Now is your chance to come help the Cumming Prairie remnant! As readers may remember this is the same remnant that I did numerous posts on last year. Warren County Conservation and Iowa natural heritage foundation as well as myself all helped to organize a volunteer effort to help restore this prairie back to its former glory and you can help on Tuesday May 24th from 6:00pm until 7:30pm! I will be present at the event and tools will be provided. You are encouraged to bike out to the prairie which is located about a quarter-mile south of trail head parking lot that is on Cumming Ave.

Restorations are needed when trees and other invasive shrubs are allowed to grow into the prairie. Historically fires kept these from coming up but now that this isn’t the case, they grow into thickets of trees and shrubs that shade out the native species slowly replacing beautiful wildflowers into an invasive mess. Above is one of the two areas in desperate need of restoration with-in Cumming Prairie. Restoration will need to consist of people hand cutting out the trees and treating the stumps so they don’t come back! So as you can see, there is quite a bit of work so spread to word because we will need lots of volunteers! After these are removed sunlight will return to these areas and dormant seed just waiting to come up will sprout returning these areas back to prairie.  Hope to see you there!