Sparrow had a very productive 2015! Many native plants were planted, many native birds, butterflies and pollinators attracted, many hardscapes installed and many invasive plants removed. Check out my 2015 recap video....Looking forward to the spring.
 Marquette County, where I call home, boasts the third highest deer density in the state of Wisconsin. Last I checked, numbers are bumping 50 deer per square mile. Not surprising given the habitat. The mosaic of cropland interspersed with fragmented woodlots and wetlands, considered prime by the deer herd. So prime that the biological carrying capacity of what the DNR labels as “farmland range” could support double that. Socially, though, a density of 100 deer per square mile has been defined as loony-toons for many reasons: Too many losses to crops and ornamentals, too many collisions with cars, too much browsing pressure on native communities and increased risks of contracting Lyme’s disease because of parallel deer tick population explosions. These edge-loving critters, increasing because we’ve created the habitat for them to do so, need to be managed/culled/harvested, or to completely remove the sugar coating, killed.
On the plus side, a big deer herd equals big money. The Wisconsin DNR rolls in $20 million plus alone in licenses and permits each year. Wisconsin businesses benefit as well with some estimates in excess of a billion in yearly revenue when you factor in the peripherals required by nearly ¾ of a million hunters: Weapons, fuel, lodging, food, alcohol. Chili. From an economic impact standpoint our deer crop kicks cranberries to the curb! Hunting is a deeply ingrained tradition. Jeff Daniel's Escanaba in Da Moonlight captures it perfectly. A tradition I HATED during my first quarter century on this planet. I judged all hunters as barbaric Elmer Fudds. I cheered on hunting protesters from my dorm room window as they drove around with orange-clad dummy hunters strapped to the tops of their cars. Yeah- take that hunters!! How futile. But, my blinders wore thin the more educated I became in the field of native restoration. Ironic that my master’s degree came from Madison’s Department of Wildlife Ecology, with strong roots in game management under Aldo Leopold’s historic influence as chair. I still didn’t understand much of the faculty’s passion for the hunt, typically leaving the lunch room when the stories started. The blinders dropped completely when I became a land owner. Every spring I excitedly watched pasque flowers emerge, but sadly never to see them flower, never to spread. I found the characteristic palm shaped fronds of prairie coreopsis, but scant few sunny yellow blooms. Deer time their browsing perfectly, indulging their flower lust just as the petals unfold. For the first time, I felt anger towards the local herd. Damn deer. The reintroduction of wolves gave me hope…Go rewilding!!….but deep down, I knew they would never be welcome. Our culture can’t seem to kick its misunderstanding and sometimes raw hate of top predators. Aldo Leopold questioned his motives and ultimately changed his view of predators as the enemy. Watching the green fire die in the eyes of a wolf that he had shot on a whim inspired his revelationary work, Thinking Like a Mountain. Why can’t we all get-there-already like Aldo Leopold did? So, for ecological reasons alone, I embraced my role as top predator. I learned to hunt. I chose the bow as my weapon, as I couldn’t seem to get past the shock of a rifle discharge. My husband, an expert with the bow, instructed me well. No hunting allowed until I was accurate at 20 yards, to minimize the risk of wounding a deer and increasing its suffering. My practice paid off; my first bow-kill dead on. With the help of my also expert-tracker husband, we found the animal in its final resting place among a sea of oak leaves on the ridge. The anger that motivated my hunt, that I was doing the right thing for the woods, immediately dissolved as I touched its fur. Feeling the stirrings of a forgotten connection between a predator and its prey, I felt relief that the animal hadn’t suffered, but a crushing sadness for the death of this beautiful animal by my own hand. It’s not the deer’s fault that we’ve created the ultimate habitat for them. It’s not the deer’s fault that they love pasque flowers and prairie coreopsis. Why should I feel anger towards them? I hunt every year now, but approach the season with bittersweet anticipation, not anger. Although helping to restore the balance within the oak and pine woodlands spread over the hills is still one of the main reasons, it’s trumped by treating the hunt as a harvest. As long as I continue with carnivory, I’ll harvest the crop that thrives because of the habitat that we created. Despite the negativity associated with their “overpopulation” label, my emotions as a hunter have transitioned from the disconnect of treating them as mere targets to that of connection, empathy, and respect. These emotions, I believe, are the cornerstones of our evolution as hunters if we so chose