What was the catalyst—the magic moment—that brought you to appreciate prairies in the first place? How long have you been working to protect and reconstruct them?
I have always had an affinity for wide-open spaces, so I looked for opportunities to live and work in the West, not realizing that we had native prairie here in Iowa. I was fortunate to live and work briefly on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota in the 1980s, where I learned to appreciate the diversity of grasslands and their value for livestock and wildlife. Later, I returned to graduate school at Montana State University in range science, and it was there that I encountered the burgeoning field of restoration ecology. I decided I wanted to work with restoration and fire ecology to restore tallgrass prairie in the Midwest. After a brief diversion working as a research technician in Georgia in longleaf pine savannas (also a fire-adapted grassland community), I returned to Iowa in 1996 to work at UNI for the Iowa Ecotype Project.
Tell us about your specific role at UNI’s Tallgrass Prairie Center.
As program manager for the Natural Selections program (Iowa Ecotype Project’s trade name), I collect and accession remnant seed; manage horticultural propagation of greenhouse plugs; and oversee the increase, harvesting, and cleaning of native seed. I’ve published articles on the program and have consulted on other seed increase efforts around the nation. I read voraciously to stay current on literature related to native seed increase, and I serve as editor for the TPC e-newsletter. I have developed native plant workshops over the past 10 years, and I do a wide variety of workshops, training, and land management activities. I supervise 3 to 5 students; working with students is one of the most enjoyable aspects of my job.
Beyond the tallgrass species, what other plants and animals are you especially interested in?
I’m familiar with a lot of the more western Great Plains flora, having worked in the mixed grass of South Dakota and the shortgrass and intermountain bunchgrass of Montana. I love vegetable gardening and casual birding/herpetology, and I am a reluctant fisherperson. I grew up on a farm and have a soft spot for cattle, horses, dogs, and chickens…and ok, cats, maybe, if they’re mostly outside.
What has changed in the outdoor world since your first days of trying to learn about it and protect it? What’s better, what’s worse?
It keeps getting more and more messed up. Nobody really cares about the environment until something so overwhelmingly destructive happens that we have to pay attention. Then we stand around acting surprised and pointing fingers at everybody but our own selves. That’s why we have wounded the earth so deeply that it is now bleeding billions of gallons of oil into the Gulf at this very moment. If we recover from this devastation environmentally and economically, perhaps it will usher in a new day for the environment and the planet.
What advice would you give to beginning conservationists?
Do what you love, and love what you do, and try to do it well. Don’t expect to get rich or even to make a living at conservation unless you’re willing to sacrifice. Perhaps one day society will value environment enough to pay people a living wage to steward our world. Right now, we’re graduating biology/natural resource managers who can only find part-time internships or low-paying seasonal jobs in their field.
What are the particular challenges of being a conservationist in the Midwest?
Specific to prairies…they’re too small and isolated…we’re not going to have any prairies left in another few decades, unless we can begin to restore on a landscape scale, complete with fire and grazing (especially browsing by elk). The small, isolated fragments that we have are under relentless assault by invasive species, herbicide drift, sedimentation from adjoining farming activities, brush encroachment, genetic isolation, and outright destruction by plowing, roads, and housing developments. Prairie is a landscape, more than plants, and we have virtually none of it left on that scale. Plus, corporate row crop agriculture dominates this state. We’re not feeding the world, we’re overfeeding our own people on corn sweeteners and soy. Corn is King, but it’s unsustainable.
Greg Houseal,
The Tallgrass Prairie Center Guide to Prairie Restoration in the Upper Midwest
Photograph by Thomas Rosburg, Wildflowers of the Tallgrass Prairie: The Upper Midwest, Second Edition
