Young Red-tail Learns a Lesson

Young red-tailed hawks at Somme are often fun. They’re relatively fearless, and they do goofy things  on the way toward being a grown-up. You can tell them from the adults by the lack of that deep red tail. But you can also recognize them by their actions.

Lisa Culp was “sneaking up” to photograph one, when she realized it just wasn’t much concerned about her. Suddenly it flew down and landed in a nearby shallow puddle. It looked intently into the water, wading around with splashes dripping off its legs. What was it seeing? It’s own handsome reflection? Checking the puddle later, Lisa found no frogs, no animals of any kind.

Red-tail youth (above left) starts its ferocious dive

For its next display 

of inexperience, 

the hawk decided 

to hunt ducks. 

Adult red-tails 

don't regularly try that, 

and the youngster 

showed us why. 

It first perched 

over a pond 

where mallards were swimming and repeatedly 

swooped down on them. 

In each case 

the ducks easily scooted out of the way with startling splashes, 

leaving a confused hawk, 

again perched, 

studying them, 

and trying again.

The ducks could  

have flown away, 

or just swum to 

a different part of the pond. 

But no, they treated 

the hawk as 

a clueless nothing.

Male (left) and female (center) mallards watch
as wet hawk (right) tries to get airborne again

At one point, 

the hawk actually dove at them such that it ended up stuck 

down in the water of the pond 

and had to go through 

some gymnastics 

to get itself airborne again.   

The mallards hardly even 

moved away.

After many tries 

and much loss of energy 

(to say nothing of pride), 

the red-tail returned to normalcy, surveyed the grassland, 

pounced on a mouse, 

and perched on a dead limb to eat it. 

“I had hoped for duck. Well, it’s mouse again,” it seemed to say. 

The hawk was learning 

its own nature. 

It's a pleasure having this handsome animal figuring out how to be itself at Somme Prairie Grove. 

I want to say to it, "Little one. You're getting better and better. You'll have 

that rich red tail and be a fine and full-grown hawk some day. You're doing great." 

I hope we can all learn from our mistakes with dignity as well.

All photos taken by Lisa Culp on March 28, 2013 at Somme Prairie Grove

Ashes to Ashes (and oaks to oaks)

Can something be tragic and inspiring at once?

For me, the ash disaster is both.

“Death to the Ash!” means "Life to the Oaks!" (and hundreds 

of other declining species)! Or at least it can...

In many forest preserves, ash trees were the major invasives that have been destroying oak woodland and savanna ecosystems.

Flaky bark means dead ash. These were left to the borers when this savanna was restored.

When scientists 

told us that the emerald ash borer would kill all our big ash trees, it seemed at first hard to believe.  

We could have waited (sort of like “climate change deniers”)
to see if the scientists were right. 

But instead we stopped cutting big ash as we restored our 

oak savannas and woodlands. 

Why stop? 

We trusted the science, and, indeed the beetles did the work for us.

There’s urgency here. Thousands of populations of hundreds of species are dying out year after year because of the shade of ash and other quick-growing "weed trees." 

Why waste our work and time?
We now cut buckthorn, box elder, basswood and similar invasives, but we leave the ash. 

Beetles
can dispatch them.

It's challenging to educate people to appreciate the evil of too much darkness. Death by shade is different from death by bullet or auto crash. It’s harder for people to understand - or feel. But whether from

Hundreds of animal and plant species now have a second chance.

shade or from clear-cutting for a mall, the ecosystem is equally dead. Oaks of all ages love light and need it. Shade is like cancer for a prairie or oak woodland, a slow and ugly killer.

In the 1800s, when the regular fires stopped, white and green ash from the ravines and floodplains began to overrun our oak woodlands and savannas just as destructively as the other invasives. But now, with ash death, a huge opportunity has opened up for tens of thousands of acres.

Owners of conservation land are making plans to convert the misfortune of the ashes to the fortune of the oaks – and a potentially miraculous recovery of the plants and animals that depend on the open oak ecosystems.  Should I list a few? Gray fox, blue-spotted salamander, creamy wild pea, ruby-throated hummingbird, purple milkweed, and great-spangled fritillary.  

