straight lines in search of species of historical prairie plants from a list he had created. He marked locations by hand on his maps, creating a system of symbols for species that he would later add into digital databases. In the early days, he would log long days walking across promising fields and then retire to a motel, where he would spend another couple of hours with a phone book, dialing landowners into the evening, setting up appointments for the next day’s explorations. Each project required 35 or more days in the field. “I loved it,” he says. “Walking around a pasture, looking for prairie plants— what could be more fun than that?” In his surveys, Rosburg mapped nearly 1,000 acres of remnants and 38,000-plus prairie indicator species in Missouri. The three projects provided the most complete picture of the remaining prairie in the region to date, helping private landowners manage their lands and conservation organizations set priorities and develop strategies for the Grand River Grasslands. “Dr. Rosburg’s knowledge of the Grand River Grasslands is invaluable,” says Kent Wamsley, TNC’s grasslands and sustainable agriculture strategy manager for Missouri. “He understands the history of this area and the need for resilient measures to preserve them.” Over the past year, Rosburg has embarked on another project to research the effects of sustainable grazing practices on grasslands. He and TNC staff have set up nearly two dozen plots across Dunn Ranch Prairie where he can measure the changes in pasture and prairie species over time, comparing the types and concentrations of plant species on grazed and non-grazed plots while also capturing the on-the-ground
management activities of invasive treatment, woody control, and prescribed fire. The sites are scattered across Dunn, including the vast bison lots and the separate grassbank, where TNC allows local ranchers to graze cattle at certain times of the year as they implement conservation practices on their own land. The data will be crucial to TNC’s ongoing work with ranchers to develop the most effective strategies for sustainable grazing. “Farmers and ranchers are the primary stewards of the grasslands, and they understand better than anyone the necessity of taking care of the land,” Wamsley says. “We want to support them by taking some of the guesswork out of adapting conservation practices, and we have to have the research to show which practices are practical and profitable.”
He points to the example of cover crops. The prairie was almost never bare, and an increasing number of farmers are now rediscovering the value of mimicking natural systems by planting off-season crops to protect their land and water from erosion and nutrient runoff. The better we understand the grasslands, the more we can adapt their lessons in service of people and nature. To this day, Rosburg continues to get calls from landowners who want him to head out into their fields with them in search of surviving prairie. He still loves to go. It’s like those days when he conducted the surveys for TNC, never knowing what plants awaited him. “There was always this incentive,” he says. “I always wanted to see the next pasture.”
The lessons are out there. After decades of studying the prairie, Rosburg is sure of that. “We’re not going to go back to a
completely prairie landscape,” he says. “I’m not saying that. What I’m saying is the prairie can show us some ways of farming more sustainably.”
THIS PAGE TOP The prairie can support hundreds of species of plants and animals. © Noppadol Paothong BOTTOM Dr. Thomas Rosburg © Christine Curry
NATURE.ORG/MISSOURI 13
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter maker