Exploring tallgrass prairie in the heart of its region

 Readers will already know of my interest and fascination with tallgrass prairie. I was first exposed to its beauty in the mid 1970s, and the interest has been growing ever since. Going to so many North American Prairie Conferences has definitely helped, as I traveled to many parts of the mid-west where tallgrass prairie is one of the main natural areas. But those conferences were always in about mid summer, and I hadn't seen what they looked like in an earlier growing season when they look so much different. Therefore in 2007, 2008 and 2009, I decided to make exploration of some of the best ones in southwestern Missouri, a priority, and targeted the May/June time frame. On each occasion I went for about a two week period. In 2007 I went by myself, but both Marie and Kristin joined me in the two following years.

This first photo is of the Diamond Grove prairie, very close to George Washington Carver National Monument in southwestern Missouri. The Painted Cup is impressive and is one of my favourite early season species. The colour is so distinctive and intense.

Another May wildflower is Rose Vervain. This is at Golden Prairie, a National Natural Landmark.

Another one is Eastern Shooting Star, and can be either vivid pink or white.

One of the reasons I focused on Missouri, is because at several of the prairie conferences I attended, the Missouri Prairie Foundation (MPF) had a display table, and I was impressed with the organization and what they were doing in that state. It even energized me to focus on getting Tallgrass Ontario established in Ontario in the 1990s.

One of the things that was really helpful in planning a trip to Missouri was a publication that the MPF produced. It featured so many significant sites, either owned by the MPF or the state Conservation Dept. There are more than 75 accessible prairie sites listed, with a map of how to get there and some of the special features each site had. I never got to all 75+ sites in Missouri over the years, but have visited well over 100 prairie sites across the mid-west at various times of the year. But Missouri really had my interest, and in the past decade or so they have added several equally impressing prairie sites, many of which have never been plowed, so they are about as original as they can be.

In the first year I went, on my own, I visited Prairie State Park, a bit northwest of Springfield. There were free-ranging bison there, so one had to drive over a cattle guard to enter the park. This first photo shows bison roaming around way in the background. 

There were a few trails, and I asked at the visitor centre about the safety of exploring the trails with the bison in the area. I was advised to stay clear of groups of them for about 100 metres distance or more. So I headed out along what looked like an enticing trail, and there were no bison in sight. However that would soon change.....

I was finding plants to photograph, and while I was well away from my vehicle, I was hunkered down on my hands and knees, with my camera and macro lens photographing this colourful one, known as Violet Oxalis, which was only about 10 cm high.

I had gotten a few shots, and then something 'warned' me, causing me to look up and back along the trail. And there were two huge bison bulls walking the same trail in their steady gate, and were rapidly approaching me and less than 50 metres away! I did a quick grab of my equipment and dashed out onto the prairie for a safe distance, well safe as long as they stayed on the trail. I did get a photo of them on the trail I was on, and they didn't appear to give me a second glance. This next photo shows the bison being at the spot where I had just come from.

 

I found out later that when you see a group of bison, it usually is a mix of the females and their offspring of the year and it is easy to stay clear of them. The bulls, which are noticeably larger, stay apart most of the time, and don't really spend much time with the rest of the group until the autumn breeding season. I don't know what would have happened if I had not left the trail when I did. I can only surmise that it was God warning me that it was time to move!
 

Bison are impressive animals, and visitors are warned regularly to remain in vehicles especially if there are some close to a road. These next two photos were taken from the safety of my vehicle.

At any rate, after this encounter, I tried to be extra vigilant on the lookout for any animals as I returned to my vehicle as safely as possible.

The other prairie sites I visited did not have bison roaming, so was able to enjoy so many plants and vistas without the risk of encountering them.

One of the main places I stayed at was in the town of Lamar, and it was fairly central to some of the sites I really wanted to visit. A short distance from Lamar was Treaty Line prairie. This first photo was taken in May, and it wasn't showing a lot of colour at that time.

 When I visited it another time, in June, it had a more colourful view. Pale Purple Coneflower is well represented on many of the prairies and always a joy to see.

 

The display of these coneflowers was quite impressive at Golden Prairie.

Butterflies are often attracted by these coneflowers, not surprisingly. One of the rarest ones, and typically only resident in high quality prairie is the Regal Fritillary, shown first.

A somewhat similar but much more common one is Great Spangled Fritillary.

There are other forms of wildlife to keep an eye out for. Dickcissels are fairly typical.

If you are watching where you are hiking, you will likely encounter some dung from a creature such as a coyote. And a closer look shows another form of wildlife making use of it. There were several Dung Beetles 'feasting' on what was available to them.

An Ornate Box Turtle was roaming around....

...while a Scissor-tailed Flycatcher was on a wire. This species was fairly widespread, and of course very noticeable due to its distinctive form. I also saw Northern Bobwhite and Loggerhead Shrike, both of which are species at risk in Ontario.

 There were so, so many different wildflowers to photograph. Here are a few others of the dozens and dozens of species I saw.

Fringed Poppymallow

Prairie Phlox

Next is Butterfly Milkweed, a species many readers will be familiar with here in Ontario, mixed with Pale Purple Coneflower. Note also the last photo in this post.