In areas of many ash trees, half the work is now being done for us. Before new light gaps fill with invasives, these areas deserve quick plans and action. What does that mean? Cut other key invasives,

This dismal photo shows a dead bur oak, leaning across the foreground. It died of shade

 from faster-growing ash and basswood, in the absence of fire. Gone with the oaks are 

hundreds of other species. How can we teach people to see this? 

start controlled burns, re-seed if needed, and provide the education and political support that goes with all the above.

We mourn the ash, an important component of many non-oak forests. At the same time – we celebrate the liberation of animals and plants of the oak lands. Huge noble areas that seemed doomed now have a chance to thrive again.

Ashes to ashes

When they die, they’ll stand for years as habitat for beetles and woodpeckers and flying squirrels and great crested flycatchers. Some people will argue to cut them all down. Nature wants them to stand for the decade or more as they have their "second life" as yet another irreplaceable habitat. Someday their weathered trunks will fall. Then a slowly rotting log on the ground is yet a third habitat. That log means salamanders, frogs, snails, beetles, roly-polies, mushrooms, and places for us to sit and contemplate the miracle of lives. Ultimately, beautiful and life-giving burns will consume each log. Ashes to ashes.

Eastern bluebird on scarlet oak branch. These handsome creatures now 

breed again at Somme. Hundreds of less-easy-to-see species also need 

the dappled light of open oaks and now-rare diversity that oaks support.  

(Photo by Lisa Culp)

Oaks to oaks  

When oaks aren’t reproducing their cute little baby oaks, some people imagine we must be seeing a natural process called “succession.” It’s the opposite. When the once light-dappled floor of the oak woodland is clotted with dark invaders, whether ash or buckthorn or maple or whatever – the rich, ancient ecosystem dies. Oaks are the foundation of a community that is the Earth’s only home for thousands of species that don’t live in other kinds of woods. Now rare flycatchers, woodpeckers, mushrooms, nematodes, walking sticks, shrubs, foxgloves, grasses, sedges, ants, lichens, rare and potentially-important bacteria as well as other tree species all depend on our oak woods. Let's rescue them from the oblivion of extinction. Now's the time. Save them!

Love Among the Nuthatches

The little drama below was photographed by Lisa Culp on March 24, 2013 in Somme Prairie Grove.

Many people don’t even notice them, even though you can find nuthatches year round in every good Illinois woods.  Only occasionally perching on a branch, they mostly hug tree trunks and limbs. That’s their niche; they hunt bugs and bug eggs in the tree bark.

But when it comes to love, among the nuthatches it's truly a many-splendored thing. The male is a handsome devil, with a beady eye, black cap, and elegant blue-gray, black, and white design. (You can't see his fetching chestnut under tail coverts until he's ready to flaunt them.) 

Lisa's camera was following a demure female, with a gray cap and generally more restrained 

and subtle style. Suddenly, out of nowhere, she (the person) noticed that she (bird) had company. 

Indeed, our little female stopped looking at Lisa and started looking at Mr. Big Stuff. 

It turned out that he'd arrived with a bug. 

Mrs. Hatch opens her bill with a begging gesture. That's how she indicates she's decided

 to give the guy a try. As you can see, this gesture makes him hopping excited. A courtship 

is under way, and she is saying, "Yes - yes - feed me."                                                                                                                                                                                

Now comes the nuthatch version of kissing. They are both holding the bug. 

Their bills are together in a very intimate moment. My apologies to any sensitive viewers 

for whom this may be too much. (Even more exciting, you get a hint 

of those chestnut under tail coverts. Okay, it's not much of a view, and she can't seem them at all. They must fit in to some other stage of the courtship. But there they are.)

He hands off the bug. Be my mate. He's so strong and generous. Or is he?

He flies off to find more presents. She will eat the moth in peace and happiness. 

Yes, he's proving himself to be a good provider. But generous? Research on other birds shows that a well-fed female will lay more eggs (containing her, and his, genes). So, for the male, it's not all generosity. Perhaps he's expressing love. But it benefits him too. At least he'll help her feed the chicks, which is more than the bird males of some other species do. 

Notes:

1. She will lay between 3 to 11 eggs in a hole in a tree. They'll both feed the chicks insects and spiders. In winter they also eat acorns that they "hatch" out of their shells by wedging them in a tree crevice and whacking them with their bills. 

2. They do best among mature trees with a lot of old dead limbs. Please don't cut down the dead and dying trees in places where you want nature. So many species depend on them.

