TED Talk tech notes 1: Discovering Eco-Restoration

This post adds mostly technical details to a TED talk Stephen Packard gave at the Northbrook Library on May 20, 2017.
That actual talk can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RICTPEFbRh8

The words in bold under the slides are the words spoken in the talk. The rest are the blog comments. 

On August 6, 1977, a dozen of us newly authorized volunteer stewards
gathered our first rare seed. 

We had never heard of anyone doing this. For the record, we gathered smooth phlox (Phlox glaberrima) on land owned by the U.S. Coast Guard. The following week we planted those seeds at three forest preserves: Bunker Hill, Miami Woods, and Wayside Woods. Some experts told us it wouldn't work. Rare prairie plants are too weak to compete with dense weeds, they claimed. But we were determined to try many approaches. In fact, the effort turned out to be dramatically successful. On the other hand, we saw no sign of that success until scores of phlox plants started blooming where we seeded - five years later.

We might have looked kind of random.
But decades later, books would record
that we helped launch a community with a mission
that would have its influence from coast to coast, and across continents.    

"Community" and the "mission" will be recurring themes in this TED talk. We became the dedicated volunteers of the North Branch Prairie Project. Expert mentors adopted and empowered us - establishing a model that would be widely publicized, copied, and improved on over the next few decades.

In time, the seeds we gathered and planted came
to symbolize something new about this planet:
we hold the future of its ecosystems in our hands. 

Indeed, one of the biggest "controversies" and challenges to this new vision was around symbols and concepts. Does nature mean: just let things go? Some people argued that "whatever happens without human meddling" is "nature." But some of us increasingly pointed out to the "Nature Preserves Commission" and "The Nature Conservancy" that what they thought they had "preserved" was seriously degrading. To survive and continue to evolve, the fire-dependent natural ecosystems of the Midwest need the help of human stewards. It gradually became accepted that the millions of years of heritage embodied in biodiversity is now utterly dependent on us.

We now know that the natural richness
of an ancient prairie Nature Preserve
like this one at Somme – without skilled care …    

This photo of Somme Prairie may be pretty at a glance, but it shows only the bit of its richness that blooms in June. There are twenty to twenty-five species of rare plants in the average random quarter-meter of the Grade A prairie here - that rise and bloom week by week throughout the growing season. The pink flower is smooth phlox, that species we gathered seed of on our first day. 

… would get blotted out and replaced entirely, by invasive brush.    

This photo actually shows a high quality prairie that had been entirely replaced by brush. This prairie - "preserved" in a Cook County forest preserve - was the subject of a study by early ecologist Victor Shelford. When I visited the site in the 1980s, I could not find a single prairie plant beyond a few nodding onions in the mowed right of way of 1st Avenue. The science had been published. But no one cared enough to do anything. 

Or, to look from a little more hopeful angle, this invasive-choked woods,
thanks to years of good work by generous stewards, could be and was …    

When we started, this photo was typical of the oak woodlands of the Somme preserves. The few original woodland plant and animal species that remained here were largely in scattered small areas that had more light - on the edges of mowed trails or in gradually succeeding former pastures. Most of us who had studied ecology had been taught that "ecological succession" led to ecological improvement. Now we were learning that "leave it alone" - in the absence of regular fire - led to loss of prairie, savanna, and oak woodland species and quality.  

(My greatest disappointment on how the final TED talk was edited is in these two slides. The contrast between the photo above and the one below should kick off the rest of the talk. "Health can come back!" - is the message. The contrast between these two slides should tell the story. But as the TED talk was edited, the former slide was shown long before, as if that big oak were a part of the overgrown prairie. Oh, well.)

The talk tried to convey that the dark, few-species, degrading area shown above would - with stewardship - become the increasingly rich area, below. 

… restored with the diverse plants and animals that for eons constituted oak woods biodiversity, its ecosystem services, and its very “nature.” 

Here I have to apologize again for a slide in which conventional "beauty" stands in for "biodiversity." In fact, the biodiversity of this restored (or, to put it more accurately, "in the process of restoration") area is barely hinted at by the few species obvious here (oaks, hickories, Joe-Pye-weeds, pale-leaved sunflowers, and a few others). More than a hundred species of grasses and wildflowers (perhaps more than 200 in the area shown here) would emerge if we could watch this scene closely throughout the growing season. And in addition to the plant species, many hundreds of species of butterflies, beetles, birds, salamanders, snakes, walking sticks, mushrooms, soil biota, etc. are recovering here. We'll get to more of that later.

Six years after we began our mission, politics in Springfield

 eliminated the entire budget of the Illinois Nature Preserves System. 

Suddenly without staff to protect approximately 100 important preserves, 
the commissioners asked us to organize a volunteer program. 

