Reconstructed and Remnant Prairies

(music)

(Looking out over a large prairie.)

[Abby Brown] Prairies in Iowa are actually pretty hard to find, even though our state was once covered in them.

(A field of tallgrass prairie swaying in the wind with yellow and white flowers dotted throughout.

Looking out over a large prairie.

Abby is standing in the middle of a tallgrass prairie. Her hair is held back from her face in a pony tale. She is wearing a dark blue polo shirt with black pants.)

[Abby] Remnant prairies are the ones that are the hardest to find because they're the originals,  they've been here for thousands of years! Remnant prairies have hundreds of different kinds of plants. The largest remnant prairies in Iowa are in the Loess Hills. Smaller remnant prairies can be found in old graveyards or ditches and scattered in patches across the state. Reconstructed prairies are made by humans who purposefully chose seeds to be planted to grow into prairies. 

(A sea of light purple prairie flowers with dark orange centers swaying in the breeze.)

[Abby] It can take hundreds of years for a reconstructed prairie to grow and mature enough to be like a remnant prairie. Why do you think it's important to reconstruct a prairie?  And how do you even do it? Let's go investigate!

(music)

(Light purple prairie flowers in a field of prairie grasses under a light blue sky.)

[Abby] This is a reconstructed prairie. What does that mean?

(Tom is wearing a light tan, short sleeve shirt with dark brown pants. There is a patch on the sleeve of his shirt that reads "US Fish & Wildlife Service Office of the Interior". In the center of the patch is a crane flying out of a breaking ocean wave.)

[Tom Skilling, Wildlife Biologist, Union Slough Nat'l Wildlife Refuge] That means the prairie was gone from here, probably farmed, like most areas in Iowa. And we decided to put it back into prairie. So we bought some seeds. We harvested some seeds with a combine, and we replanted it.

(music)

(A single prairie grass in front of a sea of prairie. The flower is swaying in the wind with a cluster of bright flowers at the top of the plant. To the right of the plant is a patch of light, purple prairie flowers.

A red, brown prairie flower on a backdrop of green.

A yellowish green sea of prairie grass swaying in the wind like rolling ocean waves on the land.)

(insect sounds)

(Abby and Tom stand in the middle of a tallgrass prairie.)

[Tom] With prairie, the origin of the seed is important   because you don't want to take seed from Oklahoma and plant it here, it doesn't grow right. It grows earlier and doesn't produce seed and all kinds of things.

[Abby] Maybe, even be invasive?

[Tom] Right. Right. So we get seed locally and we can do that with a combine and that seed is well adapted  to this area and that's why it does well here.

[Abby] Why is it important to reconstruct a prairie?

(Bright purple prairie flowers swaying in the wind like Peep's marshmallow candies swaying on the end of a stick.)

[Tom] Well in Iowa over 99.9% of the prairie is gone, and so one of the ways we can help it is to replant it. And that's what reconstructions are all about.

(A cluster of bright orange flowers in a sea of green.)

[Abby] So how does the diversity of plant life in this prairie, where you picked all the seeds and planted them, how does that compare to a remnant prairie,  where those plants have been there forever?

[Tom] This prairie has maybe 75 to 100 species, which is a pretty good reconstruction.

[Abby] Yeah!

[Tom] But a good remnant prairie may have 250 species, so it's maybe half.

(A cluster of white Baby's Breath floating on the breeze like a green and white lily pad in a pond.)

(music)

(Abby is standing in the middle of a tallgrass prairie.)

[Abby] There's one more reconstructed prairie I want to investigate with you today. Let's go!

(page turning)

(insects and birds chirping)

(Abby is standing in another, yellowish green tallgrass prairie.)

[Abby] About a three hour car ride from Union Slough is this! A tallgrass prairie at Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge.

(music)

(Yellow and white flowers clustered in and among tallgrass prairie plants.)

[Abby] This is also a reconstructed prairie. People have worked really hard to bring this land back to prairie. So Karen, what was this area before it was reconstructed to prairie?

[Karen Viste-Sparkman, Refuge Biologist, Neal Smith Nat'l Wildlife Refuge] Before the refuge was here it was farmland, just like most of Iowa.

(Abby and Karen are standing in the middle of a tallgrass prairie. Karen is wearing a long sleeved button down tan shirt with dark pants. Karen's hair is shoulder length and she wears dark rimmed glasses.)

[Abby] Sure. So you've done a lot of work here to bring this back. Tell me about that work.

[Karen] Yeah, we have planted prairie seed and we do a lot of work after it's planted, too, with just trying to control the weeds and burning.

(music)

(A green and gold prairie with a farm field behind the prairie under a cloud covered blue sky with a bit of pink and yellow from the sun peaking through the clouds.

A person walking through dry, brown prairie grass spot lighting the prairie grass with a torch.)

[Karen] Burning benefits the prairie because it removes all the dead vegetation and stimulates new growth of the prairie plants.

(Bright yellow and green prairie plants swaying in the wind like people swaying to their favorite song during a concert.)

[Abby] Tell me about the work that's involved  in getting the seeds and planting them.

[Karen] We get seeds from an area in Iowa that is close to the refuge. It's a pretty big area. It's about 38 counties in southern Iowa. We decided that we wanted to concentrate on the local area because the plants are adapted to the conditions that we have here: the soil type and the weather.

(music)

[Abby] Why is it so important to reconstruct a prairie?

[Karen] Well, bringing back the prairie helps with the native wildlife, with the plants. It gives us a place to go and experience prairie.

[Abby] Will your work here ever be done?

[Karen] Probably not. It's going to go on for hundreds of years.

[Abby] Iowa prairies appear in lots of shapes and sizes. Some are old, some are new, some are huge, and some are small. But one thing's for sure, they're an important part of our history. What is one thing you can do right now to make sure that our state's prairie is also an important part of our future? Keep investigating and have fun!

[Announcer] Funding for Find Iowa has been provided by the following supporters.

(text on the screen) FIND Iowa, The Coons Foundation, Pella, Gilchrist Foundation

(text on the screen) Iowa PBS Education