3. The research on increased egg laying with males feeding females was conducted on terns (which have to be light to effectively dive for fish). The female when she's ready to lay eggs weighs 50% more than when she's not breeding. In fact, she stops feeding herself entirely; she's just too fat. According to the Birder's Handbook by Paul Ehrlich et. al., "when a male warbler, crossbill, chickadee, or tern is seen feeding a female, it seems apparent that he is increasing his own reproductive success by keeping her fat and healthy." Inspiring, isn't it?

4. Nuthatches often fly high into a tree and then descend down the trunk head first, hopping, using their feet more than their wings. No other bird does that. Creative.

5. According to Ehrlich, "Courting male carries food to female, performs bowing and singing ritual with head feathers raised, tail spread." According to Richard Pough in the Audubon Land Bird Guide, nuthatches often mate for life.   

How Graphic is Too Graphic?

I received a thoughtful note criticizing my last blog - which contained photos of a dead deer somewhat torn up by coyotes. The concerns troubled me, so I asked a few people for advice. Here’s the note, followed by the advice I got - followed by comments from readers of this blog.

Stephen,

      Realizing I run the risk offending you, I still decided I should give you my assessment of your recent blog post.  I found it to be morbid.  I think this type of posting would scare away potential volunteers.

Sincerely,

 James

When I wrote people, I asked:

“I wonder if you agree, disagree or "are agnostic" about (James) comment…

I wonder about the line between ‘compelling’ and ‘alienating.’"

Dennis responded:

I enjoyed the blog. It was very real, and very personal, for me as a fellow steward … although I could see where the deer carcass photos could be off-putting to the more squeamish. But are those the types that read your blog? … I would hope that most are open minded enough try to understand and learn about the realities of the natural world, which isn't always pretty and tidy. I think this post, and the reactions to it, can be a learning experience. So in the tradition of Leopold and Sigurd Olson, I say carry on -- you are telling stories … that are worth telling, and you are keeping them real.

Lee called and said:

I hope you’ll take this the right way. Those gruesome photos are just too much. I go to nature and to your blog for beauty. I have more than enough of the negative in my life without this. When I read your first dead deer blog (“A Death on the Prairie”), I didn’t dare go back for months. I didn’t say anything, but it was too much. I don’t go there for that.

Eliezer wrote:

I am a true believer that nature should be taken raw; that is, nature should not—must not—be gussied up à la Disney or as is the general (current day) Japanese tendency to cute-ify nature…

You can’t be so concerned with ‘scaring off’ volunteers that you violate basic precepts about how we would seek to be authentically related to the natural world of which we are a part.

Sunny wrote:

If this turns off potential volunteers, I imagine they are people we would have lost eventually, anyway, to any number of unpleasantnesses that pop up regularly in the real (i.e. natural) world—things like mud, or…insects.  The Somme Prairie Grove could never be maintained as the perfect, Disney-ized, flowers and butterflies environment they could approve of.  Death is everywhere in the natural world.  It can’t be white-washed; it is, in fact, part of life.  Can’t have one without the other.  I actually think it would be grotesque to try to separate the two.  It was a good post—please don’t take it down.

James wrote:

It is important for people to understand predators and scavengers.  However, this can be conveyed without such graphics.  You should always strive to convey "life" when you promote restoration.  A good example of a positive photo would be a coyote feeding its pups.  This conveys life, even if a meadow vole had to be sacrificed for the dinner.  I think the theme of "life" should even be applied to plants.  Focusing on methods to kill weeds would turn off many people who might be interested in helping nature.  However, showing the recovery after weeds had been removed would convey how Stewards give "life" to their sites… Your goal should always be to compel people to become more involved.  Learning is a process.  People volunteer for many reasons.  You do not want to scare away potential supporters before they have gotten their boots on the ground to learn more about the importance of your work.

Elizabeth wrote:

Oh my response will be quick! Hell yes you should post this. It belongs to the real fuc%ing world! It is our duty as stewards to help volunteers learn and process what they may witness, not remove parts of the environment that is challenging or uncomfortable for some.

Robert wrote:

I read the post after you sent me this e-mail and was intrigued. I personally did not share the sentiments of James…Maybe I am desensitized. I am going to say that I am 'agnostic' on this one. I don't feel strongly one way or another with regard to the impact upon potential volunteers. I find this post fascinating; I have personally found very few opportunities to track and observe top predators in Illinois (or anywhere for that matter) and felt compelled to follow you on your journey. While I find myself agreeing more with commentators Steve Halm and E Wenscott, I can appreciate what James says. The final image on this blog post, the one with the scattered remains of a deer, is indeed gruesome … Not everyone likes to think about this aspect of ecology. It is one that has been absent from our natural areas for some time now, and as populations of top predators return to our landscape their stories should be written.

