Land Between Two Rivers; 202; Prairie: A State of Mind

Woo woo woo. Woo woo. The following program is made possible through a grant from the Kenny Lindstrom foundation incorporated a charitable trust Mason City Iowa. Home. It's. In the 1930s as European settlers began to arrive in

gigantic stretches of tall grass Prarie was confronted but there seemed little value in this land until someone forced to plough through the highly resistant soil. A few a few families seeking a fresh start using this robust soil discovered they could do more than eke out a living. They could provide a comfortable lifestyle for themselves and future generations. The rush to acquire this fertile prairie land was if as a result the Natural Heritage written in the prairie has all but disappeared. Most farmers have no memory of fairies because they were gone before the farmers were born in their minds. Iowa has always been a state of vast rolling cultivated fields. Academics concerned about this loss have identified most of the original prairie that still exists in the state but concern and identification is not enough.

When the continued existence of faeries is in doubt the question becomes should we have a master plan so that all remaining prairie's will be acquired by the state as a way to preserve this precious piece of natural heritage. Further how should we manage these prairie's so that they continue to thrive in their natural state. To concern individuals such as Dean Rousseau Iowa State ecologist Darryl Smith biology department head of the U.N. I call Christiansen professor of biology at Cornell and John Downey a dean at the U.N. I continually exchange information in an attempt to answer these questions. Do you come here I feel her ration plan for Iowa. Oh my dream will be the head of a very in every county so every child must truly enjoy having a chance to visit her. I think that would be sort of the mineral rich should one for the fur for the

kid you about the time. We discover a lot of these sites just driving through the countryside will find many small prairie's which would contain the butterflies and possibly butterflies that would be collected at that site for the first time in that county. Go back a year later and find it's gone that the can't even see where you were sometimes you might think you're lost in that you had stood there beside a 20 acre patch of prairie or Martian and there isn't a sign of it next year because of field crops. So it's kind of a race and a little frustrating I guess you might feel endangered like the prairie plants in the 99 counties in Iowa. If you spent a year in each one I think you just touched the surface pretty well. As you take me now Yang years then I'm running out of time. The prairie was gone and I have my 900 essentially in the case of the prairie in Iowa

I don't think we need the endangered species argument anymore I think we need to be endangered ecosystem market because any rabbit of prairie that you preserve is preserving a tiny fragment of a vast ecosystem is gone. Isn't that possible. Get out there and move some prairie out of Iowa with. The person living the story that has a gene for resistance to certain kinds of cancer. Part. Of your answer is that it could be. Maybe some players out there. Maybe some wonderful high. Out there. Has a gene that would be resistant to certain forms of cancer even to begin with. Is that sure we might be able to borrow that gene. To the living systems could have eventually had to deal with it and use it for the benefit of. Men call you a good detriment of the living things that we call cancer. And that's what man needs to know or. What out there in the prairie. Would benefit other creatures of the prairie would would benefit.

Ultimately every living system including the question of what good is it for May and can really be answered was so sure we can say. That thing is there for this purpose or serves this particular function. But as of now our knowledge is so incomplete. I doubt that we'll know that in the end another thousand years. There were we have left maybe ten thousand acres of them outside. Ten thousand other 22 million. Plus a fairly. Distant. Figure out our salvation base that is mighty small. It's a it's a fake illusion of something that's of the past it's no longer quite here. Part of that is apparently mind. You. I guess we have the best of intentions of the society today. For. We have to. Push it without question. The superbug. You know. This. Is like

God how could you destroy all prayer and how could you possibly cloud up. Well it didn't seem to The Most folks that you were. Concerned about. Perry's has been an ongoing phenomenon in this state for the past 50 years. Preservation plans have been resented by many noteworthy scholars but not until the late 1960s did a grassroots movement spurred on by a growing national awareness of environmental issues developed bringing prairie's as an issue to the forefront. In the 1980s that educational process continues. Novices soon learn that fairies are not the same as weed batches. To some people it's just an open grass grassy space.