to hunt. Their love of Wisconsin sand. The pure, round, silica variety that runs along a wide band from the Mississippi River in the northwest through the heart of south central potato country. What’s up with the sand? Wisconsin sand supports native lupine, the only food source known to nourish the caterpillar stage of the federally endangered Karner blue butterfly. Although the adults will nectar on a variety of plants, it’s lupine exclusive for its young. No coincidence that the butterflies follow this sandy band, sharing space with prairie smoke, puccoon, western slender glass lizards and thousands of other species that call dry prairie, oak and pine barren communities home. Wisconsin is the number one producer of endangered Karner blue butterflies. Wisconsin’s unique sand is also coveted by frac sand miners racing to meet the demands of the hydraulic fracking industry. Durable and crush resistant, it’s added to a high pressure cocktail of water and a dash of chemicals and blasted from existing wells into shale buried deep beneath the soil surface; creating fractures. Once the water runs off, these mighty grains remain, propping the fractures open like miniature Herculeses, unlocking precious petroleum fluids; oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids, from its former shale vault. Fluids and gases that fill our insatiable need for energy. So, can Karner blues and frac sand miners share the love? Although it seems there’s a lot to go around at the moment, Wisconsin sand has become a hot commodity the last five years, turning the heads of a BOOMING fracking industry. Since our deposits sit at or near the soil surface, mining is easy and relatively inexpensive. Based on a recent article in WisconsinWatch.org, Wisconsin ships 26 million tons of the stuff per year from 125 mines, tripling production since 2009.  Wisconsin is the number one producer of frac sand. This isn’t the best news for Karner blues and other members of Wisconsin’s xeric soil communities. It’s pretty easy to connect the dots. I jumped on the haters bandwagon at first, obsessing about everything that I heard or read about the frac sand mining industry. Focusing on the increasing number of mines, how the vast majority aren’t in compliance with stormwater permits, how air quality isn’t being monitored as it should be, how toxic wastewater is being handled. The list goes on and on. All of my concerns, shared by many other Wisconsin natives, are exhaustively summarized in the Petition for a Strategic Analysis of Frac Sand Mining.  Although you can fault the mines for not following current laws, you can’t fault them for selling sand, or the frackers from buying it, just like you can’t fault farmers for growing potatoes in sand. Both practices disturb the soil, just on different scales. Whether removing sand from a couple thousand acres or dousing 62,000 of them with pesticides, these were areas that once produced lupine, Karner blues, oak and pine. Ultimately, we’re the ones using the end products, whether its filling our cars or our stomachs. We’re the ones living in glass houses. I’m reminded of a talk by Ed Begley Jr at the Lake Home & Cabin show a few years ago, where he told a story about how he was complaining about the state of the world to his Dad. How his Dad turned it around, asking Ed, “Well, what are you going to do about it?” Ed went on to talk about making changes within his own life to become more energy efficient; to reduce his carbon footprint. Remember the three R’s? Reduce, reuse, recycle? Jack Johnson’s song comes to mind. But how many of us really live that way? Every day? I think we all have good intentions, but sometimes lose track of balancing our wants with our needs. It’s easy to point fingers. It’s easy to think you’re doing the right thing and everyone else needs to get it together. I find myself in this same self-righteous position. But, I’m a hypocrite. I take airplanes to go on vacation. I haul my horses hundreds of miles to endurance events as entertainment. I throw food away and buy new clothes even though I don’t need them. So, when I find myself turning a critical eye to the fracking industry, I ask myself, “what am I going to do about it?” What AM I doing about it? Here’s the silver lining. It’s never too late to dust off the three R’s and put them back into play. Evaluate and revise your personal use of fossil fuels and invest in/use alternative energy sources. If you own property on Wisconsin sand, use it to its full potential instead of complaining as it’s sold to hydraulic frackers. Secure a future for Karners and other species that depend on sandy soil communities. Reduce your lawn and plant a prairie-heavy on the lupine. It’s tough to grow turf on sand without adding topsoil and tons of water anyway. If you have acres to play with, plant a grove of oak and jack pine with an understory of Pennsylvania sedge and blackberry patches. Add some old field juniper, sand cherry and goat’s rue. If you’re lucky, your neighbors will follow your lead and you’ll have done your part. Wisconsin sand is precious and there’s a finite amount. How long can we support the fracking industry? As a famous witch once said as she turned over the hourglass, “It isn’t long my pretty, it isn’t long.”  