As with every site The Prairie Enthusiasts protect, the tale of Muralt Bluff does not end with the inked check. The success at Muralt Bluff spurred these and other early Prairie Enthusiasts to double down on their efforts to find and protect remnant prairies across the Upper Midwest, to form groups of volunteers dedicated to stewarding land and to keep spreading a passion for prairie. All the while, there stood Muralt Bluff—challenging its stewards to experiment, teaching them how to listen to the land and ever urging them to renew their shared commitment to this place.
Though the Green County Board originally assigned official stewardship responsibilities at Muralt Bluff to the Wisconsin DNR, members of the original burn crew and a growing core of Green County prairie-lovers remained the site’s most dedicated volunteers. Ownership of the site was transferred to The Prairie Enthusiasts in 2013, and the Prairie Bluff Chapter continues to steward Muralt Bluff today. Over the last 50 years, Muralt Bluff’s devotees have faced nearly every predicament familiar to prairie practitioners: invasions of sumac, cedar, cherry and plum, burn restrictions, funding challenges, conflicting management styles, disappearing flora and fauna and questions about when, where and how often to mow, cut, treat and burn on the prairie. While some issues could be solved with time, trial and lots of error, others proved mysteries.
While discouraging losses of rare prairie plants, insects and habitats have played out at Muralt Bluff over the years, so too have natural wonders that could renew the curiosity of even the most downtrodden Prairie Enthusiast. Following a drought in 1988, Muralt Bluff exploded in a profusion of rough blazing star (Liatris aspera) and showy goldenrod (Solidago speciosa) beyond belief. “I’ve been going up there for 50 years,” reminisces Gary, “I never knew that those plants were there. There’s hundreds and hundreds of them and they’re blooming, so that indicates they were mature plants. God knows how long those root systems have been lying dormant in that soil before the drought shook them up enough to sprout. I was absolutely flabbergasted. It’ll never look like that again in my lifetime, so what is the secret there? How long have those blazing stars been dormant?”
When you stick around long enough, as Muralt Bluff’s devotees have, prairies have a way of surprising you like this. A rare plant emerges, blooms once and folds itself back into the soil, never to be seen again by the same eyes. New grassland birds find tiny pockets of prairie in a sea of corn and soy, making themselves at home as if they have always lived there. Amidst extreme weather events and a rapidly changing climate, the prairie dips into its well of resilience and acts.
This and Muralt Bluff’s many other mysteries bring into focus our role as Prairie Enthusiasts: to recognize what we are losing, and the immense power of what we still have. “Your whole perspective on who we are and what we’re here for changes when you visit Muralt Bluff,” says Prairie Bluff Chapter volunteer Jerry Newman. To steward this place is to humbly return to it with respect, curiosity and wonder, putting in the difficult work to restore a place, all the while knowing that the prairie holds a wisdom much older than you. Like that first burn, prairie conservation is a chaotic, dynamic and deeply collaborative process. The important thing is to keep trying at it, even when the fire jumps your breaks.
In many ways, the Muralt Bluff story endures as the model for The Prairie Enthusiasts’ land protection efforts today. We understand that if we want to save the prairies around us, we must act, and we must do so holistically. Like those early Prairie Enthusiasts, we build trust with landowners and local communities. We share land management knowledge and take initiative to steward land, embracing uncertainty and failures. We connect people with prairies through field trips, work parties, education and art. We find creative ways to raise funds and collaborate with others to further our impact. We do not let our enthusiasm dwindle, even after 50 years. This is a resilient method of conservation because it depends, at its core, on people loving the land enough to want to protect it and make it better. This enthusiasm is alive and well at Muralt Bluff and everywhere there are prairie people, and that is something to celebrate.