But. I think if you were to check the definition biologist new poll indicated it's grassland companies and certain species of grasses for years without trees and a limited number of shrubs being present. It's a partisan comment grassland the United States that the French can think of another name to describe their word for a meadow and that's when they came up with the very interesting thing they're probably the most common cause the state was the one dominated by big blue sea grass in terms of total acres but the percentage of that one remaining is so small today because that was the one that made our productive agricultural soil. Yeah now that's the one it lended itself so well to. To corn beef production and so there is very little of that left and in the oddity is that the Hill praising ne for the lust for

areas of western Iowa where the sand phrases were were small percentage of the phrase originally but now there's probably a larger percentage of those remaining. Then there was the the more common talkers for it because they're not as suitable for agriculture. How much of a toll road. Perceive what do we have left and you think below 10 percent. I think the highest would be that we prolly less than one tenth of one percent. When you talk about 85 percent of the state was Prairie. That seems to me that's imperative that we preserve some remnants of that and its bigger revenues would possibly get. I think we get we have to return to the idea that most of the Fraser islands and their island surrounded by. A non-native sea would have to also look at the history of. The. Currys they were established during a very hot dry period. I was prairie's took shape beneath the ice of the great glacial advances of the last two

million years. The soil that was formed by these glaciers was an ideal material for the growth of grass. But a larger factor in the formation of fairies is climate. Hot dry periods favored grasses. Cool moist periods favored trees. Over the last twenty five thousand years this silent struggle between trees and grass has raged in the Midwest. About a thousand years ago a grass favoring shift of climate occurred which continued for about 4000 years. Since that time. The pendulum has swung in favor of trees. Does this retreat spell the end for prairie's as we know them. There is no way to be absolutely certain. Should we assist prairie's in their struggle to survive. Some believe we mattered little in that effort. Others think maintaining harmony with our environment is a goal worth a lifetime of continued dedication.

I knew that when I set out to do what you're going to be different from. Corn field farming which is the tradition here. I anticipated people with. Somewhat ostracised me because of just living deaf or doing things different. I mean I plot out perfectly good corn fields and put it back into the prairie to the corn field but a hole in it. There's a. Bass bluegill catfish pond out there that we used to race cars. Of course my dad. Was born and raised a farmer farmer son and lived on a farm. Surprisingly he didn't understand native prairie's. And when I plot out a corn field and planted in things like big blue stem little boost him switchgrass Indian grass and put in. Prairie cone flowers and black eyed Susans. He was interested he thought that would be all right. But he would look across the field to

where the house used to be you know Kentucky bluegrass and in the spring it was all green and lush and you'd look over my native prairie plot and it was dead looking just black it was nothing but last years we'd seen each shake his head say well we're going to have to tear that up and replanted tell him Well no no I think be patient it takes you know warm June Sundays to make a native prairie come you know this early spring stuff that's. His still alive under there three or four weeks later this who threw him out of the bottom pasture and being you. Know El Castor get ready to be born and you know the buffalo are starting to show signs of milk. You could be looking at that dead looking wheat that yeah we're going to have to tear that up you're going to have to do something that looks awful that has an oh no no. A new planning like this it takes two or three years for it to really get established and take off. Of course this was a second year after he planned it and he thought it had all died out it was going to shake his head and he almost in his way would lean like you better tear that up and I say oh no the facia

and a long July and August Dang it got hot. The Kentucky bluegrass withered away and turned halfway around the smooth grown quick growing and that native summer warm season grass took off and got three or four feet tall and you could just barely see the backs of the buffalo sticking out of it as a walk through that. And that's the last time you made a comment about tearing it up. The elk and buffalo were here long before the whites ever thought of coming to this country. One of my basic philosophy says you know go with nature. When I think of an ideal life I think of the Sioux walking around out here never worrying about getting to work on time in the morning and never worrying about freezing to death knowing that food was just. Not a serious effort for them. You would have found out there L..

