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Re: Omaha Urban Prairies

Lovely article.  Uplifting. How about sending them some information on
placing a prairie conservation easement on their lands? Then they can be
protected when the owners are no longer around. 

Lee Stone
----------
>From: Glenn Pollock <pollockg@radiks.net>
>To: prairie@mallorn.com
>Subject: Omaha Urban Prairies
>Date: Fri, Nov 19, 1999, 6:13 PM
>

>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.
>
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>                              
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