[PCA] NEWS: Helping to re-plant the prairie
Kunda Lee Wicce
kundaleewicce at grandecom.net
Sun Feb 15 14:54:14 CST 2009
Expressing a personal opinion that needs no response, as an advocate
of prairie restoration, I too was relatively disheartened that neither
the landowners, their advisors, nor the writer of the article
understood that planting a forest on old prairie land is NOT what is
meant by prairie restoration. While some progress has been made, that
article made it disappointedly clear to me that we prairie
restorationists have a long row of more PR/education to hoe.
Kunda Wicce
Austin, TX
Board, Native Prairies Association of Texas
On Feb 13, 2009, at 7:06 PM, Fuhrmann, Paul wrote:
> Marianne and Emily comments indicate that restoration requires clear
> thinking as well as practice.
>
> "Relatively disheartening" is understandable but maybe too harsh for
> the landowner who is attempting to "restore" some semblance of
> ecological form and function on what is in his control. 19 acres
> could be called a demo project or simply "gardening" but to a
> landowner that may be a big part of his world. I am more concerned
> for what the future holds for parcels like this. Any scale of
> restoration is dependent on security re: site control and future
> land use. If he landowner is serious, an easement in perpetuity
> would be in order with a management plan based on restoration
> ecology and stewardship (AKA hard work). Other than passive
> landscape restoration with measurable habitat value, landowners like
> this one could have chosen an abiotic development scenario,
> traditional industrial forest land use, land trust scenario with
> family use restrictions or a Wall Mart. Projects like this can
> elevate awareness and define and economic values of ecological
> services. We're all in trouble unless public and policy makers can
> link resource restoration with economic and social values that will
> release funding on a reasonable scale.
>
> "Restore to what" is THE question for all designers to attempt to
> answer in the planning/conceptual design phase. Pre historic, pre
> settlement, pre contact, pre disturbance? Watershed or system wide
> alterations often preclude ecological restoration of most function
> and process but can allow for some level of recovery in form.
> Restoration of cover types doesn't guarantee that the trajectory of
> natural succession will be reset correctly. It could involve
> decades of adaptive management to stay on course towards a
> restoration target. It most project work areas, urbanization or
> landscape scale modification has inhibited definition of restoration
> goals and objectives. Two of my favorite references that illustrate
> the challenge of pre planning and how designers think about
> restoration:
>
> The Myths of Restoration Ecology - 2005
> http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol10/iss1/art19/
>
> Functional Objectives for Stream Restoration - September 2006
> http://el.erdc.usace.army.mil/elpubs/pdf/sr52.pdf
>
> Paul Fuhrmann
> ecology and environment, inc.
> 368 Pleasantview Drive
> Lancaster, New York 14086
> 716 684 8060 tel
> 716 684 0844 fax
> www.ene.com
>
> From: native-plants-bounces at lists.plantconservation.org on behalf of
> Marianne Edain
> Sent: Thu 2/12/2009 7:26 PM
> To: native-plants at lists.plantconservation.org
> Subject: [PCA] NEWS: Helping to re-plant the prairie
>
> One of the biggest problems we have in restoration work is in
> defining the term "restoration." The first question, of course, is:
> "restore to what?" We talk about reference sites and reference native
> plant communities, and that restoration implies bringing a site back
> to what it once was. So first you need to know what it once was -
> which begs the question of when it was.
>
> Here in the Pacific Northwest, as in other parts of the
> country, when white folks arrived, they put a stop to the native
> practice of burning the prairies. The obvious result was that first
> shrubs and then trees took over areas which had been kept in prairie
> for thousands of years. Early in the 20th century our particular area
> was logged, leaving a very few patches of remnant old growth Douglas
> fir forest. Much of the historical Doug fir forest grew back. There
> is a distinctive difference between historical Douglas fir forest and
> forest which grew on prairie soils after burning was stopped. After
> the great clearing of the 1880s - 1920s, many former forests were
> converted to farm land, brush fields, or developed uses.
