I remember the first time I met Tony Vorwald. A Naturalist in Jackson County, Tony pulled me aside after I'd given a talk at Winterfest about developing singletrack hiking trails. We immediately hit it off, having similar passions for botany and getting dirt under our fingernails in pursuit of healthier habitats and quality outdoor recreation.
Fast forward a few years, and he and I are serving on the board of the Iowa Prairie Network. Every time we crossed paths we'd trade stories about cool finds, sketchy experiences with chainsaws or fire, and our own experiences trying to find our green thumb with native plant gardening.
We had a lot in common, but most importantly, we both felt like we could do more. We began to wonder about a way to combine forces.
We had some models; Drake Prairie Rescue, spearheaded by professor Tom Rosburg uses external funding to bring interested students out to private prairies for restoration and maintenance. In the Loess Hills, all the land managers from the Nature Conservancy and National Park Service to the Iowa DNR and all the CCB's regularly work together.
Call it the "army ant" model of land management; rather than spending days or weeks working on a project individually, this model has a whole colony descend upon a work site for a day.
And so it was the Eastern Iowa Habitat Partners was born. In January of this year we held a zoom meeting with some neighbors throughout the region to see what everyone thought of the idea. We ended up with nearly 20 people on the call. Part of our pitch: every other "guild" of natural resource professional - naturalists, peace officers, directors/leadership - has fairly regular meetings to get together and talk shop. However, there's no such avenue for those of us who've chosen a life of briar scratches and Lyme disease to compare notes.
We all, no matter our role in the conservation world, try to keep up with the science. But no amount of peer review can replace actual time spent on the ground with people who have worked with it for years or even decades. Every site has its own unique set of variables, and each practitioner has their own unique set of goals, strategies, and philosophies.
We sketched out some basic ideas on that first call: shoot for four meetings this first year. Keep it informal, mostly get together and put in some sweat equity on a project that the "host" can't quite get their arms around.
Selfishly, I offered up Motor Mill for our first project. We had done about 5 acres of oak woodland restoration and wanted to set the site up for prescribed burning. Establishing firebreaks through the heavy timber slash seemed like it would take days, if not a week or more.
It seemed like the perfect introduction: I could get several sets of knowledgeable eyes on my project to get their opinion, and maybe get a little extra help with a heavy lift. Turns out, I got a lot of extra help.
We had folks come from Clinton, Jackson, and Dubuque CCB. More came from Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation and the Nature Conservancy; three more came from the Iowa DNR. And they all brought saws.
I had hoped to have us work - with a little site orientation/discussion and lunch break of course - from 10 AM to 2 PM, figuring we'd whittle it down to a manageable state that I could come back and finish with our crew. We were done, completely, by 1:00. Nick Banwarth from Dubuque county commented, "Well if I get this group down to our neck of the woods I'd better have a big project."
Next up we headed to Jackson County where Tony hosted the group; again we had 15+ participants, including some new faces from US Fish & Wildlife and the Tallgrass Prairie Center. We worked on some high-quality remnant oak savanna before taking a little tour of nearby sites to see how similar treatments had developed.
We marveled at the Kalm's brome and shooting star, watched our step for rattlesnakes, and discussed the past and intended future of the natural landscape.
In October the group rallied again for a day at the Buffalo Creek Wildlife Area in Delaware county, cutting woodies out of a fen, a rare and sensitive habitat chock full of fascinating flora and fauna.
Finally, in November, the army ants descended once more onto a remnant prairie right in the middle of downtown Dubuque. Kaufmann prairie, managed by the Nature Conservancy, is an absolute gem. We pulled up on a windy, cold day and, while waiting for TNC's Dale Maxson to lay out our work for the day, a woman from the neighborhood had some questions. She had noticed the multitude of logos on the sides of our vehicles. "Are you guys from the DNR? Somebody needs to do something about this prairie! It's a really special place you know and I've just been watching the woody stuff creep further and I try cutting it and..." She went on for a while, before discovering that we had showed up to do exactly what she was suggesting. Her eyes lit up. We went to work, cutting a seemingly-impenetrable wall of buckthorn, 1/2" stem by 1/2" stem, from the top of the bluff down towards the neighborhood below. Others diligently went from patch to patch applying chemical to the freshly-cut stumps.
Towards the end of the day, I saw Dale walking back and forth along the ridge overlooking the project just shaking his head.
"You know I get up here maybe twice a year, with one other person if I'm lucky, and you just feel like you're getting nowhere. This is incredible." In other words, we had gotten done, essentially, a few years' worth of work in a day by working together.
Kaufmann prairie, possibly more than any other project this group tackled this first year, showed just how much stronger we are working together than working alone. It would have taken longer, but I could have gotten the firebreaks done at Motor. One bite at a time, Tony would have continued improving the health of the Ozark Wildlife Area. But at some point, Kaufmann was going to need an army. A day or two each year will maybe keep Buckthorn at bay in a small infestation. Mostly one person working alone can only hope to slow it down. Buckthorn does not stay put; each plant drops thousands of berries per year, most of which have no problem germinating right beneath their parent plant, a fecundity keenly observed by the neighbor that had greeted us before the work session.
With properties all over eastern Iowa, a small staff, and a home base near Muscatine, the Nature Conservancy simply does not have enough buckets to bail out the ship at Kaufmann by themselves. Enter EIHP.
For the first time in a long while, Kauffman prairie took one great leap, rather than one step forward two steps back. But this first year did more than just restore native habitats; it fostered new growth and symbiosis between those of us working towards similar goals and facing similar challenges. I got to better know my neighboring stewards. We all got a better sense of the work calendar for our partners with different agencies like the USFWS, DNR, or INHF.
"Fragmentation" comes up time and time again in the literature on Iowa's ecological issues. Isolated populations of rare species become vulnerable when their numbers drop too low to maintain genetic diversity. Tiny islands of remnant habitat are vulnerable to degradation creeping in from the surrounding landscapes. Turtles on their way to nesting sites get run over trying to cross the highway.
Fragmentation can affect the people working to save these landscapes, too. I likely won't find a prairie pothole or oxbow here in Clayton County. The Fish & Wildlife folks from southeast Iowa probably haven't seen many goat prairies. But plenty of the species we seek to protect will use both, so if we're not working together we contribute to that fragmentation.
If I only see Clayton County's properties, and I only talk shop with the other people working on those properties, my ideas might start looking a little inbred. All this to say nothing of the slow creep of insanity that starts to take hold after too much time alone in the woods - even Thoreau welcomed visitors to Walden Pond.
Conversely, restorationists tout the importance of diversity in building resilient ecosystems. Lots of root competition makes a prairie more resistant to invasion. A mosaic of habitat types will accommodate more bird species. At least three blooming species from April through October for pollinator health.
I'd like to think this little experiment in professional connectivity and diversification can also help us all build more resilient spirits, minds, and bodies. We have a larger rolodex of help we can call on. Most importantly, we now head into 2025 secure in the knowledge that we are more than the sum of our parts. Much more.
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