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news article

There was a great article in our local paper on Sunday.  It was under state 
news and came from the Chattanooga Times/Free Press, written by Mike O'Neal.  
The title was "Officials encourage return to native grasses."  I tried to 
find it online but had no luck.

This is the first time since I moved here in '92 that I have seen anything 
published about native grasses in the Tennessee region.  I was beginning to 
think there had been no prairie grasses in this region.

A few quotes:

"The Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency is  converting fields all over the 
state to bluestem, Indian grass, broomsedge and other native grasses.
    Along North Chickamauga Creek, the TWRA will plant some 400 acres of 
native grasses on the old Varner, Vandrgriff and Hixson farms later this 
month.
    Audubon Acres, the Greenway Farm, the Tennessee River Gorge Trust and 
Reflection Riding all will be getting plantings sometime this year.
    Cades Cove, too, is in transition.  The National Park Service hopes to 
make the cove look again as it did from the 1850's to the 1930's."

" ' We have a 60-acre field of natural grasses that hasn't been touched in 20 
years,' said Jenny Beeler, a biological science technician with the National 
Park Service at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  'It provides our seed 
stock - we're not buying from outside sources.' "

"Where did the native grasses go?
    Once these native grasslands spread westward across the region from the 
Cumberland Plaueau.  The eastern prairies mixed with oak and hickory forests 
to support a myriad of wildlife.
    But the native grasses were unfamiliar and unappreciated by early 
settlers.  In their pioneer zeal to tame a continent, European immigrants 
introduced plants that changed the American landscape. . . The new plants and 
the settlers' plows spread farms over Tennessee's once abundant prairies and 
woodlands."

"For some, the native grasses weren't lost.  They were unknown.
    "We didn't know about these grasses until 1986,' said Conley (TWRA's 
grass seed specialist). 'It was quite revolutionary to us.  We thought they 
were only found in the West.' "

"Near Livingston, US Department of Agriculture soil scientist Carlie McCowan 
has hay field planted in native grasses.
    During last summer's drought, McCowan's neighbor produced only about 10 
bales of fescue hay on 20 acres.  But McCowan cut nearly 60 round bales of 
hay on 3.5 acres of switchgrass and Eastern gamma grass."

"Not only does fescue yield drop during summer, it carries a toxic fungus.  
For beef cattle alond, loses in Tennessee are estimated at between $60 and 
$85 million per year.
    Environmentally, experts have documented that where fescues have become 
the dominant grass, there is a dramatic drop in the bobwhite quail 
population."

If there is one way to make Tennnesseeans see the light it is by threatening 
their hunting resources.  Whatever works! 
    

Carmen
"There's always turbulence!"  Nicole in Airspeed
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