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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.

"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

From the MIT Technology Review article "The Price of Biofuel":

"Blooming Prairies: Whether ethanol made from cellulosic biomass is good or bad for the environment, however, depends on what kind of biomass it is and how it is grown.

In a series of tests, Tilman grew a mixture of native prairie grasses (including switchgrass) in some of the field’s plots and single species in others. The results show that a diverse mix of grasses, even grown in extremely infertile soil, "could be a valuable source of biofuels," he says. "You could make more ethanol from an acre [of the mixed grasses] than you could from an acre of corn." Better yet, in a paper published in Science, Tilman showed that the prairie grasses could be used to make ethanol that is "carbon negative": the grasses might consume and store more carbon dioxide than is released by producing and burning the fuel made from them." "

From the Dallas Morning News:

"UTA students win for park project: University of Texas at Arlington students won the Student Project Award from the Midwest Section of the Texas chapter of the American Planning Association. The project focuses on a proposed Fort Worth Prairie Park, a 1,983-acre section of prairie in southwest Tarrant County, some of the last remaining original Fort Worth prairie ecosystem."

Read the full article at the Dallas Morning News.  Also read more about efforts to create a Fort Worth Prairie Park to protect a ~2000 acre tallgrass prairie remnant in Tarrant County.

From the Hidden Trails blog:

"Renowned National Geographic photographer is considered one of the premier wildlife photographers in the world. However, this Minnesota-based artist doesn’t measure his success by the numerous national and international awards and honors he has received. Rather, he gleans a well-earned sense of satisfaction from a steadfast and long-term commitment to his almost mystical quest to explore and understand the wilderness. As he says, "Ever since I was a boy, I have had a passion for telling stories about the forest and the prairies." …

An abbreviated list of Brandenburg’s project for National Geographic include: "The Tallgrass Prairie," "The Canadian Rockies," "South Dakota Badlands," "At Home with the Arctic Wolf," and "Ellesmere Island Life in the High Arctic.""

See Jim Brandenburg’s prairie photos by going to his web page, clicking on "Gallery", then clicking on "Prairie".

Jim Brandenburg also helped found the Brandenburg Prairie Foundation which helped protect 800 acres of tallgrass prairie in Minnesota.