The wind is often a factor on the open prairie, so I decided to show these little sunflower types blowing in the wind.

More coneflowers and others at Skye Prairie.

  

 

Obedient Plant

There were lots more plants I could have included as well as vistas of many of the sites I visited, as these prairies are so rich with impressive flora. It was quite memorable to search through the many files I accumulated, but will leave it as is. 

There were other things going on. It was great to have Marie and Kristin along, even though their passion for prairie wasn't quite the same as mine. But the bonding was wonderful. And on one occasion, just shortly after we arrived at Lamar, there were tornado warnings, not all that atypical for that part of the country. There was a lot of heavy rain and wind where we were, and apparently a tornado touched down somewhere southwest of the city. But with so much rain, some of the rivers were quite full. Here Kristin looks over a meandering and flooded river.

One of the highlights of our 2009 trip was to visit Carol Davit, her husband Mike, and son Jamie. Kristin took this photo of Carol, Marie and I on our visit.

 

Carol is the executive director of the MPF, and the chief editor of the Missouri Prairie Journal, a very well done magazine. I had met Carol at some of the various prairie conferences I had attended, and kept in contact with her when I said we were coming to visit Missouri. I had been a member of the MPF for several years, and after my visits, I sent several CDs full of photos, giving permission to use them for the MPJ. A number of the photos showed up in the magazine over the years, including this cover photo.

During our visit, she conducted an interview of me, and used it as the basis for a MPF Member Profile in a future issue of the MPJ. She was intrigued that a Canadian member would spend so much time exploring the Missouri prairies.

Exploring God's fabulous creation is just so joyful and rewarding. And it reminds me of a fairly recent song I've been hearing on the local Christian radio station, called Let It Be A Hallelujah. It was written, and is sung by Lauren Daigle. She has been on the Christian music scene for a few years, and I must admit when she first started out, I wasn't overly impressed. But that has changed over the years, and I can say that this one is right on and by far the best one yet. It is a prayer that we should all be saying daily! Here is the link to this song.
 

It is interesting that a program on this station is called Twenty The Countdown Magazine, where they play the top twenty songs in Christian music. It comes on once a week and each time the host features a couple of new songs for listeners to vote for, and sometimes the more popular one will eventually become popular enough to make the top 20. In the case of this song, the host could tell it was going to be popular, so didn't even give listeners a chance to vote. And the following week, it debuted at #18, and the week after it had moved to #16. I would not be surprised if it makes it to #1 very soon!

 

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More protection action plus some family adventures of the early 2000s

 The previous post focused on involvement in protecting two provincially significant natural areas, that eventually became legally protected as a provincial park, or a provincial conservation reserve. There were lots of other evaluations of natural areas in the OMNR district in my jurisdiction over the years, to determine their future as being protected or altered for development.

One of those involved a westward extension of the Bickford Oak Woods Conservation Reserve (BOWCR). As mentioned in the previous post, BOWCR was the eastward extension of a woodland corridor that varied in width for the entire 6 kilometres ending at the St. Clair River. It was in about late 2006 or early 2007 that we became aware of a sizeable area of woodland being proposed for industrial development by the Royal Dutch Shell Company (RDSC). It was in an area that had not been very carefully evaluated before, but since it was part of the woodland corridor between the St. Clair River and BOWCR, it warranted further examination before not objecting to development. With its profile for quality habitat for species at risk, as well as the value of quality forest cover that could be lost, it was a combination of some of my district colleagues, as well as those from main office who became involved with a few site visits.

What we found was indeed quite significant. The forest itself was impressive, with more than a few examples to determine its value as Old Growth Forest. There were some intact areas that not only represented OGF, but also represented good quality habitat for the endangered Prothonotary Warbler, as shown first.

Next is an example of a large Shumard Oak, another provincial species at risk.

An exciting discovery was this next one: Spoon-leaved Moss. My colleague Ron, who is in the above photo, and I were walking through a section of the better quality forest and paused for a short time. He mentioned that where we were standing would be a good spot for Spoon-leaved Moss to be. And in mere seconds, after glancing around the forest floor, we saw several nice patches of it! It is an endangered species, as prior to this, it had only been found in two locations in Ontario: a small woodlot southwest of London, and also in a wet-wooded area in the Niagara Peninsula. So this was a very significant discovery.

We also discovered a few Butler's Garter Snakes, another provincially endangered species.

There was also habitat for what was a species at risk at the time, Hooded Warbler, and one or more were present in that spot. The species has expanded its Ontario range since that time, and is no longer a species at risk.

It is interesting to note that while a few of us from OMNR were roaming the site and discovering more than a few significant things, the RDSC also had a crew of environmental consultants looking for things. And what was significant, was that in spite of the fact they spent much more time at the site than we did, they found virtually nothing of any significance! Presumably they had been hired to cover the area, but with specific instructions to not find anything that might make future development restrictive. The end result, perhaps a combination of what we found as well as a change in the industrial opportunity was that the site was left undeveloped.