Then I make this final comment:

You know, I’m still troubled and unsure. I was moved by the spirit of every response. I deeply agree with the people who appreciate all parts of nature. I also deeply appreciate the people who are repelled by “the gruesome.” I want all of us to continue to be part of the community and the discussion. Perhaps there should be two blogs: one called “The Beauty of Somme” and another called “The Nature of Somme.” (The second would have all the same posts as the first, and then some additional.) But I hope there are better solutions than that.

Please leave a comment, if you have thoughts on this.

Thanks.

Tracks and Blood in the Snow

I follow the coyotes and they follow me.

One day I was cross-country skiing through Somme near twilight and noticed a coyote pacing me to my right – watching with the oddest look. I stopped to watch back, kind of giggling inside. I must have seemed bizzarro to “God’s dog.” As I stood and smiled, the animal made a 360^o circle around me, at a respectful distance, and then went on its way.

For my adventure today, March 2, 2013, I follow the paw-prints of coyotes that mostly walk but sometimes bound all the way from the Middle Fork of the North Branch across the entire width of Somme Woods, cross Waukegan Road, and traverse the entire savanna of Somme Prairie Grove before disappearing into Somme Prairie.

What do I discover? God’s dogs were eating venison, probably from animals struck by vehicles before limping off into the woods; coyotes are too small to prey on adult deer.

Near the Middle Fork I find two hoofed legs attached by a scrap of tawny pelt, then a raw skull and spinal column. Fifty yards away is a larger and essentially fleshless pelt they’d been dragging around.

Tracks take me to check out fallen trees, into thickets, along streambanks. In mid preserve I stop for the pleasure of sandhill cranes – 16 of them circling and trumpeting overhead on their migration north. Whatever will they find to eat in all this snow and ice? But the smart ones want to be the first to claim the best nursery grounds for this year’s colts.

Crane flying low over Somme Prairie Grove in 2010. Photo by Lisa Culp.

In the Woods I follow just one set of tracks, but in Prairie Grove a pair travelled together all the way across. At one point they passed within a few feet of an obvious rabbit hole, but they didn’t even stop to sniff. They’ve probably checked this secure burrow often enough to get bored with it. Only rabbit tracks in this photo:

At one point they both stop and pee on the same goldenrod stalk. The mind of the dog is opaque to me when it comes to smells. They have their reasons.  

On a knoll near the railroad is a great multitude of coyote prints and another deer in the early stages of disassembly. Clearly they knew where it was; they’d been heading straight for it as they crossed the savanna. Eating that much food should take many days. But it’s winter. Venison will stay fresh for them.

Some people think nature is perfect and beautiful. It is more than that. I am of the coyote's world and not of their world. Paw-prints continue west beyond the carcass, past the railroad, and into Somme Prairie, but I’m done. My awkward boots and cramped feet have had enough of deep and crusty snow.

As I exit across Dundee, paw-prints here suggest that three coyotes jointly explored the thickets that line the road. They’re dense – as a barrier to vehicles and the madding sights and sounds of so-called civilization. One of God’s dogs crossed the road and travelled for a while through people’s yards. That’s where I headed too.

What a Steward Thinks about in Cold January 2013

These are some of the same photos as the previous post ... 
... but with different words - more technical or detailed - if you like that. 

The elm tree on the right is a good reminder of "ecological time."

We saved this tree, long ago, when we cut the dense brush that, at that time, 

completely surrounded the Swale Pond (white in this photo).  

We saved this elm in part because elms probably were components of the wet savannas. 

(They sure have the right shape for a fire environment, no lower limbs to burn off.) 

But we also saved pretty much all the big elms 

because we knew they'd die anyway from Dutch elm disease, 

so why not invest our clearing efforts on higher priorities? 

Also, dead elms are prime habitat for the red-headed woodpecker - a species of high conservation concern. 

It took 30 years for the red-heads to finally show up and nest, 

but they did this year, and that felt 30-years-worth of good. 

Snow on this dry pond reveals a circle of dark hummocks, 

built up by ancient plants of tussock sedge. 

