Empire-Sauk Chapter December Update

by The Prairie Enthusiasts | Dec 14, 2021 | News

Small seeds planted lead to bigger things. At the end of June, Ian Michel, an employee from Diederich Tree Care LLC participated in a tour of Moely Prairie led by the stewardship team of Amy & Rick Chamberlin, Paul Anderson, and Brandon Mann. Apparently, Ian was impressed enough to report back to the owner of the company, Slater Diederich, that there were exciting things happening out on the prairie. Soon afterwards we were approached by Slater with an offer of a days’ worth of work pro bono to assist our efforts. After some internal discussion and meeting with Slater in person, we decided that removal of a large, declining cottonwood tree at Schluckebier Sand Prairie and a few smaller trees leaning heavily across the south boundary at Moely Prairie would fit the bill for a days’ worth of work. 

Fast forward to October 27 when the crew arrived to accomplish the first phase, taking down the large Cottonwood tree at Schluckebier. Diederich Tree Care arrived with a crew of four, trucks, trailers, a brush chipper, and a skid steer for the task at hand and within a few, efficient hours had felled, limbed, and cut the tree. Not only that, they agreed to haul the trunk to two different offsite locations for use as firewood. The prairie was left in excellent shape. Phase 2 is planned for a later date at Moely. A big thank you to Diederich Tree Care LLC for their community involvement and work to improve our two precious Sauk Prairie remnants!

See the video of the Cottonwood coming down on our Facebook page. 

Photos by Diederich Tree Care LLC

Reaction to Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources State Natural Area [SNA] Strategy

by The Prairie Enthusiasts | Dec 7, 2021 | News

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources recently published A State Natural Area [SNA] Strategy(1). Here I discuss one aspect of the Strategy that I applaud—the development of a formal procedure for SNA withdrawal. This is something that the conservation community needs to be talking about more. Challenges facing natural areas are increasing and changing, and some have already lost the characteristics that first merited their designation. Climate change is exerting pressure on natural communities, but passive neglect is a clear, if not dominant problem for natural communities that are fire-dependent. Frequently burned and otherwise well-stewarded sites are holding up quite well despite our present climate already departing significantly from what it was 200 years ago. Ignoring degradation of sites suffering from fire exclusion and general lack of stewardship only misleads the public and misrepresents what natural areas are. Our SNAs should be the places where we take ourselves and others on pilgrimage to receive inspiration that our best prairies, savannas, woodlands, forests, and wetlands freely give. This is fundamental to why many of us who work and/or volunteer in conservation do what we do. That inspiration has the power to compel others to join us in having a more reciprocal relationship to the land.

Franklin Savanna SNA in Milwaukee County is a good example of a site that could be considered for withdrawal. It was designated based on a regionally unique opportunity to restore mesic oak savanna that still had some persistent prairie- and savanna-associated species. However, little has been done to restore the savanna, and it continues to deteriorate. Most of its acreage presently consists of dense buckthorn under declining bur oaks with sparse ground layer vegetation dominated by weedy species. There is no fire. Franklin Savanna is certainly not a place I would take someone to show them mesic savanna. Tragically, there is not such a place in southern Wisconsin.  

Franklin Savanna SNA (left) in Milwaukee County is a good example of a site that could be considered for withdrawal. Pleasant Valley Conservancy (center) and Black Earth Rettenmund (right) are examples of well-stewarded sites whose condition is being maintained – Photos by Dan Carter

There are other SNAs that might one day soon be considered for withdrawal, though their cases are generally less extreme. I am most familiar with SNAs near where I live southeastern Wisconsin. Karcher Springs and New Munster Bog Island SNAs (2) still retain a lot of their native biodiversity but they will continue to deteriorate without increased sustained stewardship. Cudahy Woods remains diverse for its urban location, but emerald ash borer has cut a swath right through the heart of it, and invasive species are proliferating at the expense of a rich spring flora. These places could lose much of what made them exceptional, at least regionally, within a decade or two.  

None of this is to say that sites should be abandoned, even if some ultimately have SNA designations withdrawn. This is especially true where resources could be put into action. Franklin Savanna could be a very fine mesic savanna in thirty years’ time. If it were, mesic savanna inspiration would no longer require a road trip down to the Chicago suburbs. Bringing that inspiration closer to more people in the Milwaukee area would be a worthy effort that would extend beyond the site itself. 

It hurts to recognize that we are still losing even legally protected natural areas when we’ve already lost so much. Acknowledging this can be downright politically fraught, so I’ll reiterate my applause of the Strategy for putting words on paper. 

