Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fortunately, Jan and I did not follow convention. We were both college graduates
in biology, and I had a master's degree in limnology. Due to family issues, upon grad-
uating in 1977 we moved back to my hometown of Aurora without jobs. Impetuous,
stubborn in our ways, and energetic in our mid- to late twenties, we liked where we
were and felt we could survive doing any number of things for money, including my
college summer mainstay—house painting. Perhaps, I thought, a local professional
job would eventually materialize in conjunction with Platte River sandhill crane con-
servation issues. After struggling through a horrifically cold and snowy first winter with
only sparse work, we were able to create a grant-funded project at the Stuhr Museum
of the Prairie Pioneer in nearby Grand Island, interpreting prairie natural history with
respect to the Great Plains post-1870 settlement era. This project concluded a year
and a half later with mixed success (we were paid!). More important, however, during
this project we learned about, and became a part of, a budding movement in the Mid-
west and Plains states concerned with the almost-vanished prairie ecosystem.
Well into the museum project by the fall of 1978, I traveled east on a fact-finding
mission to see what other people were doing. I visited with Ray Schulenberg at the
Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois, and Dr. Virginia Kline at the University of Wis-
consin Arboretum in Madison. I toured all of their restored prairies, which are famous
for being some of the earliest attempts at ecological restoration (Schulenberg Prairie
at the Morton Arboretum; Curtis Prairie and Greene Prairie at the UW-Madison Ar-
boretum). I was intrigued, for example, by my discussions with Mr. Schulenberg,
whom I later discovered was a living legend to prairie enthusiasts, about how he cre-
ated his prairie from scratch. I was astonished when I saw the restored prairies in their
late summer grandeur—tall, colorful, diverse, and perpetually undulating with the
wind. Such exposure to outstanding people, the concept of prairie restoration, and ex-
amples of restored tallgrass prairie left an indelible impression on me. In eastern Ne-
braska it was difficult to find many places with tall prairie grass, much less native wild-
flowers. Upon returning home I began to collect prairie seed on a few local roadside
remnants I had discovered along the Platte River earlier in the summer. While I've
long forgotten her name, I cannot forget the advice of a conservation consultant who
worked for a prominent national organization. She advised me against pursuing high-
diversity prairie restoration. “It is too difficult and time consuming,” she said. I alto-
gether ignored her advice because I had found something I liked.
Once the museum project ended, Jan and I again worried about our future and
money. Again, due to a recessionary economy, winter work was slow to nonexistent,
but I was able to bring in some money from a temporary construction job. Hopes were
lifted in late winter as I heard about an ecologist position opening up with the newly
formed Platte River Whooping Crane Habitat Maintenance Trust. I applied, but our
hopes were dashed when I was rejected. We must have had supreme faith when I con-
vinced my father, an attorney in Aurora, to incorporate a nonprofit organization in
April 1980. The result was little more than a stated intention—some words of purpose
on official-looking paper. Nonetheless, Prairie Plains Resource Institute was born.
Running parallel to the aforementioned events was an energy that proved very in-
strumental in the early development of Prairie Plains, as well as our own personal de-