Within a year, little fellowships like the one at Somme were protecting 

more than 60 preserves. This network flourished quickly, 

because some people cared a lot.

Here the TED talk lingers on the above slide during a summary of the beginnings of the Volunteer Stewardship Network, sponsored by the The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and Illinois Nature Preserves Commission (INPC).

A principled and courageous agency, the INPC was crippled in August 1982, when Springfield bureaucrats  fired director George Fell and his entire staff. Seeing this in the works, TNC had already hired me (for northeastern Illinois). After the firing, TNC temporarily took on the other field reps (who worked in other parts of the state).

The "1979-1980 Report" of the Commission lists 79 preserves at that time. (There were about 100 in August '82 when the dedicated INPC staff was fired.) That Report also lists 142 "Areas of Commission Concern." Even that number pales beside the 610 surviving areas of high quality listed by the Illinois Natural Areas Inventory (INAI). The job taken on by TNC and the new "stewards" of the pioneering "Volunteer Stewardship Network" was to protect the nature preserves and publicly owned INAI prairies, wetlands, and woodlands in the six counties of northeastern Illinois.

To review the personal stories of some early volunteer leaders, see http://vestalgrove.blogspot.com/2017/06/ted-talk-all-secrets-revealed-part-1.html

The history of the early volunteer network is featured in "Miracle Under the Oaks: the revival of nature in America" by New York Times science writer William K. Stevens.

The account below covers the Volunteer Stewardship Network in the six-county Chicago region. 

Soon, we volunteers were being coached and inspired by some of
the region’s most-respected ecosystem scientists and creative conservation officials. 

Prairie expert, Prof. Robert F. Betz wears the beard. Roland Eisenbeis, forest preserve Superintendent of Conservation, has the pipe in his mouth. Eisenbeis told us to listen to Betz, coordinate with FPD-staff prairie-expert Chuck Westcott (a student of Dr. Betz), and go to work.

A much longer list of professors, conservation professionals, and expert amateurs came together to be part of the Volunteer Stewardship Network. Some of the most important mentors were the Morton Arboretum's Ray Schulenberg, Floyd Swink, George Ware, and Gerould Wilhelm; the Forest Preserve District's Paul Strand, Ralph Thornton, and Kelly Trease; Chicago Academy of Science's William Beecher and Doug Taron; Illinois Nature Preserves Commission's George Fell and Jerry Paulson; Audubon's Alan Anderson and Judy Pollock; Illinois Herpetological Society's Ken Mierzwa; and many many more.

Eisenbeis supported us. But others on his staff sometimes worked to sabotage us. That photo above shows a meeting called by Eisenbeis after the Maintenance Department (a supervisor of which stands, back to the camera, in the foreground, above) unexpectedly mowed all the prairies we were restoring (and that Eisenbeis had committed to protect) in 1978. Also in this photo are the Chief Forester Sam Gabriel (obscured, right) and me, taking notes, on the left. We reached a good consensus.

We cut invasive brush, we pulled aggressive weeds
and safely conducted controlled burns.    

Volunteer leaders trained and learned rapidly, year after year. For controlled burns, we were trained by staff of the Illinois Department of Conservation and INPC (including Marlin Bowles and Fran Harty) and The Nature Conservancy (many years of intensive training workshops). During the '80s and early 90s, expert volunteer teams did a large part of the region's ecological burning - over eight counties. None of our fires ever got out of control or did damage to any adjacent property (neither through fire, smoke, nor any other impact) nor were any participants injured. We may not have worn what are now considered proper uniforms or had fancy equipment. But we were energetic, well-organized, smart, fast, and careful.

In time, many brush patches that had looked like this …    

The slide shows solid buckthorn. Typical partly-surviving grasslands and oak woods went through decades when they were grazed by farm animals. Most species survived in reduced numbers but then, in many cases, were wiped out, ironically, when conservation agencies bought the land and "left it to nature". In the absence of (what is now seen as natural) fire - trees and shrubs (alien and 'native') killed off the understory. Though here the "brush" is buckthorn, "native" ash, basswood, box-elder, maple, and others can do the same.

… became natural prairies once again. We volunteer stewards became known
for public lands ecosystem restoration. Press coverage was great.
People in surrounding states (and soon countries) sought our support and guidance. Some of us were hired by conservation agencies to head up new programs.
But there would never be remotely enough paid folks
to do all the needed work – with all the needed care. 