Fox coyote. Would have found this the home of the Sandhill Crane whooping cranes nested right here says Jeremy. It probably would have been trumpeter Swans down there in that marsh that would have been muskrats doing the northerns. You had an. Immense diversity. And the records are very clear that out for a buck. Well there are. Historical. Surveyors that came through here recorded herds of over 200 head in one man and very commonly seen elk sign in places where elk crossed and of course. The prairie is the traditional thought about Buffalo. They certainly were here when you put that picture together. From Eagles to Osprey's to whooping cranes to elk to Buffalo to Beaver. That's pretty pleasing picture to me. That whole history has been eliminated. In an essential short time that it didn't happen over centuries. And we were talking about. The last act being shot in

1863 the first leg man coming here to shoot it now is eight hundred fifty four. We're talking about herds of hundreds of al. And how many years were time nine years. Total elimination complete elimination nine years. That. Kind of grief is going to selfish. Can you imagine. And it happened. Two or three men would grab an afternoon. As you were. Banging their head and when Beth. Asked me I can bet if I eat two meals a day before home here I still got off the next week there's less red shirting there bevel. When the first settlers arrived in the New World in the early sixteen hundreds there were already many Indian nations living in harmony in the land between two rivers

early white explorers found great open plains of grassland filled with Buffalo elk and deer. To some of these pioneers. These open spaces were a prospect most bleak monotonous and lonely. Others reveled in this open expanse. But there was no denying. But here a family could settle cheaply. Here after the long painful weeks and months in a Conestoga wagon. A family could put down roots. Despite the great difficulty of breaking the prairie sod and the root structure which held it in place there were rich rewards. So even though the winters were extreme most two made it through those first long cold winters stay. And once again forced the prairie to yield a harvest for mankind.

This process has continued to the present day leading to confusion about what original prairie looks like. Only. To realize that there are. Still. Plants and. The metal is actually original. For. I didn't know anything about her. We used to graze 40 to sack out in cans of this 40 acres and they never did run out of forage. Lee didn't really realize that the grass and stuff was that good of a horse that went. Right. At South Pensacola black night shade to young John Mann account ski wanted to sell one of his back pastures when members of Iowa's Department of Natural Resources noticed this they asked permission to investigate but they had only seen at a distance from the road. To their amazement they discovered 30

acres of original prairie Clinton County bid on and acquired the land. After today's ceremony this tract will become the man a county prairie preserve So it's an interesting relationship there and buttering you're a competitor your prairie fires is what gets with the monsters who exactly. Well the first time it was evidence of the fact there hasn't been a fire here for a little while is because you had junipers and they also had occasional. Rough leave dog with. Al Gore and his dog. Yeah well that dog left hand I head screw that's you know is that's the sandalwood because they're Yeah because actually as far as Prairie is concerned there are no trees which are needed to Perris except the Burr Oaks. Sometimes the couple's plants and other plants have root systems and produce it go down like 10 12 15 feet or more. And so the top portion the sliced off and if the area is left alone for a couple years it has an opportunity to respond out and then reseat itself in the area so it's these are very resilient areas in that

regard where they have to be tough or they think they can die. That's right. This is a new addition to the state preserve system. This is a special program that was established by the legislature exactly 20 years ago and it's not just Prairie is that the preserve system deals with. They're interested in sites that have geological significance archaeological significance historical significance as well as biological significance. And I might just point out that usually these places aren't significant for just one of those reasons either and this is a good example. This is a prairie preserve but it has a very unique geological interest as well. We're we're on a rolling off one here you know it is the sand you've noticed the rock outcroppings. But as you look out there to the west you can see that LOL and it drops down between here and the far horizon and that's an old abandoned channel of the Mississippi River.

During glacial times thousands of years ago all that valley carried water that was formally flowing in the Mississippi Valley and that was due to the disruption of the drainage in this part of the Midwest by advancing glaciers. So not only do we have a prairie preserve established here but it provides us a very excellent overlook of a significant geological feature that's present in this part of Lyla and we're very pleased to be able to add manic housekeep prairie to this important list of state preserves in Iowa. Thank you very much. You know I think the same thing. That I want to happen over the style of our recessional but. They have to deal with it. Not to be suspicious of if it's a plant which is unknown to them in their usual can of. Weed or. Car. Van hits it's falling into the weed

