Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
County's Lincoln Creek). Ecological restoration, stewardship, and educational poten-
tials are far from realized on each of these properties; the future offers enormous op-
portunity. More than once I felt that the prairie gods were really smiling on us, though
I attributed it mostly to steadfastness in our core principles, passion, a lot of difficult
work, and a little luck. Success requires long-term commitment to a place. No doubt
a universal truth, most certainly it is how things always get done on the wind-blown
Plains.
Ecological Restoration
Since my formal ecological education included elements of terrestrial and aquatic
ecology, I could envision myself early in my professional life somehow working on a
watershed—particularly on a river corridor, with the stream and associated wetlands,
and the adjacent valley land. When I learned about ecological restoration, especially
from my arboretum visits, I wanted to bring that emphasis to Nebraska and place it
into a stream corridor context. Our first Prairie Plains property along Lincoln Creek
in Aurora was where this began to happen, in a small, but highly visible, greenway
project where people could enjoy a stroll along a trail. In order to consolidate a diverse
assemblage of prairie species closer to home, where I could monitor them and conve-
niently collect their seeds, I spent the first years of Prairie Plains harvesting and plant-
ing prairie seeds from local prairie remnants to plant at Lincoln Creek. A string of suc-
cessful plantings followed, none larger than a half acre. These small-scale efforts in
the 1980s grew in the 1990s, fulfilling another long-term goal to apply high-diversity
prairie restoration techniques along a major corridor, the Platte River, as Prairie Plains
undertook the restoration of mesic to wet-mesic (subirrigated due to a high water
table) lowland prairie. This began in 1992 and marked the beginning of my full-time
employment by Prairie Plains. Collecting seeds from more than 150 species each
summer, I was able with intern help to increase from thirty-five acres planted in 1992
to more than one hundred acres in 1995. The overall process led to many insights
about harvesting techniques, seed mixes, seed quantities, planting methods, seedling
development, and plant community evolution in the new prairies. At this time, work-
ing with The Nature Conservancy, we also had excellent luck organizing volunteer
crews of as many as twenty-five people to hand sow areas of up to fifty acres in size.
Yet another large growth in restoration happened in 1999 and through the 2000s,
starting with projects for Nebraska's Rainwater Basin Joint Venture and major funding
from the Nebraska Environmental Trust to expand high-diversity plantings to many
new counties in eastern Nebraska. By this time many state and federal agencies were
buying into the idea of local ecotype seed and much higher levels of diversity. With
added staff we soon developed the capacity to plant in excess of five hundred acres per
year. In addition to more staff we shared high school interns with the local Nature
Conservancy project office in Aurora. This additional labor greatly enhanced our abil-
ity to harvest seeds and was an exceptional educational work opportunity for the
young people. One ended up working for us through college, and about half of them
pursued natural resource or science studies in college. During this last era we have