Tom Vanderpoel is one of the few people who know how to restore this species.

He uses large plant pots (removing them after the first few years) to create the hummocks 

that this formerly-common species needs to give quality to a wetland. 

He has to judge just the right position in a landscape for its pattern of tussock sedges? 

These are the kinds of judgments that make or break a planting as the years progress. 

Thus, an experienced person with good judgment is a critical need in some specialized decisions.

No one is studying 
the Swale Pond's tiny clams 

and many kinds of snails. 
True restoration could restore 
the full diversity of 
formerly-common, now-rare animals, 
just as we do for plants. But which ones require our help, and what are their habitat needs? 

Would someone like to study our mollusks and help out with the many (mostly badly degraded) 
ponds of Somme?

Damage to hydrologic structure is easier to see in winter. Take look at burned Vestal Grove, and notice a ditch dug by farmers long ago. We have seen how many decades it takes for restored plant species to sort themselves into quality associations. If we restore hydrology later, then they have to start all over again.  Hydrology restoration, if possible, is best done near the beginning and is long overdue here.



 

One of our biggest problems at Somme is the lack of natural tree and shrub species. Most of them (especially oaks, hazels, and plums) are especially targeted by hungry deer and rabbits. We don't begrudge these neighbors their food; indeed we wish there were a lot more of it for them to eat; and their eating is part of the function of a healthy system. But with the overabundance of buckthorn, a tipping point has been reached. It's now almost impossible for the good guys to compete. Buckthorn has an inedible bark. (Buckthorn, "Rhamnus cathartica,"  was named for the bark rather than the berries, which many species in fact relish and depend on in winter). Deer in winter eat mostly bark in the form of live twigs ("browse"). Rabbits eat bark off the bottoms of trees and shrubs, like this indigo bush. We protect the natural trees and shrubs in a variety of ways and are learning more all the time. We're always eager to find additional people who might take on a species or a sector.

Bur oak is the most important tree of our richest savannas. (On poor-soil sites, black oak is The Tree.) All the very old trees at Somme Prairie Grove are bur oaks. Their acorns are said to be the biggest, sweetest, and most prized by animals of all the oaks. We now have hundreds of thriving young bur oaks in open areas near the old ones. But over most of the preserve bur oaks are few. So we cage them from the deer and, originally, to save on materials, we moved our short cages up as the oaks grew to protect the tops. Sadly though, as in this case, the deer cage didn't protect their bottoms from the rabbits. This problem didn't seem so bad in the past, but it's widespread this year.

Some nibblings
just do a little damage, and the tree heals quickly the following summer. Over the years, successful trunks gradually get the thicker bark that rabbits won't bother with.


Some nibblings actually girdle a tree - which kills it.

Most typical is damage serious enough to kill the trunk, but not kill the tree. In this case trees just put up new young trunks next spring. Most mature oaks that have two or three trunks have long ago re-sprouted, following a burn or a rabbit incident in their youth.

Here's an oak with added protection. We're just starting the experiments that will tell us for sure what caging needs are. The inner "hardware cloth" cages are to protect from voles and rabbits small enough to get through the wider mesh.

The photo below shows a recovering farm field with more than 100 young bur and scarlet oaks, many of which are now big enough to escape the deer and most fires. The oaks visible here by their bronzy persistent leaves are the scarlets. Bur oaks are among the first trees to drop their leaves in fall, which contribute to the hot fires that are their weapon against competing trees with thinner bark.

This photo also has a message on global climate change. Why a sharp line separating snow from no snow? It's the same line that divided this fall's burn (top right) from "no-burn" (bottom and left). A few inches of snow quickly melted where the standing vegetation absorbed the sun's rays and spread heat. In other areas, where the snow reflected radiation back to space, there was less melting (and less global warming).

Some people jump to the conclusion that prairie burning would add to global warming. Not so. Compared to an unburned grassland, a burned prairie grows twice as much biomass in the following year. That means it removes twice as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Yes, some of that carbon goes up in smoke with the next burn, but much stays in the soil as roots and the organic matter. Thus, there's a net loss of carbon from the atmosphere.

One study showed that temperate forests contribute more to warming than do grasslands, because the tree trunks absorb solar heat all winter long while the grasslands, often covered by snow, reflect most of the sunlight back into space.