category. And one that has to be eliminated or certainly controlled. That the guy on first is disturbing to many people. They like to see uniformity you see uniformity in our laws and our current crop plants and so forth our parks and everywhere. I think we need a place to go to illustrate what it was when this when this state was said. Of the wide open spaces the vastness of the. All right. The dollar and. The stories that they heard. Because I think the prairie is. Part of our cultural past. And certainly part of our biological past this point you could see some time in the past when they struck this road they must scrape some of the topsoil off and we've got a bit of a different type of

prairie community that's sort of moved back in and reclaim this very territory differed from that unique You see some of the same species in both their land by that but I had a grandfather who had who was born in central Illinois about 1885 and spent some time in South Dakota helping one of his brothers homestead there before he moved back I was a farmer and he used to share some things about the prairie with me. He was a farmer and he was wrestling a living from the soil and rather I can recall specifically one of his comments when I asked him about the prairie because I'm sort of romantically inclined towards a fairy's and an ice as I was asking about and he said Oh yeah when I was in South Dakota we had to leave a section for the school. Well I think first of all Iowans are people of the soil in one form or another and this soil was created by the prairie and so that's a little bit. Abstract In one sense they're very direct in another one the black price oil is what raises are good crops in the

organic matter that was created by the prairie's important but I think there's also a need in a lot of people or some open space in a feeling of openness and I think that this provides that opportunity as well. And there are some who might even make the argument that man as a species needs some natural areas like this. Our biological inheritance may be in and developed and in the trees and regions of Africa but our cultural inheritance was on the savannas of Africa. Now does this slope up here is that. The whole Blazing Star. Rosin we are being called are fantastic. I think I could just walk out here forever. Then the other sizing is I wouldn't want to bring every Iowan out here from the standpoint of what I would do the prairie from the standpoint of overdo the Iowan I'd love to bring him out here because I think everyone should have that opportunity but all the labels got a quote there that I think is very very appropriate He says all conservation is self-defeating because to fully appreciate it

you gotta see it and fondle it when enough of seen it and fondled it there's nothing left. So that's a difficult balance to achieve and that's where I think projects like the reconstruction of prairie's you can recreate certain aspects of the prairie and and you can do that closer to the urban centers and where people can have access to them. They can come and visit those. Those reconstructed prayers at least begin to get a feel of what Iowa may have been like in the past so I walked right by this caller who says this is kind of an interesting plant the leaf arrangements interesting in the flowers when they first emerge are interesting. Apparently the Indians and some of the early settlers used it as a prototype. In fact sometimes as I'm being called Culver's root it's called Indian physic. And if you take a portion of it it will apparently be very plucky that is American right. In fact some of the commercial sellers of natural foods in their portion to

keep you regular will use covert fruit as a portion of that. It's it's all of this over. Oh yeah yeah. His essays. That's that is a very strong scented one too that will work very well for seasoning. Well just like they look I don't think is as strong as it is against anything. Don't you know I don't know it because it's been there for the seasons. Why stop here. Notice call your attention the fire has caused the big blue stem to bloom earlier than it might normally do it's what you can easily see why they sometimes call this turkey. But yeah it's very apparent. Big blue stem is one of the characteristic grasses of the tall grass prairie in fact they grew stern along with Indian grass are considered two of the primary dominant grasses of the tall grass prairie. Most good prairie's probably have twenty two hundred fifty three hundred

different species on Earth. The thing I don't think we all realize very often is the age of some of these clumps of prairie plants it's very possible that this clump of drops a day is equally as old as some of the oak trees in Iowa because they they die back each year but they go up from the roots of the roots may be equally as old as some of the trees. I think that's a concept that we'll always keep in mind when we're looking. Prairie's tend to think they grow up new every here at the compass plant for example has like its roots Taproot that goes down 16 20 feet or so and the roots of the prairie are what is the basis of our agricultural heritage in Iowa because those prairie root systems are what created the Black prairie soil that we're raising all of that corn and soybeans with. It is believed that fires caused by lightning strikes or other natural forces

help to reduce Woody invasion. Non-native prairie plants lacking deeply imbedded root structures were unable to survive these fierce natural forces. Today fire is used as a management technique to encourage native prairie plant domination. This return to a more natural form of control has supplanted traditional mowing and haying operations. Yeah many of the prairie ecologist was well. We'll let it go then. Return to it's called. Normal state. I think there are a couple problems were missed there. We're learning from that now. One is that it probably will never return to its original state because it's now an isolated island with a whole sea of agriculture around it so that there are pressures on it that were there before so we need to take a look at some other types of management techniques other than No.

