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David Hartwell, the chair of the Belwin Conservancy board, recently gave me a book titled, 1491. It chronicles the history of land use in the Americas prior to European colonization. It’s a very interesting account of how mankind, irrespective of time period or geographical locale has long sought to shape and control nature. Unfortunately, our track record in such endeavors is hardly stellar, as civilizations have often squandered whatever natural resources they possessed.
We talk a lot at the Belwin Conservancy about restoration and it’s a major component of what we do on any given day. Reading this book gave me a chance to reflect on what our goals are and what we mean when we say we intend to restore an area. Is it our goal to reel back the hands of time to some predetermined date or are we more focused upon how well a natural community functions?
Conservationists often refer to “pre-settlement” conditions. Through a variety of means, we are pretty good at determining what plants were here before the Europeans showed up. For instance, on Belwin Conservancy land we have small remnant prairies in areas that were never cultivated and appear to have the original compliment of plant species. These areas can serve as a template of what was here prior to the prairies being replaced by crops or planted with alfalfa to be grazed by domestic cattle. As someone would restore a valuable work of art, we can then go back, often at great expense of time and effort, and try to recreate the original. But, like a work of art, just recreating what we think the original looked liked doesn’t necessarily recreate everything the artist intended to convey.
Another way to approach restoration is to view it from a functional perspective. Think of Humpty-Dumpty. Like Humpty-Dumpty, once an ecological system is broken, it can be a vain attempt to literally put all the pieces together again. However, it may be possible to reinstall the ecological processes that allow the natural community to function again. This means knocking back invasive species and bringing back processes, such as fire or bison, to the point where natives can gain a foothold and outcompete the interlopers. Humpty-Dumpty may never be put back together again just as he was, but hopefully we can make him functional (which begs the question of the purpose of Humpty-Dumpty, but that’s for another time).
Metaphors aside, let’s look at a real example: buckthorn. This Eurasian species has become the dominant understory in much of the St. Croix Valley. Years of grazing coupled with the suppression of fire gave buckthorn a leg up on all the native plants. Our game plan is to aggressively attack buckthorn via a combination of mechanical removal and targeted herbicides, plant native plants, reintroduce fire into the landscape and, over time, we will have restored habitat suitable for other native flora and fauna to flourish. Buckthorn will likely always be around, but if we keep at it, it won’t be the dominant plant degrading the habitat for the birds and mammals that once inhabited our forests.
This functional approach puts the emphasis on habitat quality rather than just restoring a natural community for the sake of restoring a natural community. This perspective allows us to monitor our restoration work for the quality of habitat our work creates and then adapt our management techniques accordingly. We continue to refine and invent new techniques for doing restoration on a large scale. In this newsletter you will read about how bison aid us in our quest to bring back the prairie and how we are doing at the Lake Edith oak savanna restoration, one of the largest oak savanna restoration projects in the state. You will learn about how we are now systematically monitoring the breeding birds that use Belwin Conservancy land as a way of gauging our restoration success. You will also read about how we are working with many partners to protect the whole watershed that supplies Valley Creek.
We continue to shape and manage the lands that the Belwin Conservancy owns and we’ve made incredible progress. There’s a lot happening these days at the Belwin Conservancy and it’s only possible through your support. Thank you for all you’ve done.
I hope to see you out here soon.
Steve Hobbs
Executive Director, Belwin Conservancy