What we notice of the ecosystem in winter keeps us thinking, as we learn to be better stewards of nature, the planet, and ourselves.

WHAT A STEWARD SEES - January 2013

Each cold walk at Somme surprises us with something new. 

In winter we see the ecosystem's bones and learn about essence.

The white area burned last November. Tall orange grasses in the distance were protected by a firebreak. 

The unburned pale in the foreground is a weak community of weeds, without enough fuel to carry fire. 

A few years hence it will look orange and thick, like the rich grassland in the distance.

Snow where the grassy Swale Pond burned reveals a nearly complete circle of dark hummocks, 

built up by ancient tussock sedge plants. In summer, I'd stumbled over them 

in the lush vegetation without realizing that they were in a circle. Now the structure emerges.

All summer 

the Swale Pond looked 

like a field of tall grass. 

But now - burned - 

(and in between snows)

the bottom is strewn 

with the shells of tiny clams 

and many kinds of snails. 

Although still dry, 

the shells now show more clearly 

the pond's true character.

 Damage to hydrologic structure is easier to see in winter as well. When we look at burned Vestal Grove, we notice a ditch dug by farmers who owned this land for the century-long gap between ancient nature and forest preserve. Why dig a ditch in the woods? Probably to improve pasture. These woods supported cows and horses then. To restore nature now, should I take my shovel to that ditch? Natural hydrology can help the ecosystem recover.





 

In winter, rabbits and deer eat a lot of bark. For the deer, that bark is mostly in the form of live twigs ("browse"). For rabbits, it's mostly the bottoms of trees and shrubs, like this indigo bush. Note that four stems are entirely cut off. The other two have little left. This shrub will have to start again next spring with new shoots.

This bur oak was caged to protect it from the deer.

Most parts of the preserve have no bur oak reproduction even though bur oak was the main original tree here and over large areas.

But look down; the deer cage didn't protect this one from the rabbits.

This close-up
shows the rascals' handiwork. A trunk can recover from a little nibbling, but too much will kill it.

Here an oak has had some protection added.

The rabbits won't reach it now.

As with the clam and snail shells, 

the calcium of deer antlers 

survives as reminders
of the once living thing. 

The same animals 

that bite oak trunks have gnawed off the tips - recycling antlers 

to build their own bones and teeth. Calcium supplements. 

Other calcium that you might 

expect to be very fragile 

survives the winter. 

I was surprised 

to come across 

these mallard egg shells, 

left over from the drama 

that was the subject
of "Egg Blog" (May 16, 2012).
They seem so fragile. Their insides are still lined with bits of eggy stuff. Nothing has seen fit
to destroy them
after all these months?

Why a sharp line separating snow and no snow? It's the same line that divided this fall's burn (top right) from "no-burn" (bottom and left). A few inches of snow quickly melted wherever the standing vegetation absorbed the sun's rays and spread heat. Where the snow reflected radiation back to space, less melting (and less global warming).

What we notice of the bones and essence of the ecosystem keeps us thinking. In time it helps us learn how to be good stewards of nature, the planet, and ourselves.

Of Mice and Voles (and men and molds)

Voles are adorable and horrifying creatures. When I forget them, it’s tempting to think that the ecosystem is mostly about plants. But when chocolate-brown meadow voles are eating every rare gentian every year, I’m forced to remember that ecosystems are equally animal.

There’s a comparison with you and me. Our bodies are ecosystems that include more bacterial cells than human cells. As microbes are to us - voles, insects, etc. are to the prairie. Venerable ecologist E.O. Wilson called them “the little things that run the world.” (In case you like numbers, each of our human bodies supports one hundred trillion bacteria, molds and other micro biota, most of which help us more than they hurt.)

We who seek to save prairies, woodlands and wetlands once thought that our mission was simply to restore nature, and then nature would take care of itself. As we explored restoration, successes unfolded like magic. Hundreds of (until recently) rare plant species eventually found their niches and became abundant, and the ecosystem grew progressively more diverse and healthy.

Animals (including some endangered ones) also voted their support. Rare butterflies, snakes and birds increased dramatically. When the first white-tailed deer returned to the North Branch, we felt we were seeing, in all our innocence, another confirmation that our prairies and woods were on the right track. By the time the deer had multiplied out of control and we started shooting them, conservationists considered them an easily understood exception. Deer may be nature, but they were wrecking the ecosystem because they lacked predators.