And one that's been adopted this Dean referred to earlier is periodic to manage the native grasses and other species are there. We've sort of tampered with different types of learning techniques for management and we've adopted. Because prairie fire was a very natural component of the prairie system. Mostly I see people burning in early spring now in April before the grasses really start growing before much of the nesting critters. Actually the historical evidence probably is that prairie fires were more prevalent in the early spring in the late summer and fall but they may have occurred in nature because it could have been started by a lightning strike or or something in the dry burning off an area to attract some grazing animals grazing this so I think we sort of adapted. Fire is one of our many tools to maintain these ferries but we don't know a lot about that to leave with earlier

saying if your minute she. Really does she really believes but is not sure the implications are for trust that the general idea that this training plans yesterday the Dow just. Over the years and where is the not only plans have not are not too far down. So one of the ways of giving the edge if you will to the NE finances by using fire and also to recycle some of the nutrients to. The sun. You seem to need an answer for you. If you're in the other it would be good for us. After a hundred years. Right now this was a true story but I think there's some evidence that the climate is more moist now than it was a couple thousand years ago and that just more. Ability for plants for trees to compete.

Academicians such as Paul Christiansen gather valuable data by dividing prairie's into sections and identifying exactly what plants are contained in that area. By comparing this information with other plots and repeating the process over a number of years significant results that may help to improve prairie management techniques can be obtained by making use of scientific procedures on prairie's may open up new vistas. But the results create almost as many questions as answers. It's difficult to know what we're shooting for. Because we don't have any good records of what the prairie was like when the first settlers came by or even the first trappers and traders. So we are looking for a goal which is which is difficult to define. I think for myself I look for diversity that we have as many species as as we can get into the area that are compatible is it that our prairie

species at least and occur naturally and then try to mean try to manage for for that sort of diversity you. Have to hold. On. For now. It started with the Hayden ferry in 1969 when I did the management plan and recommended a burning cycle of two or three years on different areas and I followed that then over the years to to document the changes as a result of that. And that's how I got interested in management there are good many other people that are interested as well in different times and burning different frequencies and and perhaps other management schemes as well. Okay. Got that one.

The plots that we're putting out are our small ones there are 20 by 50 centimeters at a tenth of a meter square and we're putting them out on a transect every every meter for 50 meters. Put a stake at each end of that so that it can be relocated and and redone later on. That's what we're doing estimating the cover of each particular species which occurs in the plot. OK here's a new one. Can I see where analyzed canadensis to. How true. Well I will and I Gas Electric first became involved with this property when they were looking out for a generating station and our primary interest was in protecting a prairie but that we needed the property for that power plant. However

as idle lands become more scarce we found that the premium put on natural lands is higher and people are interested in seeing them protected. So in order to be able to make use of the site we took a portion of it which was found to be very important ecologically and agreed to protect that part of it so that we could use the remainder for an industrial purpose. Aside from that in a larger context environmentally I think that the planning process we went through in building this generating station and trying to accommodate those needs was successful. And I'd like to see that kind of approach happen more often in business and I think the planning phase is definitely the place where the most can be done at the least cost. So often in the past we've gotten ourselves into situations where we don't look at a particular aspect until everything else has already been done and then it's too late to change things. Or if you can change them it's going to cost you so much money that it's not realistic.

