Palatine Prairie Needs Somebody

Rescued from bulldozers, a gem of nature began rapidly dying from something more insidious.

Palatine Prairie (an Illinois Nature Preserve) is just 2.5 acres of original prairie and marsh that was almost destroyed in 1979. Advocates saved it from bureaucrats and "progress." Stewards began managing it back to good health. (Some of it had suffered from invasives and brush.)

Palatine Prairie in 1979. Scraps of original prairie are precious beyond words.

The preserve featured a small area of high-quality wet-mesic prairie, hundreds of plants of the threatened prairie lady’s-slipper, and a drier slope that had long ago been over-grazed but was recovering with high populations of quality species.

Prairie Woods Audubon Society raised tens of thousands of dollars and bought some adjoining acreage to complete the preserve. They fended off a proposal to build a high-rise that would have damaged the prairie by shade. In 1995 the little gem was granted “the highest form of protection under Illinois law” by being dedicated as an Illinois Nature Preserve.

All seemed well except for one little deadly problem. Malignant crown vetch (Coronilla varia) was creeping down the railroad track toward the prairie. A number of us warned the stewards and the Park District and Nature Preserves staff that the threat was serious. Crown vetch can utterly destroy a prairie.

Years ago more than one of us reported: "Alarm! The invasive menace is not just close. One square yard of the prairie is gone." Many of us counseled quick action, and quite a few of us offered to help. We received assurances and promises, but the undertone kind of sounded like, “Leave us alone. We'll do this ourselves.”  

So I was stunned by what I saw on a visit in 2013. On about a fifth of the prairie, the natural vegetation was gone. I sent an urgent alert with the two photos below to everyone I thought might care and help. 

In April 2013, the western end of the prairie was choked by crown vetch, the plant here with little leaflets. 

A precious heritage and an Illinois Nature Preserve were being lost. The infested fifth of the original prairie was recoverable, but the longer we waited, the more difficult would be the needed stewardship - and the less complete the recovery.

Somehow the vetch kills most other plants. The only other plant in this photo
that still has enough energy to bloom is bastard toadflax.

The Wikipedia entry on crown vetch says this invasive is “very hard to eradicate.” Wikipedia needs to catch up. For years stewards have known that crown vetch is now fairly easy to kill. You spray it with Transline, and it folds. The good thing about Transline is that this newish herbicide won’t kill most plants. It doesn’t hurt monocots (grasses, lilies, orchids, etc.). And among the dicots, it principally kills legumes (like the vetch) and composites. But legumes (beans, clovers, etc.) are important to the natural diversity that makes an original prairie precious. So are composites (asters, goldenrods, sunflowers, etc.). To control crown vetch, you have to temporarily sacrifice the prairie clovers, indigos, leadplants, blazing stars, and coneflowers. In 2013, one person could easily have sprayed all the vetch in an hour or two. 

 

Herbiciding many of the most beautiful wildflowers of the prairie is emotionally difficult for someone who loves the ecosystem. Many stewards initially hesitated. But crown vetch can destroy all the original plants - and all the rare butterflies, walking sticks, beetles and myriad other small animals that depend on them. The sooner the invasive is wiped out, the sooner the lost species will seed themselves back from the edges of the vetch-killed area. The recovered prairie would be indistinguishable from the original, if not too big an area has been lost for too long. Unfortunately the animals are especially vulnerable to a reduction in habitat.

I heard from others (who had also been speaking up) that the message had finally gotten through. The approvals had been completed; the contracts had been written; and the work had begun. So when I had a chance to drop by again last week, I was hopeful.

But effective work wasn’t done in 2013. Nor in 2014. And now seeds are set for 2015.

Some people argue that nature should be left alone, and then high quality nature will prevail. I had never before had the grim scientific opportunity to test the “no action” alternative on a good original prairie. Now I did. The pace of degradation was worse than I’d feared. More than half of the original prairie is gone.

August 2015: dense vetch is two to three feet high over most of the prairie. Those dark fingers are mature seed pods. 

Yellow outlines original prairie. Red outlines current extent of heavy crown vetch invasion. Red dots are outlier vetch populations of a few square yards each. Left unchecked, the invasive will soon have destroyed the entire original prairie.

Hundreds of people devoted 36 years to a gem of nature. Do we have to admit that all the dedication and resources have failed?

It’s a sad story. But looming defeats can be valuable catalysts that inspire new initiatives and approaches. The Palatine Prairie saga raises some existential questions.

1. Have we conservationists spread ourselves too thin? The few of us speaking up for Palatine Prairie at occasional intervals were not enough. Many of us are committed to many sites, and we have to prioritize how we invest our time.

2. Are we failing to recruit and empower effective 2^nd generation leaders? Does it sometimes turn out that people who make great stewards may not necessarily make great recruiters of stewards? Do we sometimes “pass the torch” to people who don't really want the whole job? How often can we count on inspiration just spreading naturally among the stewards?

How do we assure needed resources, as we make commitments to the future?

3. Do public agencies depend too much on stewards – especially too much on newer, less trained, and less expert stewards? Some inexperienced stewards, for example, have counseled (especially smaller, less-expertly-staffed) agencies not to burn or not to herbicide. In the case of Palatine Prairie, the "steward" is apparently a group. Dedicated individuals grow in experience and knowledge over the years in ways that don't apply to groups. Are there approaches that would work better?

4. Do we fail to recognize the need for (and fail to demand) agency responsibility? Public agencies don’t work well without strong constituency. When depending on government - from the local park district to the feds - we need to celebrate that we live in at least a partial democracy and that issues just don’t get funding or competent work unless people care – and convey to officials and decision-makers that we know what’s happening and we do care. We need to advocate effectively for good science and effective implementation.

5. Why is it that no one is being the needed champion for so many deserving preserves? This one is not alone. Did no knowledgeable person visit Langham Island or Palatine Prairie regularly, or if they did, were they just not speaking up? Could it be that our generation has lost the “culture of advocacy” that the conservation community was building from the time of John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt through to the days of Aldo Leopold and George Fell? Pollution has its Erin Brockoviches. But natural areas mostly don’t. Sometimes one advocate is all it takes. In this case, if one person reminded and facilitated weekly or monthly, that could have made the difference.

In this 2015 photo, the leaves of prairie dock, gayfeather, rough blazing star, and prairie sunflower can be seen surviving, for now. Sadly, all those species are composites that will be killed by the herbicide that controls the malignant vetch. But herbiciding this invasive is the only way to save the prairie, and the sooner it's done, the less is lost. 

Update: We are told that concerted efforts to control crown vetch at Palatine Prairie by both volunteers and professionals will begin in 2016.