>
> So, when we talk about restoring a site with prairie soils
> which grew up in Doug fir forest but is now pretty solid weedy exotic
> grasses, to what are we restoring it? We could plant a few thousand
> Doug firs and create another tree farm, or we could slowly and
> laboriously deal with the soil seed bank of all those exotic grasses
> and bring back the native prairie bunch grasses and the spectacular
> camas fields.
>
> In fact, that's what we and some wonderful people are doing
> on a 150 acre parcel which is the last restorable piece of Northern
> Puget Trough Glacial Outwash Prairie. It is long, hard, slow,
> laborious work, and it doesn't pay - except in wild excitement at
> discovery of yet another small patch of Brodiea howellii, returning
> Festuca roemeri in areas where the shrubs have been burned (and
> occasionally herbicided) out, and the spectacular spring displays
> which grow year after year as more of the shrubs are removed and the
> natives find themselves more and more welcome.
>
> Even then, how can we be sure that what we are creating is
> similar to what was here before the plow? We may know generally what
> species were present, but can we know their relative abundance? We
> know, for instance, that the native people ate camas as a staple, and
> that death camas (Zygadenus venenosus) bulbs look very similar in
> mid-late summer after the stalks have dried, when the bulbs are dug.
> We also know that, in order to avoid poisoning, the native people
> systematically removed the death camas from areas where they
> harvested regularly. And yet our site has a good deal of death camas.
> Should we be removing it, as the native people did? To what extent
> did their harvesting, with digging sticks, break up the soil and
> provide the substrate for other prairie species? Should we be using
> digging sticks out there? Should we be harvesting some of the camas
> and other native food plants out there? How many of them?
>
> So many questions in restoration, and so little patience from
> the people who own the land and pay the bills. Its so easy to go to
> the Conservation District nursery and order bundles of trees, and
> accept all that praise from people who mean well but do not
> understand the science.
>
> So how do we bring these questions of reference sites and
> target communities into public consciousness and public discussion?
>
> Marianne Edain
>
>
> >I find this article relatively disheartening. Of 130 acres he only
> planted
> >19 in prairie and the rest with "prairie trees" of Red Oak, Walnut,
> and
> >White Pine - that he hopes his grandkids will be able to harvest
> some day.
> >Sounds more like a tree farm than prairie restoration, especially
> since
> >these are certainly not Midwest prairie tree species!
> >
> >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >Emily Lubcke
> >Greenspace & Lake Manager
> >Galena Territory Association
> >2000 Territory Drive
> >Galena, IL 61036
> >815/ 777-2000 x24
> >815/ 777-9194 (Fax)
> >www.thegalenaterritory.com
>
> --
> Marianne Edain
> Frosty Hollow Ecological Restoration
> Box 53 Langley, Wa 98260
> 360-579-2332
> wean at whidbey.net
> Helping Nature Heal
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> native-plants mailing list
> native-plants at lists.plantconservation.org
> http://lists.plantconservation.org/mailman/listinfo/native-plants_lists.plantconservation.org
>
> Disclaimer
> Posts on this list reflect only the opinion of the individual who is
> posting the message; they are not official opinions or positions of
> the Plant Conservation Alliance.
>
> To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to native-plants-request at lists.plantconservation.org
> with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> native-plants mailing list
> native-plants at lists.plantconservation.org
> http://lists.plantconservation.org/mailman/listinfo/native-plants_lists.plantconservation.org
>
> Disclaimer
> Posts on this list reflect only the opinion of the individual who is
> posting the message; they are not official opinions or positions of
> the Plant Conservation Alliance.
>
> To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to native-plants-request at lists.plantconservation.org
> with the word "unsubscribe" in the subject line.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.plantconservation.org/pipermail/native-plants_lists.plantconservation.org/attachments/20090215/62d50384/attachment.html>
More information about the native-plants
mailing list