Remaining silent about the destruction of nature is an endorsement of that destruction.

 

 

This is a short article tht my boss and I wrote together.  Hope you enjoy

 

 

In this neck of the woods, there's always one thing you can count on… the harsh climate. Months without rain followed by severe flooding, brutal heat and unforgiving cold, rampant wildfires, dry howling winds, late frosts and early freezes. That is the way of it here on the Great Plains in the new millennium. But what can be done to battle the relentless roadblocks that are thrown in front of today's landowner/ managers? How can we have proper stewardship of the land during these times that seem to rebuke our best intentions? Native plantings are certainly a large part of the answer. Our prairie rangeland plants have lived on this land for thousands of years, with nobody to fertilize or baby them. The idea of water hoses or irrigation pipes is completely foreign to them. Native seeds have endured centuries of flood, drought, fire, dust storms, and general abuse only to bounce back fuller and richer each time nature threw a curve ball their way. The plants that were too weak to survive died out long ago. We folks in modern times are left with a selection of Natives that are perfectly adapted. Native Seeds already contain all the information they need to know exactly how to live right here, without any extra care.

Once Native Plants are established on your property, the need to fertilize, water, replant, cultivate and pamper slowly fades away. The Natives simply don't need that kind of attention; they are fully adapted to our rainfall, soil types and climate. Life is too precious and short to spend it stirring up clouds of dust while mowing, fertilizing, tilling and replanting exotic vegetation every year. What is needed is to do it once, do it right, and sit back to enjoy the benefits that Native Plants provide.

In addition to reduced maintenance and worrisome fiddling, restoring our lands with Native Prairie has other benefits as well. Acre for acre the tall grass prairies, which only recently did grace the middle third of North America, could convert as much carbon-to-oxygen as the tropical rainforests of South America. More simply put, tallgrass prairie makes clean air. In today's world, more and more land is being covered up by Mega-Marts and Big Boxes with vast arenas of asphalt for parking our carbon-belching horse-less carriages.

 

Now, more than ever, it seems prudent and timely to consider putting a little balance back into this lopsided equation. After all, what is the value of a breath of fresh, clean air to fill our lungs? The tall Native Grasses also have the ability to trap rainfall, so that the water filters slowly into the soil recharging our rivers, lakes, springs and aquifers. Just think about it. After every rain, the bare Earth (plowed farmland) and overgrazed hills, with no grass covering its face, instead gushes down to the ocean carrying away our precious topsoil mixed with oil washing off all the concrete. Many Prairie Grasses produce extensive webs of fibrous-organic roots reaching down a whopping 20 feet into the soil. It is all about saving the face. The world's largest underground lake, the Ogallala Aquifer, is a direct result of millennia of tallgrass prairie collecting and holding our limited freshwater supply, so that it is available for future use. Much of the food crops that feed our nation (and the world) are irrigated from this aquifer. If we don't have the tall native grasses to capture the rainfall and recharge the aquifer, the world's largest underground lake could one day dry up.

 

 

Another benefit of restoring land to more bountiful native vegetation is the important role that Native Plants play for wildlife. Native Plants provide the perfect foods and habitat for all types of wildlife. Wildlife came to co-exist with, and depend on, the more intimate aspects such as nectars from the flowers, the nutritious fruits and seeds, to even the unique vegetative structures of the plants themselves. The importance of the "clump" featured by so many of the Native Grasses should not be taken lightly. For example, when contrasted to the matting tendency of a Bermuda turfgrass pasture, there is no comparison at all. This single aspect alone may determine whether a small mammal can even traverse your property, much less find suitable food or shelter. A ripple effect then reverberates throughout the food chain. You have no meadow mice, therefore you have no soaring hawks. You have no switchgrass, therefore you have no painted buntings. You have no eastern gama grass, therefore you have no turkey. You get the idea? And now after a fifty-year-long binge of promoting Bermuda turfgrass for every land use from cattle grazing to school lawns to roadsides, wildlife is fading fast into the past, along with the great North American Prairies. From deer to turkey, quail, dove, javelinas, countless song birds and butterflies, native wildlife depends on Native Plants to survive. Native wildlife provides us not only with sport, recreation and even meditation, but also a rich tapestry of diversity that makes the natural world both alive and absolutely fascinating.