We had basically two problems in managing the pervious first the Juniper's which were invading and second the locust and the junipers we could handle by manually clearing them or by. Having the fire when they're very young you kind of Get Smart of there but the locusts seem to be both enhanced by cutting and and fire doesn't seem to make a dent in their. Their growth. I got the typography right though for this little one here to bring back the one. That most coming out of the race here. But we can go over and look at a little bit. More closely. The key off. Here. I started with a biology major and about my second year in the school and asking teachers know visors what opportunities there were in that field. I got a little nervous about what it was I really would be doing and I just decided it might be a good idea and some insurance to take a business major. And as I got into that one of the first things I became aware of was for example an economics class you go an

economics class and talk about a zero population growth and then you go to a genetics class and talk about zero population growth. And in one class it was a bad thing and another class it was a good thing. And these things that really struck me as something that would come atcha like a brick and seemed to need some resolution or really weren't finding any of the divisions between areas of disciplines I think have been longstanding and are just now coming to a point where they have to find some middle ground. This is this is one of the species that is here in Iowa. You get a mail I skim read I don't see anywhere anymore. No it doesn't look like it. There is a marking program going on with these turtles. I don't. It's kind of aggressive guy. If this.

Goes even Actually I'm not a particularly outdoorsy person. Influence is a little funny I think I spent more and more time outdoors as I've gotten older and though it is a part of my job of course too but. I think I've learned about nature over the years and actually gone through an academic phase to find that these things are important and that they hold life together and that. Gene pools and all those things that you read about in terms of the diversity of plant life I mean more than just something in a textbook. And I think the more that you know about those things. The harder it becomes to deny that there is something going on here that's important. You know. You do need. You. Right now we're waiting for a butterfly to come out the

adult butterfly emerges and flies in an area of the prairie like this only for a two week period. In fact some of the individuals in the population live only two or three days and yet they do this year after year after year and 5000 years ago of course before this. There was anybody from Europe living in this area and indeed walking across these areas could have seen that same specimen. We know such things as the swallows periodically coming back to Capistrano in situ. Wonderful event they seem to come back in the same year that thousands of people congregate to watch that situation well. Here we have something that's been repeated for ten thousand years. Yet how many people do you see on this prairie observing this wonderful phenomena of the emergence of the prairie state. It's an amazing. It's an amazing story and a wonderful thing to consider it in terms of time that's not on this ride you're free.

We got him we got it there it is big as life. This is only skipper is found only on a native prairie in southwestern Iowa. It occurs more broadly however into Nebraska. Westward from here this is its eastern most populations. They must be around where they can get some washed year and so they say nectar feed on these flowers in areas where the purple flowers aren't sick they timed their emergence to other nectar bearing planes. It's skippers are morphologically similar one to the OTHER than they are to the rest of the butterfly group and all of them are stout bodied and more like an appearance if you will. Then perhaps they are to some of the butterfly groups all of them have a recurved

antenna all of their. Normal butterflies and non skipper groups have clubbed intended but none of the clubs turned backwards in all the skippers they do their first. Feature. They're generally fast flying things. Generally Schomberg colored. And not very spectacular. Many students and butterflies. Never take up a collection. Skippers. Are not very pretty. Well they are a. Prairie indicators among other things and what I'm not specializing in Russian group. We are a prairie state and since most skippers feed on the grass is. A very a short. There were probably more species of skin for a living you know Iowa historically than any other kind of butterfly and it gradually been. Waiting. Let's go back and think about Spring. In spring

the the canopy of the prairie was very short. Everything is just beginning to grow and every year it grows the growth starts and starts from the ground and gets higher and higher and higher as the months go by the canopy and the grass never can go higher and higher right. So here is a plant which starts very early in the spring. We can see a flowering plant and a non-problem plant. And notice down here here's the first leaf that was produced at least an early very short. That leaf was probably about halfway to the canopy at that time. Here is the second leaf. It's prettiest higher in the canopy and here is the Thirdly probably the last leaf of the season and it again probably had some position relative to the top of the canopy In other words this plant. And one way or

another the leaf lines of position in the canopy which gives it the proper blend of light intensity to carry on photosynthesis. It's not way down in the grass. It's not way up high but it always seems to position that this leaf played about halfway up in the canopy so there's not it's not really getting the full sunlight but getting lots of sunlight. OK now here's a second manifestation of this growth of the vegetation. Here is the flowering stock. And here is the first flower. It's in fruit now but the first problem was here when it was in flower. That's where the level of the canopy was. Now a week later 10 days later you see the canopy has grown an inch or two. And these are the second set of flowers is produced an inch or two above the first flower and I've seen plants with three sets of flowers. And this third set of flowers will be up here right in the canopy Mohsen minus

