During last year’s BioBlitz at the University of Iowa’s eight-acre prairie restoration project — the Ashton Prairie Living Laboratory (APLL) — 52 volunteers observed 238 different species of plants, fungi, insects, arachnids and birds, as well as one frog (an American bullfrog), which brought the observed species total to 239. All 239 were spotted in […]
prairie restoration
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Iowa DNR’s wildlife action plan calls for more prairie, more public lands and protection for 800 species
The Iowa Department of Natural Resources is seeking feedback on its 25-year wildlife action plan, which must be reviewed every 10 years per federal law. The action plan, according to DNR, is a strategy for how the department will conserve wildlife in the state. It was last updated and reviewed in 2015, but was initially […]
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Wildfire destroys, but ‘good fire’ keeps tallgrass ecosystems alive. In Iowa, more women are picking up the drip torch.
Just after 12:30 p.m. on June 2, a group of 13 women and nonbinary folks gathered in a loose circle at the base of a ridgeline at Stone State Park. They were dressed in the standard outfit for prescribed-fire practitioners: flame-resistant Nomex yellow work shirts and green pants, heavy leather boots, yellow helmets and shatter-resistant […]
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Bison made the prairie what it was. Iowa conservationists hope they can do it again.
According to the National Park Service, the tallgrass prairie is “one of the rarest and most endangered ecosystems in the world.” It once covered 167 million acres in the middle of North America, stretching from the Red River Valley in Canada into Texas. Only about 4 percent of the tallgrass prairie that existed before the […]
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‘Plant. Grow. Fly.’ program marks 10 years of crafting pollinator-friendly garden recipes for Iowans
Ten years ago, the monarch butterfly was in serious trouble. Its numbers had cratered to the lowest level researchers had seen since the current monarch population monitoring programs began in the mid-1990s. Although the monarch has rebounded from that low point enough for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature to upgrade its status […]
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Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge’s growing bison population is also restoring long-gone prairie species
On June 4, 1888, the Barnum and Bailey Circus rolled into Keokuk, Iowa with all its wonders — hyenas, lions, leopards, a whole contingent of elephants, trick ponies, trapezists, contortionists, leapers and tumblers and trained monkeys — in tow. But the circus’s manager, J.A. Bailey, the same Bailey of the name Barnum and Bailey, saw […]
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Amid ‘the most altered landscape in America,’ this 100-acre plot in Johnson County remains rich and wild
Before the first Europeans arrived in what would become Iowa, most of the land here was covered by wild prairie plants. Bison and elk once grazed in the northwest and central regions, and black bears populated the woodlands and brush in the eastern corridor. Around 85 percent of Iowa’s landscape was prairie, but today a […]
