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Choosing Your Destination Before You Choose Your Mode of Transport
Last week, I attended a science and stewardship conference of The Nature Conservancy in Madison, Wisconsin. It was an inspiring and thought-provoking week. There were a lot of topics that will...
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A Closer Look at Prairie Roots
One of the biggest jobs of a prairie steward is to manage the competition between plants, ensuring that no species becomes too dominant and no species is pushed out of the community. In our prairies,...
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Diversity, Redundancy, and Resilience
Grasslands face a long list of challenges. In many regions, habitat loss and fragmentation top that list, leaving prairies to struggle for survival as tiny isolated patches of habitat. In addition,...
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Does Dotted Gayfeather Flower More Under Reduced Competition?
Late summer is definitely a season of yellow flowers in prairies, with goldenrods and sunflowers in the vanguard. However, there are exceptions to the yellow rule, and one of the most prominent of...
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Trying to Create Something Different in the Nebraska Sandhills
At our Niobrara Valley Preserve (NVP), we’re experimenting with prairie management techniques to see if we can create a wider range of habitat conditions than is found throughout much of the Nebraska...
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Should We Manage for Rare Species or Species Diversity?
Land managers constantly make difficult decisions without really knowing the long-term consequences of their choices. Balancing the sometimes conflicting needs of rare plants like Canada milkvetch...
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The Risks of Managing Prairies Exclusively for Plants
Prairies are often defined as plant communities dominated by grasses, sedges, and wildflowers. However, prairies are also home to thousands of animal species, not to mention countless varieties of...
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Trusting the Resilience of Prairies
Note to my son (and others who mainly follow this blog to see if there are cool pictures or pictures of them): This is a pretty long and involved post – sorry. The first picture is probably the best...
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The Role of History In Today’s Prairie Management
Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results. I’m no expert in financial investing, but I’d like to retire someday, so I muddle along the best I can. As I skim through various...
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Returning to Nachusa Grasslands
Last week, the Hubbard Fellows and I attended the 24th North American Prairie Conference (NAPC) in Normal, Illinois. The NAPC is always an enjoyable and thought-provoking conference that brings...
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Prairie Word of the Day – Habitat Heterogeneity
Do you know what time it is? It’s time for another PRAIRIE WORD OF THE DAY! Today’s Prairie Word of the Day (fine, it’s actually two words) is: Habitat Heterogeneity Heterogeneity is really just a...
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Prairie Word of the Day – Disturbance
It’s been too long since the initial installment of what was intended to be a regular feature of this blog – the Prairie Word of the Day. Since one blog post does not make a series, I figured I’d...
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How did everything work this year?
This is one of my favorite times of year. It’s not the cool temperatures, the fall colors, or even the fall migrations of birds and insects coming through. Instead, I like this time of year because...
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2014 Patch-Burn Grazing Meeting – Platte River Prairies, Nebraska
Curious about patch-burn grazing? Want to get together with other grassland enthusiasts, ranchers, researchers, and wildlife managers and talk about a variety of ways to manage for diverse wildlife...
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Conservation Grazing in Iowa
I got the chance to spend a couple days in Iowa last week, talking about conservation grazing with staff of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. They invited me to join a two day workshop...
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How I Manage My Own Prairie
One of our major objectives at the Platte River Prairies is to experiment with and demonstrate various prairie management techniques and strategies. All those strategies are aimed at creating and...
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Patches of Fire and Habitat
It’s been a difficult year for conducting prescribed fires so far – the wind seems to be blowing even harder and more consistently than in recent memory. And that’s saying something, living in the...
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Photo of the Week – March 13, 2014
Here are two photos that caught my attention as I was going through timelapse imagery the other day… In my last post, I showed some timelapse photos from a fenceline at The Nature Conservancy’s...
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Just When I Think I’ve Got Something Figured Out…
I pay close attention as I walk through prairies. I watch for tracks to see what animals are around and I notice which flowers are blooming and which insects are feeding on them. Often, I notice...
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Bison Good, Cattle Bad??
Among some prairie enthusiasts, there seems to be a perception that plains bison are magical creatures that live in complete harmony with the prairie. They eat grasses but not wildflowers, they float...
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