One of the other sites that got a lot of attention in the early 2000s was in the Windsor area. For decades there had only been one bridge connecting Ontario with Michigan, the Ambassador Bridge, which was privately owned. There was also a tunnel under the river, but only the one bridge. So there was a proposal to construct a second international bridge, slightly downstream from the Ambassador Bridge. It was undoubtedly a very practical idea, but unfortunately some of the footprint to alter road access to it, as well as the footprint of the bridge itself would impact some of the most significant tallgrass prairie habitat in Ontario.

A previous post or two illustrated some of the significant prairie habitat found in the Ojibway Prairie Provincial Nature Reserve. There are many, many significant species at risk in this area, and of course the overall provincially significant habitat scattered throughout. This first photo shows an impressive display of Colic-root, an endangered species, and is not within the OPPNR, but in an area that would be severely altered for road access expansion.

Dense Blazing-star at OPPNR

OPPNR display

Fortunately the environmental consultants evaluating the site for potential development, were more efficient than the ones working for the RDSC. Some of the most significant sections were identified, and even some significant species were documented at new sites, such as the endangered Eastern Prairie Fringed Orchid, next.

There have been some sections permanently altered, as the project goes ahead. An interesting perspective by one of the persons promoting the project was to "just dig up some of the more significant species and plant them elsewhere, such as a roadside patch". In other words, create a garden rather than maintain the quality habitat. I tried to point out that this was just large-scale gardening and did nothing for the overall provincially significant habitat let alone the species survival. Some of the folks understood that, but not enough. And since this project has continued long after I retired, I am sure that some of those impractical thoughts by the proponent were carried out. In fact this new bridge is not yet completed, more than 15 years after it was begun. I haven't been back in that area very often since I retired, in part because I don't want to see the major changes in the high quality habitat that I recalled being there.

Life wasn't all work, at all. Marie, Kristin and I managed a few trips. Some were related to my work interests, such as attending North American Prairie Conferences, first in Nebraska in 2006. The first photo shows them overlooking a river valley of the Niobrara Wildlife Reserve. Marie and Kristin found some things to do while I was attending the conference.

Next, is an example of some of the wide-open prairie area of western Nebraska...

...and watching an elk, wandering around the Niobrara reserve.

We also went to the NAPC in Winona, MN, in 2008, and this time had an extra member along. A student exchange participant, Agnes, from France, was with us. We stopped at a few prairie sites along the way, of course.

Orinoco Prairie

And at Winona, which is right along the Mississippi River, we ventured to a nearby mountain area to get an overview of the city and river. The prospects for sunset photography were promising, so we stayed a bit longer.

There were a few other things going on, and some of it was work related. For example beginning in about 2002, I was invited to become a member of the provincial Committee on the Status of Species At Risk in Ontario (COSSARO), and I was on this committee until about the time I retired. There were well over 100 species at risk known in Ontario even back then, and many of them occurred in the district I was in. I know I was on, or at least involved with, more Species Recovery Teams than anyone else in Ontario, due to the numbers of them occurring in my area. I was also on a handful of Habitat Recovery Teams, which were starting to get more profile since there wasn't much use trying to protect a species unless one also tries to protect the habitat it requires. This was always important to me, and I know for quite awhile I had the following trailer on my work emails: 

"Trying to save a species at risk without saving the spaces at risk that it occurs in, is like trying to treat a life-threatening disease with an aspirin"

I was also the regional coordinator for the second Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas (2001-2005). The region I was coordinator for was Chatham-Kent and Walpole Island.

I was also on a team of editors for the newsletter of the Ontario Field Ornithologists for several years.

So many worthwhile things to do! 

Marie, Kristin and I also included another trip westward, in 2007, and not work-related. We went through the upper mid-west and eventually ended up in Nelson, BC, before our return. The South Dakota Badlands have always intrigued me, and Marie and I had been there before, but not Kristin, so it was a natural place to stop and explore.

Marie and Kristin are overlooking the rugged landscape.

We camped overnight in our van, and were able to enjoy this sunrise

 We explored the Devil's Tower National Monument...

...as well as Grand Teton National Park. This next photo was taken from approximately the same location that Ansel Adams took his famous photo, but he was there at a much better time of day. We had to keep going!

 We also went to Yellowstone...

 and a few others, such as Mt. Rushmore, Craters National Park, and Little Bighorn National Battlefield..... 

Memorial markers at Little Bighorn NB

 ...before getting to BC to visit my sister and husband. While there, we explored other areas, such as the Davis Creek area, near Lardeau. Next, Kristin and Marie are enjoying and photographing the impressive mountain scenery at Kootenay Lake!

After leaving Nelson, we went to Calgary, to visit Marie's brother Gerry, and also visited Banff National Park. Fortunately the park was not as super crowded as it often is. We saw a Clark's Nutcracker.

 

Peyto Lake

Overlooking the Bow River

We also went north to Jasper NP, and stayed overnight part way there. Marie and I got up to enjoy the sunrise in the mountains.

Jasper NP

 Just a never-ending series of places in God's creation to explore and enjoy! Much more to come!

 

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