable: planting trees instead of cutting them. What a concept! I know there's plenty out there who, I hope, are thrilled with the idea after seeing so many trees come down around our parks, however noble the cause.
I also know, on the other side of the coin are the pollinator advocates, who might be equally unthrilled by the decaying stems of goldenrod and bergamot down there now after the initial mowing, which will be followed by herbicide applications - similar to a prairie reconstruction - to abate the weed competition before the trees go in.
To that I would say, kind conservation advocate, to consider why we plant prairies. If we want that site to provide for pollinators, well, spring, particularly early spring, is when they need nectar the most. Presently - as in most prairie reconstructions - the first flowers don't really appear on the site until June.
So what's a wandering bumblebee to do when it comes out of hibernation in April? It turns out, one of the most important foraging targets for them is actually trees. Many species will flower long before leaf out, and if you've ever caught a walnut catkin on a warm spring day you can sit still and watch insect after insect ply the tiny, delicate flowers.
But what about birds? Surely the biomass of a prairie, with its ample seeds and invertebrates, is crucial for them, right? Well, yes, some of them.
Others, not so much. Particularly in a small patch size like the buffalo pen, too small for grassland birds but too open for forest birds (not to put birds into neat little boxes but... you get the idea), simply planting grasses and wildflowers might not do much for either guild. Migratory species especially really put on their bulk through fruits and nuts in the late summer and fall. Grapes, hackberries, dogwood, hazelnut, elderberry; many even have a proclivity for poison ivy berries. You know, all the stuff that makes prairie managers tear their hair out.
With that in mind, I got together with district forester and CCCB board member Dave Asche to try to formulate a plan.
"So are you thinking more like woodland/savanna type stuff?"
"No, I think a good, dense, riparian forest is the way to go."
His eyes lit up. It was the first time I'd suggested something like that.
We hammered out a species list of 3,150 trees on the four acres - very dense, in the hopes that even with some mortality it will quickly shade out the parsnip and thistle that got a foothold long ago.
We talked about getting a lot of diversity in there, including some species the USFWS has started using further north of their "natural" range in floodplain forest restorations in recognition that, in 20 or 30 years time, our climate will look a lot more like where they came from.
The final list: 400 Bur Oak, 600 Swamp White Oak, 200 Red Oak, 100 Pin Oak, 200 Chinkapin Oak, 200 Shellbark Hickory (native to southern IA), 200 Northern Pecan (native to SE IA), 125 Viburnum shrubs, 125 Silky Dogwood shrubs, 300 Kentucky Coffee trees (native but rarely occurring around here anymore), 50 Black Cherry, 200 River Birch, 50 Sycamore (native south of Hwy 20), 200 Silver Maple, 100 Bald Cypress (native to southern IA), 125 Buttonbush, and 125 red-osier dogwood.
The shrubs will go on the west end, closest to the highway, for show and to soften the edge between the remaining grassland and the to-be-forest. The dryer footed species will go furthest from the river, with the water-lubbers closest. It's going to be a lot of work, and like a lot of restoration it's going to look a little messy for a while. But in 50 years time, when wood ducks and owls and early-emerging pollinators are buzzing through the site during the spring field trip season, it will have been worth it. So while you marvel at all the human-focused construction along Hwy 13, know that just beyond, we've got our own little construction project underway for the birds and the bees. At least, we hope - it won't come cheap, with a total price tag for the trees, tubes, and herbicides coming in around $14k before labor. We've put in applications for the county REAP program (tell your legislators to fully fund REAP!), and two grants through the National Wild Turkey Federation, that we hope to hear back about later this fall. In the meantime, if you share my belief that this is the right thing to do for the land, reach out with any ways, financial or physical, that you might like to assist. Looking Back
With summer winding down, we had a few last day camp sessions before the younglings headed back to school.
On August 7th we hosted our "what's in the water?" day camp, where attendees got to try creek seining, fishing, rockhounding, and looking at pond water under a microscope - always a classic - on a beautiful day with clear stream and pond conditions.
On August 9th, 10 excited firebugs came down to the pond for a workshop on "backyard biochar," to explore the principles and applications of this fascinating material. We experimented with simple kilns made of two paint cans and charred in a fireplace, to pit burns, to double-barrel retort kilns, to top-lid updraft stoves, and made a whole pile of messy black char to mix with compost and grow some mighty fine tomatoes. On August 20th, the O.W.L.S. took to the Maiden Voyage out of Marquette, preceded by a fish fry served up by one of the finest rough fish chefs in all of the upper miss refuge, captain Robert Vavre.