Summer 1998

[TEXT ARCHIVE WEB-PUBLISHED MARCH 2002.
ORIGINAL PRINT PUBLICATION DATE: SUMMER 1998.]

Native Prairie: Twilight or Dawn?

To many of our neighbors, prairies seem foreign and unattractive, second cousin to the trash-filled vacant lot. Typically, we're uncomfortable with what we don't know. As Verie Sandborg notes in her essay, Encountering a Prairie, one could easily be a native of these parts and never have encountered what was once the dominant landscape of this region. The Midwest's sea of grass — a rich mosaic of prairies, oak woods, and marshes — was virtually eradicated within the span of a single human lifetime. Today, less than one-hundredth of one percent of high-quality native prairie remains.

Because there is so little left, it's not easy to know the prairie, and thus not easy to love it. We grew up with gorgeous images of Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, and Yosemite splayed before us. This was Nature resplendent, true Nature fine and pure — or so we were told. No one told us about the prairies.

But it was in the prairies that modern humanity would learn a shocking secret about nature. Leaving nature alone isn't enough. Leave prairie alone, and we lose it.

Thus, by necessity, prairies became the places where humans began to develop a new interrelationship with nature. Alarmed at the loss of their native landscape, people in this region worked to save the remaining parcels — not by erecting a fence and staying out, but by tending to the land and making amends. This meant re-introducing natural processes such as controlled fire; restoring some of the original hydrology, and bringing back species — plants, butterflies, mammals, turtles — whose populations had been severely threatened.

Now rarities such as Cooper's hawks and the prairie white-fringed orchids are reappearing through the caring intervention of human stewards. Restoration has taught us that people have an essential role to play in the future of nature, that we can think beyond being users, or abusers, of nature. We can, in fact, become stewards of our natural communities. Thousands of people throughout the region are now working at hundreds of sites to learn about and restore the best of what survives of our original landscape. The stewards will tell you that our native prairies, open woods, and wetlands are beautiful and subtle, bold and surprising; that the journey of discovery is joyful and profound — and often totally fun.

But don't listen to these people. Get out in the wilds and see for yourself. Look nature in the eye. Lend a hand if you want to. Enter the Discovery Zone. Become a native in our native land.

Debra Shore may be reached at editor@chicagowildernessmag.org.