I’m working on a few woodland restoration projects this fall that could benefit from a bit of rewilding. I’ve been labeling some of my projects as such, in my head at least, because I think it sounds much more romantic than restoration, especially on the heels of rewilding campaigner George Monbiot’s eloquent TED talk and 2013 book, Feral. Monbiot echos what David Foreman, who helped establish the conservation think tank, Rewilding Institute, has been preaching since the 70’s. Rewilding. Doesn’t it conjure up feelings of vast openness, mountains, wind in your hair and the howl of wolves in the distance? I like to think of myself as a “rewilder”, not a landscaper, but the reality is that most of my projects are islands that will never be connected and never resilient from a top down approach initiated by top predators; keystone concepts preached by rewilding advocates. Nope. It will be a cold day in hell when wolves are allowed to roam the fragmented woodlands of Cedarburg, Wisconsin.  The white-tailed deer herd thrives here, loving the secrecy offered by the patchwork of woodlands choked with buckthorn and honeysuckle woven through all-you-can-eat cornfield buffets and lack of hunting pressure. To add insult to injury, these resilient critters browse what little remains of native plant communities, halting seed production and regeneration. Bonsai versions of maple and oak never seem to make it past the browse line. Good luck trying to find an aster that managed to hold onto its flowers in the fall.  It’s not the deer’s fault. They’re just trying to make a living like everyone else. Synchronous with their boom, however, diversity suffers. Pollinators rely on those precious few flowers; birds and small mammals need those seeds. Woodlands, if they want to stay woodlands, need new stock waiting in the subcanopy wings to fill prime real estate in the canopy. When an ash succumbs to emerald ash borer, an oak or maple should be there to take its place, not held hostage as a clipped and twisted component of the groundlayer. “The absence of top predators appears to lead inexorably to ecosystem simplification accompanied by a rush of extinctions.” –John Terborgh et al. in Continental Conservation Obviously I can’t include “re-introduce wolves” into my woodland restoration proposals. It’s even tough to propose “install a 10-foot tall fence around perimeter,” given the expense and sometimes aesthetic compromise. I do what I can though, adding Deer-Out armour to newly introduced spring ephemerals, trees and shrubs. I’ve made it a habit to leave a hand-held spray bottle of the stuff with instructions to “holster your spray bottle and take it with you on your walks, spraying new plants every few weeks or so to prevent deer browse.” They usually laugh at the holster reference, but I tell them that they’re protecting their investment. Hardly rewilding, but the best I can do in the absence of wolves.   Starting a new wildlife garden can seem overwhelming, but break it down into easy steps and Trust the process…. Words that have become my mantra lately as I train for my first marathon in October. The nervous anticipation of my weekend long runs are alleviated when I refer to the training plan that I purchased from someone with years of experience coaching marathon runners. I’m reminded that if I don’t do progressively longer runs over the course of six months to a year, I won’t succeed. By trusting his process over my own suspicions, it gives me confidence and ultimately, peace. I’ve integrated this mantra into my work because I obsess about prairies just as much as I obsess about running; repeating the phrase every time I pull into a driveway to check out a new project or evaluate an existing one. For new prairie projects, I have to remind myself to trust my own process. It’s usually around a new home and I’m reminded again that no matter how cool the new house is, the disturbance around it is never pretty.   A stream of anxiety-producing questions immediately rush through my typically logical head as I get out of the car.
Aaah!! “Take a deep breath, I tell myself. How many times have you done this?” Logic overcomes anxiety. I tell myself to….
Evaluating existing prairies is another story. I have to convey confidence to the client who is suspicious of the process. Their stream of worries are also posed as questions.
Even though I tried to mentally prepare them for the obligate “ugly duckling” stage of prairie establishment, every client, no matter how patient, needs reassurance that all will be okay. That their money was not just thrown onto the ground. That they will see flowers in their lifetime.   I certainly understand their suspicion. It’s an unknown process to them. I feel suspicion while I’m doing speedwork at the local High School. Is sprinting around the track really going to help me on race day?
