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Native Warm-Season Grass News
A Landowner’s Guide To Wildlife-Friendly Grasslands
instead of leasing based on acres. Heavy grazing or too many
AUs and continuous grazing has left a bad taste in everyone’s
mouths. “If we can get to the point of appropriate stocking
rates with fire,” Harr said, “then we can work our way to
restore prairies.”
• Harr stated that those who have been restoring prairies
with fire and grazing, and documenting results, have found
increased diversity of plants, birds, invertebrates, and other
biota. Editor’s note: Increased diversity does not necessarily
mean an increase in the diversity of prairie-dependent species.
Documenting data on the response to prairie-dependent species
is also needed. Documenting and sharing results of any
management technique are both important.
Chippewa Prairie Preserve in Minnesota
Chippewa Prairie Preserve Other morning presentations
introduced us to and set the stage for the afternoon field
trip to the Chippewa Prairie Preserve, owned by The Nature
Conservancy (TNC) and Lac Qui Parle Wildlife Management
Area in Minnesota where TNC and the Minnesota
Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) are experimenting
with PBG. Their focus is on quality habitat and wildlife management,
not beef production. There are a lot of rare species
in these prairie landscapes, and MDNR and TNC are thankful
that Minnesota has areas that were too wet or too rocky to
farm, otherwise these sites would no longer exist. However,
never underestimate technology and greed. Adjacent to several
areas, we saw rock clearing (with large rocks being shipped to
Minneapolis for landscaping) and wetland draining and tiling,
efforts to make this land more arable for corn and soybeans.
The PBG trial site is a high-use public area and is eight
miles of open prairie landscape with several access points and
Steve Clubine
swing gates for the public. Projected “grazable” acres were
used to figure the stocking rates (sites that produce no grazable
forage are deducted from the total area available for grazing).
In 2012, managers used 200 head (240 AUs) on 2,177 acres,
which equates to ~10 acres/cow-calf pair on the entire site and
~2.2 acres/cow-calf pair on burned areas. Wells and solar-powered
float pumps provide stock water. Fencing is also designed
so the public does not notice it while driving by. They chose an
effective post spacing and a higher wire spacing that requires
less maintenance, has a stronger charge, and is wildlife friendly.
Chargers are protected with Gallagher lightning diverters.
Much of what one sees today on these prairies is due to
past management. Fire occurrence ranged from zero to nine
burns since public ownership. Land managers chose to use
cattle because they felt that cattle were great tools in the toolbox
and they needed more disturbance than just fire or doing
no management at all. Haying is limited by pocket gopher
mounds, and is considered a poor management choice for wildlife,
but is used to maintain some firebreaks.
To reintroduce grazing to Chippewa Prairie, TNC and
MDNR have been working with area cattle producers and
using a model called “grass-banking.” They work with producers
who own bigger tracts of prairie and use their cattle to graze
the Chippewa Prairie. “Grass-banking” allows these producers
to rest their prairies to improve production, root depth, and
diversity. It is a win-win because habitat is improved on both
the Chippewa Prairie and private land, and landowners get
more and better quality forage for livestock on both properties.
MDNR and TNC are interested in knowing what effects
PBG has across the landscape and have high quality prairie
monitoring projects set up—monitoring and sampling for vegetation,
birds, mammals, insects, amphibians, and reptiles. For
instance, they want to see the effect of the grazing component
of PBG on the plant species composition of a dry-mesic prairie.
Sample plots were laid out for five pairs in each of the five
management units. Current results show that burns stimulate
the grass community and grazing produces the desired structure
with an increase in plant diversity. Editor’s note: these results
may show an increase in plant diversity, but what are also
needed are data that show the plant species that make up this
increase.
Woody invasion is a huge problem in Minnesota and
South Dakota prairies as elsewhere. Grazing helped keep the
woodies down so management crews were not in the field with
their chainsaws as often, allowing them to do other important
work. Cattle also become extremely important when the crews
are not able to conduct prescribed burns. They have a very short
window of opportunity for burning, so grazing can help with
24 Missouri Prairie Journal Vol. 35 No. 1