One group that gives us hope is the newly-formed Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves – read all about them here, and on Stephen Packard’s blog, Strategies for Stewards: from woods to prairies. 

Dan Carter, Landowner Services Coordinator

[1] https://widnr.widen.net/s/zjhgzqvqdr/nh0401_lowres

[2] The island is noted for its yellow birch in a southerly location, but arguably what is more notable about it is that it also supports a unique example southern-dry mesic forest, which unlike most southern dry-mesic forests in its region doesn’t appear to simply be the result of hickory and black cherry colonizing oak savanna or oak woodland, and which unlike most upland sites in its region is minimally impacted by a history of continuous cattle grazing.

November 2021 Update From NIPE

by The Prairie Enthusiasts | Nov 11, 2021 | News

Lonetree Farm, in rural Stockton, Illinois, gets busy this time of year with NIPE’s prairie seed mixes. Staff and volunteers spend hours picking native plant seeds from area prairies and savannas, separating seeds from the rest of the plant, drying seeds, and then sorting into their proper mixes for seeding and overseeding elsewhere.

Earlier this fall, NIPE received two and a half large lawn bags of common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) to help with these efforts. This is the milkweed that is so important to the Monarch butterfly life cycle. To use the seed in NIPE’s prairie seed mixes, it must be removed from the pods and de-fluffed. Paid staff and volunteers spent a total of 55 hours at Lonetree cleaning three wheelbarrows full of pods. The result was a little over eight pounds of clean seed.

(Photos of the Asclepias de-fluffing project: from wheelbarrows full of seed pods to de-fluffing to clean seed. Photos by Rickie Rachuy.)

In late September, NIPE’s Jim and Rickie Rachuy gave members of the Lake Carroll (Illinois) Prairie Club a tour of the rare plant gardens at Lonetree Farm. The tour also included time spent in the seed shed and greenhouse (currently housing more prairie plant seeds awaiting milling and bagging). Club members were allowed to process a few of their own collected seeds on the hammer mill in the seed shed.

In the Rare Plant Gardens at Lonetree Farm (photo by Pam Richards)

Working the Hammer Mill (photo by Pam Richards)

Voices of Moely Prairie featured on Nature Revisited Podcast

by The Prairie Enthusiasts | Nov 11, 2021 | News

Moely Prairie has had a presence on Instagram (@moelyprairie) and Facebook (For the Love of Moely Prairie) for the last several years, and during that time, my fellow volunteers and I have connected with many nature lovers around the world. One follower who I have come to know quite well is Stefan van Norden, the producer of a podcast called Nature Revisited. Earlier this spring, he asked if I would be open to doing a podcast about Moely Prairie. At first, I was a bit hesitant; my family and I have only been doing prairie restoration for about 5 years, and although we have certainly learned a lot about prairies in that time, we still don’t feel like we qualify as “experts” to speak with authority about prairie restoration. 

Stefan explained that he was delighted by the photos on our Instagram page depicting our daily discoveries and was intrigued by our restoration efforts on this true remnant prairie. Sensing my hesitancy, he suggested that we forego the traditional podcast interview and instead create an episode that highlights the voices of the land owners, educators, students, conservation experts, and volunteers who appreciate, study, and work to restore Moely Prairie. Stefan’s excitement and vision made it an easy challenge to accept.

Over the summer, I conducted several on-site interviews. Barbara Moely, who owns the land with her sons and who donated the conservation easement that protects Moely Prairie in perpetuity, recorded her testimony from her home in California. My husband, Rick, went to work crafting a poetic narrative to highlight some of the natural and cultural history of the land, including the “where” and the “what” that make remnant prairies like Moely Prairie so special.

Week by week, I would send our audio files to Stefan, who wove parts of them into Rick’s narrative, and music created by Ben Cosgrove. We were given permission to use the song, “Cairn” from Ben’s most recent album, The Trouble with Wilderness. When I first heard the song, it immediately conjured pictures in my mind of Moely Prairie in its many seasons. We all agreed it would be the perfect accompaniment to the voices of Moely Prairie.

We are delighted with the final results and hope you, too, have a chance to listen. Find the podcast by subscribing to Nature Revisited on your favorite podcast streaming platform, on the Nature Revisited YouTube page, or at their website. As of this writing, the Moely Prairie episode has reached more listeners in the first 24 hours than any other podcast Stefan has produced. It’s a wonderful testament to the love people have for Moely Prairie and for all prairies in general.