Greensleeves

Last fall I visited the Loess Hills in northwestern Iowa near Sioux City, and took these pictures on the Broken Kettle Grasslands of The Nature Conservancy.

Shortly after my visit, the Conservancy re-introduced bison to the prairie.

The bison aren’t just for looks.

There is science indicating that the way bison graze creates a healthier and more diverse prairie.

And now – following a tough winter — the herd has produced its first four calves, causing a lot of rejoicing among the Conservancy staff.

“This is the first time that a bison has been born on native prairie in Iowa in more than a century and a half, within a herd established exclusively for conservation,” according to the group’s news release.

That’s something to applaud. For a picture of the first calf, go to this site.

The bison originated from the Wind Cave National Park herd in South Dakota. They are consid-ered historically and genetically valuable because they have shown no evidence of cattle genes as determined by current DNA testing techniques.

I hadn’t realized that scientists make a distinction, but it turns out that almost all bison herds, except those in Wind Cave and Yellowstone national parks, contain evidence of cattle genes.

What are the Loess Hills?

Broken Kettle is in the northern portion of the Loess Hills, which rise 200 feet above the Missouri River Valley, snaking in a narrow band of wrinkled bluffs that cover some 650,000 acres along Iowa’s western border.

The Broken Kettle preserve covers 3,000 acres, containing the largest remaining prairie in Iowa.

“Loess” is a kind of soil consisting of tiny windblown silt particles. The Loess Hills were literally blown into existence as the glaciers of the last Ice Age retreated. Loess covers most of the Midwest, which is why our land is so rich for farming. But the deposits in the Loess Hills are far deeper than in other places.

Why care about grass?

Some people don’t find a lot of beauty in grasslands. Forests and wetlands tend to generate more enthusiasm. 

But grasslands of all kinds once covered 40 percent of the Earth’s land masses, and today they are the least protected, most threatened terrestrial habitat on Earth, according to the Conservancy.

And when a habitat is threatened, so are the various forms of life – birds, insects, reptiles etc. – that make their homes there.

For more on The Nature Conservancy, go to this site.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 8:58 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.