A few months ago Iowa Natural Heritage foundation, Warren County conservation and myself organized a volunteer event to help restore Cumming Prairie – a rare prairie remnant along the Great Western Tail in northwest Warren county. The restoration involved cutting out the numerous invasive non native trees, vines, and weeds that formed a thicket and was shading out native vegetation as pictured above. This is something that fire used to control naturally back when Iowa was 97% prairie land. These yearly fires kept any trees from growing into the prairie but now that fires are suppressed to protect the buildings of cities and towns we live in, trees and weedy shrubs are allowed sprout into prairies. This slowly shades out native plants and converts them into non-native woodland which is the biggest threat to prairies today and is why they need our help! Warren county does mow this prairie which is the approved best method for keeping weedy plants out of a prairie but this area was on a steep hillside too dangerous for mowing, so assistance was needed to bring this part of the prairie back to life.
After an hour of work removing thorn-filled shrubbery with the help of about 17 volunteers, the sun reached the soil where it couldn’t before, dormant seed left in the ground was allowed to finally sprout and native plants returned to the hillside! I’ve seen Beebalm, Big Blue Stem, and Grayhead Coneflower all showing their return so far, and this is only the first year! I am hoping to have another event this fall to restore two other parts of this prairie that we didn’t get to work on this spring because we ran out of time (stay tuned for updates). With yearly burning, we should continue to see even more natives start to fill in making the hillside beautiful again!
Huge thank-you to:
- Warren County Conservation
- Iowa Natural Heritage Foundat
ion - Everyone who participated in the restoration event!