   The common meadow vole is promiscuous and barbaric. The similar but

   now-rare prairie vole is monogamous and territorial. Is there a clue 

   hiding in these rodents' morals?

Then came meadow voles. Why should they get out of balance? Somme Prairie Grove has a host of vole predators. Red-tailed hawks, great-horned owls, red foxes, and coyotes all feast so heavily on voles that these little rodents have been called “the hamburger of the grassland.”

Then rare plants started to vanish. For some species, when we caged them from the deer, the voles mowed down pretty much every one. Vole numbers follow a “boom and bust” cycle. Could we hope that their devastations were just temporary? But year after year it was the same thing, not just in the savanna but in the very high quality and original Somme Prairie as well. Tom Vanderpoel found the same thing at Grigsby Prairie twenty miles to the west.

   White-footed mice are common at Somme, but we never find them 
   wiping out a species. Why does this mouse “work well with others” 
   while the voles don’t?

Are some species populations being lost because of obscure out-of-balance species? Take the example of the globally-rare eared false foxglove (Tomanthera auriculata). This plant is an annual. It does not sprout again and get another chance next year if its reproduction is foiled. A seed bank may keep producing new plants for some seasons. But sooner or later the last seed will germinate, and the last plant will enter the bowels of a deer or vole, never to feel the sun on its chlorophyll again. At Somme, at least in some summers, the voles eat every foxglove.

We’ve invented “vole exclusion cages” to protect key plants. But there’s a limit to how many species we can protect that way. Every year, for example, every uncaged prairie gentian gets cut before the seeds mature.

What could be going wrong? Certain weasels and certain snakes feed heavily on voles. Those predators are missing at Somme. Should we work to restore them? That could be a compelling challenge! Are there vole diseases or insect pests or other controls that have vanished in these small and isolated sites? Who would study that?

When people, rather than ecosystems, have imbalances, we call it sickness. The fifth most common reason for people to take antibiotics is sinus disease. People with sinusitis on average have nine hundred species of bacteria up their noses. But people with healthy sinuses have more – twelve hundred species. This is another case where diversity is better than control. As Dr. Martin Blazer, chairman of the Department of Medicine at NYU said of human ‘germs,’ “Everyone focuses on the harm. And it’s not that simple, because without most of these organisms we could never survive.”

In ecosystem restoration we tend to restore one species at a time, usually by seeds. We could learn something from an earwax story that’s a favorite of Dr. Andrew Goldberg of U.C.S.F Medical Center. A patient had years of agony from an infection of his left year. He went through many doctors, who prescribed a variety of “antibiotics, anti-mold drops – the works.” Except that nothing did work. Then one day the patient came in smiling and happy.  Goldberg assumed he’d tried another medicine, but no. “I took some wax out of my good ear and put it into my bad ear, and in a few days I was fine,” the patient told him. This was human ecosystem restoration.

When we conservationists rescue a rare plant from the bulldozers at a prairie remnant and move it (and its dirt) to a site under restoration, we copy Dr. Goldberg’s patient. Tom Vanderpoel wondered how the rare Mead’s sedge got to the restored-from-scratch Grigsby Prairie. Then he noticed that each spreading clone of sedge had a hoary puccoon in the middle of it. Tom had rescued the puccoons from a high-quality remnant that was being destroyed. Unnoticed, the rare sedge came along for the ride. So, no doubt, did many species of bacteria, fungi, nematodes, and innumerable others. We don’t study the results of that sort of thing. We should. Not that it would be easy.

The medical quotes in this post are from Michael Specter’s “Germs Are Us – Bacteria make us sick. Do they also keep us alive?” in the October 22, 2012 New Yorker. There we learn that a person has about twenty-three thousand genes. Impressive?  Our human “microbiome” – the bacteria, molds, etc. that live on and in every part of us – has at least four million genes that help us in countless ways. Our bacteria outdo us, gene-wise.

Every plant and animal in the wild ecosystem has something comparable. That means Somme Prairie Grove has a lot of genes. Let’s see: 478 native species times four million genes, give or take a few, yields 1,912,000,000 genes for Somme Prairie Grove.

      For every plant species, a natural area is said to have ten animal species. 

      But then we have to add fungi, bacteria, and God-knows-how-many others. 

