Prairie and Veldt: what tallgrass illinois might learn from tallgrass africa

Some of us stewards spent three weeks among rhinos and lions trying to get a feel for what "grassland with megafauna" can teach us about the prairies and savannas we’re trying to restore at home.

It’s complicated and different. We knew that. But the grasslands we’re working to rediscover had American bison and wolves – and not many millennia back our ecosystem evolved with mammoths and other counterparts of lions, rhinos, cheetahs, and zebras of the Kruger megafauna. (For a good summary of ancient tallgrass history, see Tim Flannery’s “The Eternal Frontier.”)

We'd come to see rare nature as precious and delicate. Not among elephants and hippos. We were stuck by the massive and ever-present impacts of the big animals. Illinois nature preserves in contrast seem like botanic gardens under glass. Much of South Africa's Kruger wilderness (especially where recently burned) smells like a stable or a cow-barn. It’s not at all a bad smell, outside. But you sure know you’re around wild “livestock.” The smell of nature there mixes animals, decay, flowers, and clean clear air. It’s a gloriously powerful smell.

Tracks, animal trails, wallows, dung middens, fire scars and animal scars are everywhere, everywhere. The trails we walked on looked like the Somme trails. But in this case, big animals made them – footpaths, hoofpaths, paw-paths. Every tree has “character” carved on it by fire, teeth, claws, tusks and rubbing.

The Kruger climate is not tropical. It’s more like Georgia (in Kruger's cooler, wetter south) or Texas (in the park's drier, hotter north). The preserve extends a whopping 200 miles, north to south, and is 60 miles wide where we were, in the tallgrass cooler south.

Shrubs and trees are typically in a grass matrix. When you look close, 

every woody plant is burned, eaten, or trampled. If you want to zoom in, notice shrub skeletons 

(and zebra with various antelopes foraging in the middle distance to the right). 

Walking on this hallowed ground is dangerous and forbidden unless led by rangers with guns. 

The rangers are incredibly knowledgeable and aware (of tracks, smells, and the meaning of obscure sounds). A person with ranger abilities can walk safely in this nature, unarmed. 

Many of the rangers are clearly the native people of this land and have been for countless generations. Philamon (pointing) knew every grass, and how much various animals liked to eat it. 

He knew native uses for seeds, flowers, stems, and bark. He could identify without binoculars 

every bird that we could see only by using them. We stewards seek to become his counterpart in the prairies and woodland of North America. But we have a long way to go.
In the foreground is a dung midden left by a male white rhino. 

Rangers know Phd levels of detail about the ecology of dung middens.  

A conventional arborist might shudder. The stump here has likely burned 

and re-sprouted countless times. The dark-barked tree to the right has had its top eaten off repeatedly. These trees are nature. They are beautiful. Real nature requires an adjusted aesthetic. 

So too does the ground, torn up by wallows. Buffalo, rhinos, elephants, and many others make and frequent them. As in Illinois, many species of plants seem adapted to the edges of wallows 

or burned-off shrubs. Natural disturbance diversity promotes plant diversity. 

These elephants are standing in a wallow and throwing dirt on their backs. 

(If you want to zoom in you can see a cloud of clods released by the trunk of the cow on the left.) They butt trees down. They dig, wallow, trample, eat, and generally throw their weight around. Masters of Disturbance. 

This is wilderness. But our words "pristine," "unspoiled," and "untouched" seem not quite right. Indeed, much of our common "natural areas thinking" doesn't quite fit here. 
Does that suggest we may need better words for our own work?

Rangers also teach appreciation of trees, grasses, hydrologies, and spiders.
When we put this baboon spider back in its hole, the ranger carefully camouflaged the burrow he'd opened to as not to help parasitic wasps find this splendid creature.

The shrubs in this photo have been burned and are re-sprouting. The grass is lush. Buffalo are said to be the most dangerous of "the big five" if you hunt or otherwise antagonize them. But if you're cool, they can be friendly, curious, and kind of regular. Some guides let us get very close to them.
The park folks think a lot about the visitor experience. Visitor support
is what keeps the park funded and safe from inappropriate development.

Zebras, like buffalo, eat grass. Giraffes, like white-tailed deer, eat leaves and the bark of twigs. 

Large areas of the park have few trees higher than giraffes, which continually browse the tops, maintaining a kind of fifteen-foot-high "woody lawn."

When walking through tall grass we sometimes came across areas where the vegetation was very short. Some rangers explained that these were areas where the grass was very nutritious, so the grazers kept them eaten down. But I could rarely detect so much as a nibbled blade. A later ranger explained that these were "sodic sites" - with high sodium because hydrology brought mineral-laden water to the surface here, and most plants couldn't grow in the mineral soil. He also said that the plants that did slowly grow in these paces had high mineral content which some animals sought out. Many animals also liked to loaf in these areas, perhaps because of the breeze and the safety of good visibility? 
In this case, we watched four young cheetah siblings from an open car, on a rarely used dirt road. Big cats, rhinos, and elephants don't seem to abide us walking close to them. But they don't much mind people in vehicles. Cars, as "blinds," are an important part of experiencing the park. 

Our photos of people out walking are mostly of people's backs. No one was allowed to dart out front to take a picture. Guides kept us close together, safe, and silent.

When the group stopped 

to look at tracks, or a flower, 

or bug, or whatever, 

one ranger typically went off 

by himself to listen, 

smell, and decide our route. 

Rangers heard subtle 

sounds that might reveal 

what was invisible in a thicket - from the rumble 

of an elephant's stomach 

to the call of a certain bird 

that might mean rhinos ... 

or other birds 

that might indicate 

a large predator. 

A person cannot get most 

such skills in a classroom 

or from books.

You come to know 

key parts of nature 

by learning in nature.   

We continue to think about Kruger.

It's an important place on this planet. Thank you, South Africa!

Photos by Jeanne Dunning, Linda Masters, and Stephen Packard