Wumple.com

From the Austin-American Statesman article, "State’s biggest park offers improved access and more campsites", about TPWD’s Big Bend State Park (not the national park):

"The state acquired the land for this park in 1988. Heavy grazing by sheep and goats from the 1850s to 1940s took a toll, diminishing the grasslands and giving shrubs an opportunity to take root. But it’s not as desolate as it seems. The park is home to three of the four highest waterfalls in the state and about 120 perennial springs."

Read more about Texas’ desert grasslands at the Native Prairies Association of Texas (NPAT) web site.

In Texas, prairie lives on only in name in many places.  In my experience, most people living in tallgrass prairie ecoregions aren’t aware they live in such a region, don’t know it is an endangered ecosystem, and have never seen the beauty of tallgrass prairie.

One method of helping people realize they live in former prairies is to show them how many places are names after the prairies that existed there.

Texas cities, towns, and other names with prairie, meadow, or another prairie related word in the name:

• Grand Prairie
• Prairie View (Nogalus Prairie)
• Bailey’s Prairie
• Prairie Hill (Washington County)
• Meadows Place (formerly Meadows)
• Mustang Prairie
• Prairie Chapel
• Prairie Dell

(more…)

A story on MyWestTexas.com talks about the possibility of the Mallet Ranch (Hockley County) in the High Plains becoming an outdoor education center. 

I don’t know if the author is referring to the whole 50,000 acre ranch or just an area around the ranch buildings, or if the Mallet Ranch still contains good quality shortgrass prairie like the adjacent 6,000-acre Fitzgerald Ranch recently purchased by TNC to protect habitat for lesser prairie chickens and other native wildlife found in the region.

Read the full story at MyWestTexas.com and let us know if you happen to know more about the Mallet Ranch.

An update: There is some additional information about the Mallet Ranch in the Handbook of Texas Online:

""In 1925 and 1926 about 6,000 acres of Mallet land were put into dry-land farming for cotton and feed crops." (meaning the prairie on that acrage was plowed under)

"The Mallet Ranch covered nearly 45,000 acres in 1990, when it was still active."

Texas Master Naturalist Marybeth Arnold volunteers to restore native coastal tallgrass prairie for the endangered Attwater’s Prairie Chicken at TNC’s Texas City Prairie Preserve.  From the Houston Chronicle story:

"The work of restoring a vanishing habitat can also be backbreaking, blister-raising labor, but Arnold doesn’t mention that. Nor does she brag about the fact that she and other volunteers have recreated one of the few examples of coastal prairie in Texas. …

You’ll find her most Tuesdays at the Texas City Prairie Preserve, where she is one of a handful of people working to return the 2,300-acre spread to the way it was when bison foraged and periodic prairie fires raged from the Mexican border to Louisiana."

Read the full article, "A home for Attwater’s prairie chickens to play", at the Houston Chronicle’s web site.

From the Big Thicket Association, there is a Marysee Prairie (near Batson, TX and protected by TLC) work day on January 5th:

"January 5 (Sat) – Marysee Prairie Work Day – The Marysee Prairie is one of the last remnants of tallgrass prairie in the Big Thicket region. Come assist the Big Thicket Association in this ongoing effort to revive and maintain the native grasses and wild.owers on this site near Batson, Texas. Work tasks vary by month, but usually involve removal of tallow seedlings, and controlling the regrowth of woody species. Tools and gloves provided. For more info, contact Susan Schinke at sruth@consolidated.net or 936-829-5204, or Frank Blake at frankblake@juno.com or 713-528-2896."

Spotted via the Sierra Club – Houston Group web site.

Lex X re-posted an interesting list he found, which I believe was originally published by the New Road Map Foundation.  A copy posted by EcoFuture includes references and footnotes for the statistics.

The list seemed appropriate for the new year, thinking about where we are and how we can improve in the new year.  I was surprised to see tallgrass prairie included in the list:

In the last 200 years the United States has lost:

• 50% of its wetlands
• 90% of its northwestern old-growth forests
• 99% of its tall grass prairie and
• up to 490 species of native plants and animals with another 9,000 now at risk

I think we should try to follow bad news with potential good news whenever possible, so here is a thought: what if we could fund the restoration of vast amounts of tallgrass prairie while helping to solve global warming and achieving energy independence based on a renewable, ecological system?  I plan to post more on cellulosic ethanol in the near future.

Frequency of prescribed fire and grassland bird ecology is a common topic when I talk with birders about prairie conservation.  The best state for grassland birds and native plant diversity seems to be to emulate the patchwork of fire, bison grazing, and unaffected areas of the past.  Don’t burn too frequently or too much, but don’t burn too little either.

Fire in the Tallgrass Prairie (large PDF file), an article in the January/February 2006 issue of Birding magazine, gives a good overview of the situation.

(Found via Mike’s Bird and Digiscoping blog.)

A story by Chester Moore, "Wildlife Conservation: Why Waterfowl?", brought the following to my attention:

• "Waterfowl species are not as secure since the vast majority nest in the prairie pothole and boreal forest regions of the U.S. and Canada."
• "Ducks in particular need native grasslands and other highly specialized habitat to survive."

… which led me to more sources:

• "Sadly, the loss of these prairie grasslands, and the wetlands within them, will be devastating to duck populations, sportsmen, and businesses related to waterfowling…  Breeding ducks also need large expanses of grasslands. " (Plowing the Prairie by Scott Stephens, Ph.D., for Ducks Unlimited)
• ""The best wild duck nesting success depends on at least four miles of surrounding prairie grass. … [Another] finding is particularly important if scientists want to preserve prairie-nesting shorebirds such as willets, marbled godwits, upland sandpipers and Wilson’s phalaropes." (Nesting ducks need miles of grassland, MSU researcher finds by Carol Schmidt on Montana State University’s web site)

It seems we are always finding more reasons to conserve and restore prairies, and more potential allies (birders and duck hunters in this case).