Oops, as Ronald Regan would say, there I go again. I forgot the animals. A “rule of thumb” guesstimates that for every plant species an ecosystem has about ten animals species (mostly small of course, but yet part of that petite elite that rules). Thus we compute that a natural area with 478 plant species (and 4,780 animal species) would boast a gene total of a bit over 19 trillion genes. That’s what we save when we’re good stewards. That’s what we lose if we let bulldozers or “the evil shade of buckthorn” eliminate the diversity.  

Next, I find my perspective flipped by Dr. David Relman, professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford. I’ve long claimed that we need to see ecosystem stewardship as less like physics or chemistry – and more like human medicine. That is, we have to make many decisions based on best expert judgment – when we don’t have certain scientific fact. But Relman was speaking of human health care: “We have to stop looking at medicine as a war between invading pathogens and our bodies,” he said. “This sort of stewardship has more in common with park management than it does with our current practice of trying, in the broadest way possible, to kill microbes.”

Caring for our bodies is like ecosystem management? Well, of course it is. But here’s the implication for our forests, grasslands and aquatics: we have to learn as much as we can, make the best use of specialists (both ‘expert’ specialists and ‘local knowledge’ specialists), and then make the best use of generalists – to decide and act before it’s too late.

Among the Cook County forest preserves, most get no stewardship help, year after year. In the words of one ecologist, "County-wide (and no doubt region-wide) there are many good areas of rich diversity whose figurative fingers are sinking below the waves for the last time." 

That’s why many of us find it so rewarding to work (as volunteers or staff) at this pioneering quest. As one high-schooler said last week at the Solstice bonfire, “We need people winning Nobel prizes in this stuff.” Yes, we do. But some of the needed awards would fit better in the Peace Prize category than in any "hard" science. Conservation needs young new leaders who can span categories and invent ecosystem futures that work.

The Eagles Knew Better

“Many so-called specialists thought this would be impossible,” he said. “The eagles had a different opinion.”

Red deer (elk) and tarpan (horses) in a new wilderness, sort of.

Franz Vera is speaking of the Oostvaarderplassen – an ecosystem reconstruction on 15,000 acres in the Netherlands, 30 minutes from Amsterdam. Vera and colleagues are building a Paleolithic landscape that already includes great herds of mega-fauna including extinct aurochs (giant cattle) and tarpan (original horses), or at least their ghosts, bred back to something like wildness from the most ancient strains that survive.

The white-tailed eagle narrowly escaped extinction. They were said to need mature, tall trees to nest and hadn’t bred in the Netherlands since the Middle Ages. A pair showed up at Oostvaarderplassen and built a nest “nearly the size of an armchair. It seemed ready to topple the scrawny tree it was perched in,” according to an engaging December 24^th New Yorker article by Elizabeth Kolbert.

Experts said they wouldn't show

It feels peculiar for a North American restoration ecologist to read about the Oostvaarderplassen – even though the whole project has its roots here. The “re-wilding” concept was developed by American conservation biologists Michael Soule and Reed Noss, who in turn drew some inspiration from the prairie restoration movement of the Midwest. But what’s so peculiar is the lack of any discussion about plants, in either Kolbert’s article or any of the top Oostvaarderplassen choices on Google.

Many North American ecosystem restorations have been rightly criticized for not paying enough attention to animals. The Oostvaarderplassen work seems all animal. Of course, the Europeans have no counterpart to “natural area” in the American sense. Their quality plant communities were grazed out of existence millennia ago. In some ways the Oostvaarderplassen is a big farm. By winter there’s no grass left, and something like 40% of the charismatic grazers either starve or have to be shot. 

Restoring the aurochs to wild Europe is much like restoring the mammoth to the ancient wilds of North America. 

Oostvaarderplassen has about 1,000 tarpan (horses), 300 aurochs-like cattle, and about 3,000 red deer (elk). They've been joined by huge numbers of geese, egrets, and other birds. Notice the possibly nervous heron, below left. 

No one speaks of restoring the wolf, lion or bear – all wiped out in most of Europe long ago. Of course Oostvaarderplassen, about the size of the Palos forest preserves, is too small for big carnivores.

Enter “Rewilding Europe” – launched three years ago by “two Dutchmen, a Swede, and a Scot.” They have raised six million Euros so far to pursue five rewilding areas - each fifteen times bigger than Oostvaarderplassen. Linked, they’d be enough for big predators. Let us wish them well on this noble quest.