and bobolinks," he said. The upland sand-piper, a state-listed endangered species, likes pastures that are 100 acres or more and it likes short grass. The bobolink, one of the fastest declining songbirds in the Midwest, likes habitats that are larger than 100 acres, but it likes tall grass. If you only have 100 acres then you have an issue. That's why Midewin is so important. It's so huge you can manage for both of those species 10 times over.

Which is where the bison and elk come in. "One of the options we're looking at is having a private contractor have a bison herd," Harry said. "It would be a lease just like the cattle are now. The bison would be used to keep the grass short. Elk are another opportunity to manage the structure of the habitat, because they're more of a browser than a grazer. The reason we could do it is because we have 37 miles of chain4ir'k fence already around us.

"We have the sandpipers here because there are 2,000 head of cattle grazing this land," Harry continued. "They manage the structure. The two major tools to manage grasslands are fire and herbivory (which Harry describes as plant-eating animals' effect on vegetation). The Army would never burn it, obviously, because it was an arsenal. We can use fire, but research has shown pretty clearly that herbivory is important too because it makes a different structure. If you get down and look at the ground it's really different. Herbivory doesn't mow it clean like a fire or lawnmower."

Even if bison and elk are eventually introduced, Harry said fire will play a role in managing Midewin. "Some of this prairie has never been burned in the last 45 years," he said.

"There could be a lot of prairie plants in the seed bank that a fire would release. It's a wellknown phenomenon that prairie plants are long-lived in the seed bank and when fire stimulates them they grow.

In other places, Harry said, the use of prescribed burns to restore prairie could present a management paradox" if upland sandpipers were also present and the prairie was not grazed. "If the prairie grows tall, the habitat becomes unsuitable for the sandpiper, and in effect I've managed against an endangered species in favor of a very rare community," he said. "But we can do that here because of the scale. We don't have to convert cool season grassland to prairie. We can put our prairie restoration emphasis in the row crop areas and manage them."

The legislation that created Midewin calls for gradual conversion of cultivated row crops to prairie over a 20-year period scheduled to end in 2015. With 10,700 acres of row crops, it'll take massive amounts of seed to accomplish this.

"This is the largest tallgrass prairie restoration ever attempted in North America," Harry said. "We figure the best way to do it is to grow our own seed because we'll never be able to buy enough." A small demonstration seed plot lies alongside Midewin's headquarters on Illinois Route 53, but Harry said more than 90 acres containing some 40 native species have been planted along River Road on the site's southern border.

Though most of the arsenal land was undeveloped, very little of it is in the pristine state described by Steele in 1840. Three exceptions cited by Harry include a dolomite prairie that straddles the border between Midewin and the Mobil property and two prairie groves, including one that will be part of the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery.

"Dolomite prairie is one of the rarest prairie types in the country," Harry said. "Dolomite is gravel, so anywhere you have it, it's being mined or about to be. Areas like this that are protected are extremely valuable. We have a large concentration of these dolomite prairies on the property, but Mobil also owns a big chunk of it right next to us. We're working together on trying to manage it as a unit. They're very receptive to that.

"The cemetery is actually a prairie grove, Harry continued. "That's another incredible phenomenon here. Usually in Illinois you either have a small prairie or you have something like Funk's Grove near Bloomington, a big grove surrounded by corn fields. So we never really knew what a wild prairie fire would do to a grove. It's always been an unanswered question. We can do it here because we have the scale. We could have a really wild simulated fire go right through that prairie grove and see what happens. We do have an arrangement with the cemetery folks to help them manage this woods when they get it all done."

When it opens, the cemetery will contain 23,000 casket sites and 5,300 cremation sites. Burials will not take place in the grove, but in adjacent areas currently being used for row crops. "The core of the cemetery, the backdrop, will be the grove, so it'll still be preserved," Harry said. "They've agreed to fill in a hole in the woods where there were hayfields, so that'll help forest interior birds."


Prairie Creek is one of the three scenic streams running through the Midewin area. Prairie Creek

|Table of Contents| |Back to Illinois Parks & Recreation 1998|


| Prevous | | Next Page |

Pages:|1 ||2 | |3 ||4 | |5 ||6 | |7 ||8 | |9 ||10 | Pages:|11 ||12 | |13 ||14 | |15 ||16 | |17 ||18 | |19 ||20 |

Pages:|21 ||22 | |23 ||24 | |25 ||26 | |27 ||28 | |28a ||28b| |28c ||28d| |29 ||30 |

Pages:|31 ||32 | |33 ||34 | |35 ||36 | |37 ||38 | |39 ||40 |

Pages:|41 ||42 | |43 ||44 | |45 ||46 | |47 ||48 | |49 ||50 | Pages:|51 ||52 | |53 ||54 | |55 ||56 |