As I push the clover aside to reveal tiny butterfly weed seedlings in the understory and talk about how they’re slow growing, but investing in a strong root system and how they will ultimately overcome their faster growing but shorter lived clover neighbors due to this diligent investment, clients are visibly relieved. The sometimes trying years of prairie work have built my confidence in the process of prairie establishment, which is then passed onto my clients. I look at it as they’re buying into my training plan and a prairie landscape is their finish line; a significant investment towards a glorious goal.  I don’t think I’ve ever been more busy during a spring season than I was the last 30 days. Maybe during grad school…but, that was a different busy. Working with clients carries a unique pressure. I want everyone to be happy, but I can’t do everything at once. Obviously. Maybe it was the crazy cold winter and belated spring, but it seemed like a season’s worth of work was squished into four weeks. This morning brought relief and some gut-wrench as I wrote checks to the vendors that supplied native plants and seed for my spring projects. Thank you Prairie Moon, Agrecol, Strand, Johnson’s and NorthCreek Nurseries! I also reviewed my job budgets and reflected on the highlights and tragedies that defined Sparrow’s spring. Let’s focus on some of the positives….
 And some sadness and frustration…..
But, let’s end on a good note…. My in-basket runneth over with work, which is a good thing when you’re running your own business. And my husband and son continually cheer me on; offering help when I need it and weathering my moody storms.    Outfitted in yellow Nomex and armed with a rubber flapper, I wait for the drip torch to start a burn line along the base of last year’s bluestem stalks that still tower over a five-acre prairie. The winds are in our favor and the flames are out almost as quickly as they started, leaving a charred black field in their wake. I was almost disappointed that there wasn’t more drama; nary a flap needed from my flapper. It’s April; the heart of “prescribed” burn season in Wisconsin. I had just completed my first without fanfare. As a panelist for the recent Midwest Ecological Landscape Alliance conference, I was asked; “After your landscapes are installed, how do you manage them in a sustainable way?” The image of that first prairie burn resurfaced as well as the management of countless other prairies since then. I had managed prairies with fire, mowing, grazing and herbicides. Until now, I didn’t really think about defining the sustainability of my techniques. I preface my answer with one of my favorite go-to concepts. “I would say that I’m mindful in my approach to management.”  Several nodding heads from the audience affirm my yogic wannabe lifestyle response and echoes a powerful point made by keynote speaker, Heather Venhaus earlier that day. One of her take-home messages was being mindful about how we’re managing our landscapes; adopting adaptive management strategies instead of adhering to guidelines as though they were dogma. To illustrate my point I tell a story about using prescribed burns to manage a prairie landscape; a useful tool whose frequency always bothered me, especially if sustainable management of a diversity of critters is the goal. “I was hired as a consultant to evaluate a large prairie spread over the corporate park of a high end client. The grounds manager was under the impression that he had to burn this prairie every year. When I told him not to burn in the spring, he looked at me with suspicion, like I had just told him to till half of it under. After explaining the concept of using a mosaic of strategies to manage his prairie, to include doing nothing at times, instead of a broad burn stroke every year, he was hesitantly sold, but still needed me to write up my recommendations with supporting evidence as to why he shouldn’t burn…so he wouldn’t get into trouble with his boss.” I wonder if people really consider what happens to critters that cannot escape the flames. What happens to carpenter bees that overwinter in plant stems? Or great spangled fritillary butterflies that overwinter as young caterpillars, clinging to the stalks of grasses. What happens to them when a spring burn whips through the prairie? And ornate box turtles that unsuccessfully attempt to close themselves into their shells to wait out the flames of a late spring burn? How do they maintain a sustainable population if their prairie habitats are frequently burned? Or what about birds, like Henslow’s sparrows, who need thatchy ground cover in their grassland habitat to rear their young? What happens to their overall nest success if thatch is never allowed to accumulate because of frequent burning? For all but the sparrow, who seek “thatchier” grasslands (if available) to rear their young, this corporate prairie had become an ecological trap or sink; an attractive habitat to lure them in to their eventual demise. Don’t get me wrong, my prairie roots run deep and I understand the importance of fire as well as grazing and other disturbances to the long-term maintenance of a diverse prairie ecosystem. We need to be mindful, however, as to how we use this powerful tool to manage what little prairie habitat we have left. Fire favors some species to the exclusion of others. I share Chris Helzer’s concern that “using frequent burning as a management regime always favors the same species year after year, because other species are – by default – being perennially managed