a centimeter. The vast majority of the plants are bee pollinated. Will see delphinium in a minute which is bumble bee pollinated. And then with and the bumble bee pollinated things tend to stick up considerably above the canopy they don't they don't sit down in the wind they sit up here huge beautiful flags and the bumble bees can see them from a large distance and the other large of these half a dozen species of these are here the size of bumble bees in addition to the three species of Bumblebee and they just cruise from Dolphin into Dolphin into delphinium or whatever it is they're visiting do their thing go on to the next bunch. But their plans tend to sit up high above the canopy and the the little be these and things like that. Things that are a half a centimeter long. Are smaller about that size up to that size. They'll visit those plants that are down in the canopy like the

Coreopsis And those those little bees then can just go from flower to flower to flower never get up in the wind. Lincoln did like 15 miles an hour up here and they can just go from flower to flower to flower as long as the wind speed at the canopy okay is not more than five to six or seven miles an hour with the wind in the canopy gets. Much above 7 miles an hour. The little bees disappear the little flies disappear. They just go as you said is this. There is a nice structure we have that for pollination anyway. The plants in the canopy and those that are emergent above the cans with. You. And you. In your living. Room. And you need any. And will you be doing.

Just when. I think. We. Have the luxury of going out to these and leaving. And I think that's something that we maybe should think about for the people where they live there might not be quite so. Far in their recollection. So we do have that luxury. But I do think you need to be out there at certain times too because the prayer isn't just a nice beautiful place as we found out when we were out for a day. In January. It's a

pretty day either when the wind comes across in those early early settlers. They probably didn't know the technical definition of the nation the wind chill but they could surely give you a pretty good for. Their nation which also was really the story of every. Grocer's. Daughter's birth. So I think you have to know a little bit about the subject. Richard was a philosopher. Said. Something about a tumor is a beautiful single path our. Eyes close all the. World tumours but yet if we knew enough about the way to appreciate the difference between him and. And she's a beautiful thing. Now comparing her. To. This angel and there are certain things to know about our prayers and I should join well to the information. So much remains to be. Know. About. That I think all. Your. Young. Life. Should. Be. Instantly following

with. Contributing to knowledge. And I sometimes think it's I don't know why. I try not to show them. A lot of things that they will be able to immediately relate to that try to. Chant things that they can find on a city that. Everest never. Met me my benefactor things but them identify things as them can identify that analyzer at home with my new banner. And I sat down with the. Use of them. Buy me some clothes. Oh. And we talk about grass. This morning. That's bread made. They say we want sweet and all. It's a grass. But it's the seed of a grass right. Well you can take the seed of any grass draining my flowers. Kentucky bluegrass your friend alone. So they start to. Have this connection. That hey. Maybe it does make a difference about sunshine and green space.

Then they can start reaching out into. The berries the nuts on the road. And. Then they can start to appreciate. Really a. Very cold flower. And recognize that there's a difference when you leave it in a ragged Susan. Thread we were talking earlier. If people. Have a connection with a little boost. The Philadelphia recognize. That there's something special about hoping. The never miss it when it's gone. The trip is where this is counting. I believe you have never seen a living brain. Trumpeter strong. Until I'm back here the pedal never seen in a heard one. And it's totally removed from the heritage. It's not even missed because they don't know it was ever here. Transcend race and kind of the conscious world. As a kind of character might say. Yeah. This used to be this way and it's not

because Esther chased out the Indians. You are still. Your being here is affecting this land and it's because of us that the rains. Are Here. And it's because of ash the Sandhill Cranes don't nest year anymore. That's because of ash that this magnificent spawns and swimming out on the slopes. Just because a vest the out. From one. Room. It's not because it's a million years ago. Somebody to love it. Was you know. It's still the direction we choose to be you're. Here. How. Much of Iowa's natural heritage lies in its prairie's in 1850 one

