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First Lady Laura Bush, President Bush, and Native Prairies Association of Texas (NPAT) member Mike Williams recently toured the tallgrass prairie restoration at the first couple’s Prairie Chapel Ranch with reporter Bret Baier.  Mike Williams is the restoration project leader and owner of NPAT-protected Simpson Prairie.

View the video of the tour at the Fox News web site, where the first couple and Mike talk about prairie restoration, Simpson Prairie, and the Native Prairie Association of Texas.

Mike Williams has been using prairie seed collected from Simpson Prairie as the main seed source for the prairie restoration project on Prairie Chapel Ranch, where he is planting native plants such as the native grasses and prairie flowers that thrived on the land before European settlement.

Mike protected Simpson Prairie, a rare and beautiful remnant of Texas tallgrass prairie, for current and future generations via a conservation easement with NPAT.  A conservation easement is a voluntary agreement between a landowner and land trust which permanently protects native prairie or other natural features of the property in perpetuity.

Additional seed sources for the prairie restoration project on the Bush Ranch include NPAT members Bob and Mickey Burleson’s native prairie remnant and restoration near Temple, TX.

Laura Bush also wrote an article that appears on the Fox News web site about native prairie restoration and resources available to private landowners.

A field trip to Mike Williams’ Simpson Prairie near Valley Mills will be held on Saturday, May 3rd at 9:30am.  We will meet at the bank parking lot on the northwest corner of the main intersection in Crawford and then proceed to Simpson Prairie.

Beautiful and productive tallgrass prairie is the most endangered large ecosystem in North America, and less that 1% of Texas’ tallgrass prairie remains for current and future generations.  Native prairie is also habitat for the grassland birds, the most declining group of birds in North America.  Conservation and ecological restoration of tallgrass prairie is an important method to protect and increase habitat for the imperiled native plant communities and prairie wildlife like grassland birds.

Native grasslands also protect and improve water quality and sequester carbon in the soil to fight climate change.  Tallgrass prairie plantings have been shown to be the best source of cellulosic biofuel while simultaneously sequestering more carbon in the soil than is released by its use as fuel.

You can help protect native prairie by joining the Native Prairies Association of Texas (NPAT).  You can also restore native prairie on your own land, and if you own a remnant or restored tallgrass prairie please consider a conservation easement with a land trust like NPAT.

Go to the Fox News website to view the video of Laura and George Bush and Mike Williams and read the prairie restoration article by Laura Bush.  View a slideshow of native prairie flowers and grasses on Simpson Prairie at NPAT’s web site.

The March 30, 2007 issue of "Rangeland Ecology and Management" contains an interesting article, "Blackland tallgrass prairie vegetation dynamics following cessation of herbicide application", applicable to native prairie hay meadows.

K.R. Hickman, and J.D. Derner of the USDA ARS found that removing herbicide applications of Blackland Prairie remnants after 25 years of application led to a dramatic increase in annual forbs but not the return of many later successional perennial forbs (herbaceous flowering plants aka the good prairie flowers) that should be present.  They suggested that conservation efforts may need to include reintroduction of perennial forb species that were killed by the herbicide application.

Some prairie hay meadows are unfortunately herbicided in the mistaken belief it will lead to more forage per dollar, but most groups including Kansas State University say that costs (herbicide and application) are not worth it economically and do not justify application.  Also, native plant enthusiasts and conservationists are also against mass herbicide use because it leads to a decrease in biodiversity by killing the perennial native plant species (especially the pretty prairie flowers) that are so rare.  This seems like another instance when the range management/agricultural point of view and the scientific/conservation point of view agree.

For example, "Forage Facts: Native Hay Meadow Management" from Kansas State University says: "Many perennial forbs improve hay quality and do not compete with grasses for moisture or nutrients. Harvesting by mid-July controls most undesirable annual weeds. Leaving hay bales in the meadow kills underlying vegetation and provides spots for annual weed invasion."

Of course, it is better if herbicide is never applied en-mass to native hay meadows and only used in restoration efforts to eliminate non-native and invasive plants and control woody invaders (like mesquite).  This would avoid the dramatic increase of annual forbs and also avoid the need for restoration of perennial forbs caused by the herbicide usage.

Citation: Hickman, K.R., Derner, J.D. 2007. Blackland tallgrass prairie vegetation dynamics following cessation of herbicide application. Rangeland Ecology and Management 60:186-190.

A new issue of the Texas Prairie Journal (formerly the Prairie Dog), the newsletter of the Native Prairies Association of Texas (NPAT), has been released!

All NPAT members should be receiving their issue in the mail very soon.

