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| The Randolph Glade at sunrise (Photo by Terra Fondriest, The New York Times) |
"As dawn cracked one morning in mid-May, the botanist Neal Humke and I hiked up a hill, eager to check on a landscape in progress. Five years ago, we cut nearly every single tree across 19 acres here, piled and burned the limbs and left the trunks where they lay. The goal was to restore one of the Ozarks’ rarest ecosystems, a type of dry, rocky grassland known as a glade. To bring back the grass, we had to clear it of trees.
For the previous 60 years, the glade had been shaded by opportunistic redcedar trees that moved in after a large wildfire ripped through the area, and fire was suppressed after that. But seeds are incredibly resilient; some may survive in the soil for 70 years. With the tree cover gone and sunlight pouring in, woodland species are now giving way to the grassland species. The result is a collection of strange bedfellows: sun-loving Eastern prickly pear cactus next to woodland greenbrier; ragweed alongside the Ozark-endemic, grass-loving wildflower Bush’s skullcap. The glade has also filled in with songbirds. A whippoorwill sang its name in 4/4 time, and a yellow-breasted chat squawked and chuckled. Under flat rocks, Neal Humke and I found a scorpion, a telltale sign you’re in a grassy glade.
Cutting down trees to bring back grass may seem puzzling in a time of climate change, as forest conservation and tree-planting have become popular ways to keep carbon out of the atmosphere. But it is exactly what we should do in some parts of the Southeast. The climate and biodiversity crises are twin-barreled problems. We can’t afford to rob biodiversity to pay for the climate, and grasslands are surprisingly good at pulling carbon out of the atmosphere. A single sunflower might not be the carbon hog that an oak tree is, but grass’s deep root systems store the element deep underground, where it can take hundreds or thousands of years to return to the atmosphere.
For the past century, the commonly held belief was that forests once covered most of the region from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. But we now know that’s not true. Pound for pound, Southeastern grasslands are far more biodiverse than the massive tallgrass prairie in the Midwest or the shortgrass prairie of the Great Plains. One reason is that Southeastern grasslands can be found in much wetter, steeper and more geologically diverse landscapes. The result is a dozen or more unique types — including river scours, glades, pine savannas and others, each with their own plant and wildlife communities.
All of these unique grasslands are under threat, but not all by tree invasion. The few remaining grasslands in Arkansas are being converted to grow rice, Virginia meadows are being bulldozed by housing developers, and low-lying coastal prairie faces sea-level rise. Because grasslands are so easily navigated, settled and plowed, they may be the most threatened ecosystems in the world. In the Southeast, Dwayne Estes, a co-founder and executive director of the Southeastern Grasslands Institute, estimates at least 90 percent of grasslands have been destroyed by farming, grazing, development and encroaching forests.
Grasslands remain undervalued. Many conservation organizations working in the Southeast are still focused on tree planting and preserving existing forests. One of conservation’s trolley problems is the choice between habitat corridors that protect large swaths of moving life and disconnected sites that harbor extremely rare species. But the importance of habitat corridors doesn’t mean we should give up on the 60 percent of Southeastern plant species that prefer grasslands. Looking to the future, climate models suggest a hotter Southeast that may have more extreme droughts. Geologic history tells us this kind of climate is perfect for grasslands.
The glade I helped restore in Missouri is on private land. The project is in its early stages, and grasses are still finding their place there. But Neal Humke, who is also the fire and stewardship manager at the L-A-D Foundation in St. Louis, said the building blocks for recovery are here. Forests should still occupy a majority of the Southeastern landscape, as they always have. There is no war between grasslands and forests; there is more than enough American South for them to coexist. But much of the South’s native grasslands lie dormant, under forests and farms, in seeds, roots and rhizomes, waiting for the sun that used to bathe them. They’re still alive, but time is running out. Let’s uncover them and help them bloom.
For the past century, the commonly held belief was that forests once covered most of the region from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. But we now know that’s not true. Pound for pound, Southeastern grasslands are far more biodiverse than the massive tallgrass prairie in the Midwest or the shortgrass prairie of the Great Plains. One reason is that Southeastern grasslands can be found in much wetter, steeper and more geologically diverse landscapes. The result is a dozen or more unique types — including river scours, glades, pine savannas and others, each with their own plant and wildlife communities.
All of these unique grasslands are under threat, but not all by tree invasion. The few remaining grasslands in Arkansas are being converted to grow rice, Virginia meadows are being bulldozed by housing developers, and low-lying coastal prairie faces sea-level rise. Because grasslands are so easily navigated, settled and plowed, they may be the most threatened ecosystems in the world. In the Southeast, Dwayne Estes, a co-founder and executive director of the Southeastern Grasslands Institute, estimates at least 90 percent of grasslands have been destroyed by farming, grazing, development and encroaching forests.
Grasslands remain undervalued. Many conservation organizations working in the Southeast are still focused on tree planting and preserving existing forests. One of conservation’s trolley problems is the choice between habitat corridors that protect large swaths of moving life and disconnected sites that harbor extremely rare species. But the importance of habitat corridors doesn’t mean we should give up on the 60 percent of Southeastern plant species that prefer grasslands. Looking to the future, climate models suggest a hotter Southeast that may have more extreme droughts. Geologic history tells us this kind of climate is perfect for grasslands.
The glade I helped restore in Missouri is on private land. The project is in its early stages, and grasses are still finding their place there. But Neal Humke, who is also the fire and stewardship manager at the L-A-D Foundation in St. Louis, said the building blocks for recovery are here. Forests should still occupy a majority of the Southeastern landscape, as they always have. There is no war between grasslands and forests; there is more than enough American South for them to coexist. But much of the South’s native grasslands lie dormant, under forests and farms, in seeds, roots and rhizomes, waiting for the sun that used to bathe them. They’re still alive, but time is running out. Let’s uncover them and help them bloom.
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