against.” And that ”arguments for frequent fire tend to focus primarily on plant diversity rather than the overall diversity of the prairie community, including both vertebrate and invertebrate animals – not to mention fungi, bacteria, and other organisms”. The Iowa Prairie Network’s approach to fire seems mindful to me. Their recommendations include burning small linear patches on a rotational basis by biological community, incorporating mowing and grazing into 10 year minimum burn cycles instead of the standard 2 to 3, minimizing backfires and subsequent intense slow heat and avoiding relighting patches skipped by burns as refuge maintenance. Burning, like any tool we use to manage our landscapes needs to be used carefully. Altering a predetermined course based on research and our own inherent gut-feel is a mindful approach to sustainable management if overall diversity is the goal.   “Hey Jennifer,” Jim says warmly as he opens the door. The scent of fresh bread welcomes me as I step in to rub my hands over his wood stove. Always cold hands. How do I survive Wisconsin winters? “I would have been here earlier, but I forgot my purse at your butcher and had to go back.” This was the second time since the Solstice that I left my purse in a public place. I’ve been so distracted lately. I planned this trip just after the New Year not only to pick up the lamb that I bought from Jim from his local butcher, but to clear my head, reflect on the past year and carve a path for the coming one. “We just made some lunch,” Jim says. Do you want to join us? Rest a bit before you hit the road again?” Uhhh…I so don’t want to have lunch. Not because I don’t like Jim and his wife, but I just don’t feel like talking. I’m in hibernation mode; my ritualistic break from the growing season. I figure I could use some social interaction though. Maybe it would perk me up. “Umm….Ok.” I actually cheer myself up a bit just hearing my commitment to their lunch offer; dusting off winter’s sleep with growing season’s zest. Jim takes my coat and we settle in around the kitchen table. Ruth Ann, his wife, brings coffee, homemade chicken soup made with meat from their free range birds and crusty bread served with fragrant, local honey. He cues up his property on Google maps revealing his 27-acre homestead, spread with cropland, sheep pasture, a modest farmhouse and outbuildings. He points an unsteady finger toward the fields that will be converted to prairie during the spring, excited to show off the aerial view of his acreage from his Christmas present iPad. I was intimately familiar with those fields as I had walked them with Jim the previous fall prior to creating a plan for their conversion; a plan that would bring Jim’s mission to life. The first time I met Jim was during a consult on an unseasonably hot September day. We walked the straight rows of his bean fields that stretched up the sandy hills toward the horizon and along the wooden fence that lined his sheep pasture, stopping to marvel the tangled vines of his prized tomato patch, heavy with fruit. Fruit, he said, his granddaughter loved to pick. Jim’s happiness from thoughts of his granddaughter gained momentum as he told me about the birds that he had grown to love. Birds that were already trekking south as we spoke. Grassland birds, up with the sun, kept Jim company as he tended to his early morning chores before heading to his day job as a high school science teacher. Dickcissels, Henslow’s and Grasshopper sparrows; heard, but seldom seen. Birds, he knew, were in precipitous decline. Jim wanted to help by giving the birds what they needed most. Land. Although hayfields and pastures are common in this rural Wisconsin community, most are mowed and baled prior to chicks fledging from their vulnerable ground nests. Others are fringed with shrubby fencerows, which act as super highways for raccoons, opossums and skunks; nest predators that relish eggs and baby birds. Building a prairie on 20 contiguous acres devoid of crisscrossing fencerows would benefit the birds that he loved. I advised him on a strategy to prepare his bean fields for the introduction of a prairie landscape and he sends me on my way with an ambitious native seed mix wish list. Instead of the typical one or two, however, Jim wanted eight unique blends. Eight seed mixes comprised of prairie wildflowers, grasses, and sedges that would thrive on the sandy soils that defined his fields. Eight different vistas to swallow as he’s tending his sheep, picking tomatoes or making soup. “Thank you so much for lunch, I say gratefully, pushing my chair in, remembering to take my purse. How much for the meat?” As I write him a check, Jim waves away my comment about how he should charge more for his grass-fed lambs.  Back in the car, I think about Jim’s mission instead of meditating on the yellow lines. I’m happy that I spent that hour at their kitchen table if only to get out of myself and bask in Jim’s commitment to grassland birds; those that are heard but seldom seen. His investment in the future of these birds is truly inspiring.
And, it’s just the mind-clearing recharge that I need to carry me to May. George Monbiot inspires us to "rewild our world" with his book Feral..and this TED talk. The progression of a sustainable landscape... |
Jennifer's MissionTo fuel the growth of the native landscaping industry by promoting and implementing biodiversity-focused landscapes reminiscent of native communities as an alternative to traditional landscaping. Archives
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