This is a public-interest archive. Personal data is pseudonymized and retained under GDPR Article 89.

Omaha Urban Prairies

This ran in Omaha World herald today with color pictures. Glenn Pollock
              Published Friday
                   November 19, 1999 


                   Protecting the Prairies

                   BY DAVE MORANTZ

                   WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER


Time stands still on a prairie that overlooks the Platte River.

                   Sure, tall grass sways as the wind rolls
                   across in sheens of light. And a buzzing
                   ecosystem thrives under thick ground
                   cover. But standing on the prairie, leaning
                   slightly into the puffs of wind, you see the
                   same river that flowed by 100 years ago.
                   You smell the same fragrances, dusty and
                   oily simultaneously, that settlers smelled
                   almost 150 years ago. And your feet sink
                   into a lush soil undisturbed since the last
                   ice age.

                   Few prairies like the one owned by Pat
                   Shanahan and Tom Dickerson still exist in
                   Sarpy County and the rest of eastern
                   Nebraska. Sodbusters, and now developers, have turned
most of the county into a patchwork of farm fields and subdivisions. But
for reasons varying from aesthetics to economics, prairie owners vow to
protect an ecosystem that once blanketed the area.

Shanahan and Dickerson moved from Omaha to the southern edge of Sarpy
County in 1990, unaware that the 10 acres of tall grass and flowers on
which they planned to build their house were pristine western prairie.

"Tom thought we had just a big flower garden," Shanahan said. Tallgrass
prairie once stretched from Manitoba to Texas and from Ohio to eastern
Nebraska, covering more than 400,000 square miles. Experts estimate less than
1 percent of pristine prairie still exists. In Sarpy County, fewer than 200
known acres remain. Douglas County has less than 100 known acres of
pristine prairie.  So prairie enthusiast Mark Dietz asked the couple if
they would move their building site back about 50 yards and surrender their
prime view of the Platte River, all to save some spider-infested grass and
a few wildflowers.

 It took some work, but Dietz, a free-lance nature photographer who helps
manage area prairies and heard of the couple's building plans, persuaded
Shanahan and Dickerson to build on an old bean field and preserve the prairie.

"Next thing I know," Dietz said, "they're out buying field guides and Tom
has his degree in horticulture and he knows where every orchid on the
prairie is."

In spring, the couple watch the green grass sprout and brilliant flowers
bloom. On summer evenings, they sit on their back porch overlooking the
prairie as it is illuminated by countless lightning bugs. And in autumn,
they watch it fade from yellow to red and finally to brown.

Most prairie owners haven't held onto their patches to watch lightning bugs.
Farmers have long known that prairie hay provides the best feed for young and
sick cattle and horses.

"If you can't get an animal to eat this, you might as well shoot 'em," said
Howard Schneekloth, who owns a 20-acre patch and a 15-acre patch overlooking
Bellevue's Tregaron golf course.

Before steam- and fuel-powered combines and plows roamed farm fields,
farmers like Milton Fricke in Papillion relied on horse power. When Fricke was
born in 1909, 70 acres of prairie fed the farm's horses. The Fricke prairie
has
since shrunk to 15 acres that provide feed for sick cattle and a natural
sanctuary where he and his wife take frequent strolls to watch its seasonal
changes.  As farmers know, prairies are remarkably resilient. They thrive
after periodic burnings. Some grasses have tap roots 14 feet deep to get
moisture during dry spells. And many plants aren't fazed by farm chemicals,
although some scientists worry that pesticides might destroy insects vital
to prairie plant pollination.  "Even in a terribly dry year, the hay's
always there," said Gary Schneekloth, who helps his father on their Sarpy
County farm. "The prairie always seems to hang on."

Today, more people have discovered the value of prairies.  Suburbanites use
its native grasses and flowers for landscaping. State road departments sow
prairie seeds along highways because they require little maintenance.
Farmers plant prairie seeds in crop rotation projects. And alternative
medicine enthusiasts and even pharmaceutical companies have started
harvesting prairie species, many of which exist in no other ecosystem.

The new uses, coupled with a decrease in prairie supply, have sent prices
soaring. Some flower seeds can fetch $80 for a quarter ounce, said Bruce
Heyne,
owner of Heyne Custom Seeds in Walnut, Iowa. Overall prices of prairie
grass and flower seeds have tripled in the past 10 years.

"Within the last five or 10 years, you realize it's more than just a hay
crop," said  Gary Schneekloth, who can now identify countless prairie
plants and what animals like to eat them.

The plants, spurred on by the herbal medicine craze, also have attracted human
consumption. A pristine prairie patch can contain more than 180 plant
varieties,  many of which, such as echinacea and St. John's wort, have
medicinal value.

The diversity and utility make the prairie ecosystem almost as essential to
medicine as rain forests, said biologist Kelly Kindscher, who has written a
book on the topic.

The University of Kansas biologist has collected 22 prairie plants containing
possible cancer- and AIDS-fighting substances.

The root of the purple coneflower (echinacea), a common prairie plant, retards
several forms of cancer and helps the immune system. The best-known prairie
medicine and a possible cold cure, echinacea is a $10 billion-a-year
commodity,
Kindscher said.

But the plants' popularity already has raised concerns of overharvesting in
Montana and Kansas. In Sarpy County the primary concern is that booming growth
could swallow up what few patches remain.

Golf carts and jumbo jets whiz by, just a stone's throw from Schneekloth's
north prairie. Golf course developers had wanted to turn the prairie into a
chemically enhanced swath of green grass, Howard Schneekloth said, but he
refused to sell.
His family and Dietz will try this spring to convert an adjacent winter
wheat field to prairie with hay and seed from the native patch, although
Dietz said it's usually hard to get the small flowers established.

They also want to get a conservation easement that will permanently
restrict the prairie from development, and connect it by a trail to nearby
Two Springs
Elementary School.

The Schneekloth family traces its Sarpy County roots back to the 1850s, when
Howard's great-grandfather set up a homestead. The early settler witnessed
Omaha and Pawnee Indians skirmish on an old trail still partially visible
on the prairie.

And if you turn south with your back to the runways and rooftops, you can
watch the grass sway in the wind just as it did when Howard's ancestor
decided to spare the patch from the plow.

It will be a prairie as long as we're around," Howard said.


                   


                   
                    








                              
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@mallorn.com with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE PRAIRIE
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index