Featured articles in this issue include:
– Saving Texas Prairies
– NPAT Receives Tallgrass Prairie Grants
– Tandy Hills: Prairies & People – Oil & Gas

If you are not a member, join NPAT to receive future issues of the Texas Prairie Journal!  You may join online here, or print out a membership form and submit it via postal mail.

A huge thanks to Kirsti Harms, NPAT’s new editor whose incredible design skills have upgraded the newsletter!

Yes, native prairies and plants can save the world! Okay, I admit, help save the world.

The basic premise: We can restore large amounts of native prairie while helping (1) solve global warming, (2) achieve energy independence, and (3) increase water availability and quality.

It is also an ecological solution: native plant and plant community restoration creates habitat for native plants, grassland birds, and other wildlife.

To the right is a draft presentation I am putting together on the subject. Just click the forward button to advance through the slideshow. I will add the pretty native plant or prairie landscape photos in the future.

Imagine if large foundations and companies got behind such a project, creating public/private partnerships that would lead to large amounts of diverse tallgrass prairie being planted for the dual purpose of biofuel and habitat restoration. I’d love to be part of that.

This could ecologically supply the large amounts of biomass that Vinod Kholsa believes will be needed for cellulosic biofuel plants (see his posts on Grist: 1, 2, 3, and 4).

If you have any feedback or suggestions, please leave a comment. Thanks!

In addition to the positive potential of native prairie plantings being used for cellulosic biofuel, there is also risk to native prairies: that existing prairie remnants might be plowed up to plant corn or another biofuel crop.  With so little tallgrass prairie remaining (estimates in Texas are less than 1%) and the potential for prairie biofuel and carbon sequestration, this would be a travesty in my opinion.

Loosing more tallgrass prairie to plowing is a higher risk in the near future with corn ethanol increasing corn prices.  Ducks Unlimited and others have already reported on native grassland plantings being plowed up when their CRP (Conservation Reserve Program) agreements expire, leading to loss for grassland bird and duck habitat. 

This is bad for grassland birds, but I think CRP plantings tend to be low diversity plantings so plowing of prairie remnants would be even worse for native plant communities than loss of CRP plantings.

An article from BBC News, "Biofuels ‘are not a magic bullet’", says:

"Biofuels could play an important role in cutting greenhouse gas emissions from transport, both in Britain and globally," said Professor John Pickett from Rothamsted Research, who chaired the Royal Society’s study.

"But it would be disastrous if biofuel production made further inroads into biological diversity and natural ecosystems.

"We must not create new environmental or social problems in our efforts to deal with climate change."

From Explorers’ Texas: The Lands and Waters by Del Weniger:

"The most variegated carpet of flowers I ever beheld lay unrolled before me – red, yellow, violet, blue, every color, every tint was there… The finest artificial garden in the world would sink into insignificance when compared with this parterre of nature’s own planting."

“My horse could scarcely make his way through the wilderness of flowers, and I for a time remained lost in admiration of this scene of extraordinary beauty. The prairie in the distance looked as if clothed with rainbows that waved to and fro over its surface.” – Charles Sealsfield in the tallgrass prairies of Texas, 1843

From BioPact – "Tallgrass Prairie Center to study polyculture prairie hay for bio-electricity: combining conservation and restoration with bioenergy":

"The University of Northern Iowa’s Tallgrass Prairie Center is conducting a five-year project to research how prairie hay can be used to generate electricity, partnering with Cedar Falls Utilities, Soil Tilth Lab at Iowa State University and the Black Hawk County Conservation Board."

"The Tallgrass Prairie Center is a strong advocate of progressive, ecological approaches utilizing native vegetation to provide environmental, economic and aesthetic benefits for the public good. The center is in the vanguard of roadside vegetation management, native Source Identified seed development, and prairie advocacy."

There is another good article on BioPact, "Bioenergy, conservation and wildlife protection can boost each other" that discusses biofuel from native prairie plantings.  The article described how native prairie plantings can provide cellulosic biomass for ethanol and other bioenergy methods while simultaneously sequestering carbon in the soil, improving water quality, and providing habitat for grassland birds, other prairie wildlife, and native prairie plant communities.

Here is the first installment of what I plan to be a regular feature: great quotes, poems, and songs about the prairie.

Quotes, poems, and songs can evoke the emotional side of prairies, which I hope will help get more people interested in learning about prairie and prairie conservation.

Today’s quotes were spotted on Sioux City Art Center’s web page in a description of an exhibit by Jin Lee called Wind and Prairie:

On the prairie there is sometimes a quiet so absolute that it allows one to begin again, to love the future.

— Robert Adams, To Make It Home: Photographs of the American West, 1989

The prairie path leads to the sky path; the paths are one: the continents are two; and you must make your journey from the prairies to the sky.

— William A. Quayle, The Prairie and the Sea, 1905