hundred thousand acres could comfortably have been set aside in one thousand eight hundred ten thousand acres could easily have been put in public ownership today. Concerned Iowans must talk in much more modest terms and then they must wonder is there a size below which it is not worth preserving i was natural. Very cool. How big of. A prairie is self-sustaining over a 200 year period. You think 160 acre ferry will last for 100 years. Do you think a three acre ferry last for a hundred years. The answer to that question will have implications on how much what. Our. Priorities will look like you know by the year 2000. Well we have a lot of little prairie spread around. Well we take the plunge and try to pick the biggest area in the state and part of the stuff so to speak and buy any remnant of prairie that you preserve is preserving a tiny fragment of a vast ecosystem that's

gone. Bits and pieces back. But you know then Dean's argument then the question this is is it worth it in the long run. Are they going to be around. Are they going to just disintegrate in you know end and the diversity goes down every decade and pretty soon it's blue Stengel of goldenrod patch. And is that valuable that even a new stem goldenrod patches from superior to nothing that's there. What if we let several more generations go without educating them on the importance of the earth. We may get to a point where a prairie or any other while the area frightens or intimidates a soap I would argue that with a 28 million acres if you preserve every acre that's left the percentages is insignificant compared to what's been put into production. Now I could argue that on a brand scale but the guy who were taking 30 of his

hundred sixty acres that's still a large percentage of that particular farm that persons object to that. Well if we don't if we don't establish a plan you know we're going to be we're going to be saddled with somebody else's priorities. That's right. Maybe that's not bad but I would like to have those who are very interested in Prairie protection have some say about what not only what is protected but the philosophy behind Do we want a large chunk. Do we want the series of small jobs. Well there's been plans with the I would have you sign any that he hadn't a care in the haid suggested prayers and they tried to put together a rationale for why different samples should be preserved. So yeah I think there's been plans but they seem to be cropping up and they they haven't been. None of the follow through. You made a statement in one of your talks about preservation. We just followed through with the

one the AIDS Committee put out in 1944 through 46. We have one whale of this ferry system in the state because I don't remember the exact number. Maybe you know you need about a hundred thirty you know Lynn we've purchased. 5. 5 recently as 1978 we purchased one as a result of her plan. We purchased 5 of the berries of those 130 plus or minus that you don't get any of those under 30 plus or minus how many are totally obliterated now or the other 24. Certainly more than 5 inches. Yeah. It has a slant change. Yes. It's changed a lot hasn't it. Well now it's my turn to make decisions about this land. And you can see the decisions I make. You can see the decisions of my neighbors have made. But pretty soon it's going to be your turn to decide what happens to this land.

And for you to make an intelligent decision as to whether you're making it better or not it helps just a little to know what it was like before doesn't it. Are we improving. Are we taking away from what it was. That's a heavy question. That's serious stuff. But that's a question you're going to have to deal with and it's a question I'm dealing with now. Do that is so easy to listen to me that a TV 50 years ago really said this township in Kisumu County or some county will be forever. So this is a prairie with everybody in the world names the. Best people in the years. Twenty six they will see all of those people in

86 and the wonderful chance. This is a lot of courage. The last film. To do. Good for you. So it's all relative and that. Motivates me. I'm concerned that the we're going to miss preserving something that's going to be gone and once it's gone you can't recover. And that's you know it sounds sort of repetitious to say it in maybe overstating it but. People don't really recognize a vanishing heritage until it's gone through in the look back and say gee why why didn't we. Here is something which is slipped away from us without even realizing this something that was so huge that it could could never be used and we used it up almost completely. And I think the way to interest people in this is to get them to know about it to to vi to learn not to like it.

It's a place that I come to and I just sort of forget my worries. I often come

home late after I've been with her because I really has a sense of a sense of time. I'm just it's just a place to wander around enjoying. I think part of what's left of I would say is is in a sense a state of mind and you can create part of that state of mind yourself. This program was made possible through a grant from the Kenny Lindstrom foundation incorporated a charitable trust Mason City Iowa.