The diverse grassland in the photo above replaced dense brush. After cutting the trees and shrubs, we gathered seeds (spring, summer, and fall), prepped them for planting (in a dozen separate mixes according to wetness, shade, and weediness), and broadcast them. In this case, you see the plants of the mesic prairie mix. We seeded for many seasons - later adding the later-successional species (like prairie violet, prairie phlox, yellow star grass, and shooting-star (which competed better in "prairie turf" than against "weeds" on bare ground). About half of Somme Prairie Grove was burned every year - for decades - before rich biodiversity like this gradually triumphed. Common weeds were the first species to flourish after removal of the brush. They were mostly out-competed, slowly, by prairie species. 

One bit of the magic of the Illinois Nature Preserve law was that conservationists could advocate that a ecological gem be "dedicated" into the system by any agency that owned it. Once dedicated, the woodland or prairie was legally protected from exploitation or maltreatment; only later did conservationists come to realize that expert care was also needed. Yet little restoration was done by the many agencies that owned preserves but did not have staff experts in ecological land management. In those days, it was not difficult for a bright, energetic person to learn more than staff people with no training - and who may have had little interest.

I chose the place we now call Somme Prairie Grove as the preserve
where I’d be volunteer steward. 

Other people could best tell the restoration story with reference to other sites, which they know as I know Somme. I hope they will.

This talk focused on Somme because the local library's TED series seemed like a good opportunity to find more local volunteers. But even for a broad general audience, my intimate relationship with this challenging site seemed to help me figure out how to tell the story.

Somme Prairie Grove benefitted from persistence. But it often went begging, as my job as Illinois Nature Conservancy's Director of Science and Stewardship required me to spend most of my time on hundreds of other important natural areas. I stuck with Somme in part because I didn't want to lose touch with what it's like to be an individual site-steward. Often I felt like a "bad parent" - as "my site" was neglected on the basis of state-wide challenges - budgets, staffing, regulations, media, other sites, etc. etc.

But whenever I could get free, I was at Somme, pulling invasive weeds, gathering seeds, noticing failures and successes, struggling with off-road-vehicle challenges, and advocating against development proposals (pipelines and bike trails, for example ... they could better choose other routes), and trying to figure out many levels of priorities.

At Somme, we did some good – learned some lessons – and were credited
with some discoveries. We thought we were restoring prairie. Some experts
encouraged us to cut back all the trees, to expand the precious prairie
to a more sustainable size. But, as we cut, we found scattered oaks –
and rare non-prairie plants and animals. We began to suspect that we were
uncovering a poorly understood and even more endangered ecosystem –
the oak savanna.  In time, research at Somme and many sites confirmed
our suspicions. This was really fun – kind of like eco-archeology,
or finding grimy Rembrandts at garage sales.    

At first, Somme Prairie Grove was called "Somme Woods Prairie." In time, we came to know that it was not mostly prairie. This work is experimental. We need to be constantly testing and learning. Some of us started to realize that by limiting our conservation vision to prairies and woods, we were missing an important element. The oak savanna is a fire-dependent grassland with scattered and clumped trees. As we experimented with how to manage and understand it, we reached out and in time organized North America's first "savanna conference" - drawing pretty much all the experts that existed. (North Branch leader Karen Rodriguez had landed a job with U.S.E.P.A. and, with federal sponsorship, pulled together this important conference.) Federal and state agencies and conservation organizations needed to re-write their standards and manuals and revise their priorities to take account of what we were learning about fire-dependent oak ecosystems.

Now – not just prairies - but savannas and woodlands
that had been choked with buckthorn …    

In one Somme area that had looked like the above slide, we just burned and seeded - without cutting the buckthorn. For a couple of years only the small buckthorns were top-killed by fire. But after a few years, even the older trunks were dying. Little came up from the "seed bank". But we began to broadcast local seed; we kept burning; and richness returned impressively until "The Moratorium" ended the burning for a few years. (See these notes, Part 3, for more on 'moratorium'. See Part 4 for the graph of results.)

These days our treatment for a woods like this is to cut and herbicide all the large brush and pole trees, spend a year foliar-spraying brush seedlings and re-sprouts, then broadcast local seed, and burn annually or biennially for a few years.

... began to regain their richness and health.
Hundreds of species of formerly-vanishing plants once again supported …    

This photo shows success, but it's a preliminary and limited success. None of those pencil-pole-trees in the background will develop noble arms like the old tree in the foreground. (Indeed, those impressive lower branches would probably have been fire-pruned in most spots on the original landscape.) If we didn't have higher priorities, we'd have thinned many of those skinny pole trees. Similarly, if we'd had time, we'd increase the amount of seed we gathered (and broadcast)(especially of conservative species) from many local sites. The few plant and animal species that now dominate in this photo have among them scores of other species, here and there, less visible because they're less common, or merely shorter. We suspect that even visually in a photo like this, the dominants will over time yield much of their space to more diversity. Our monitoring seems to show it gradually happening.  But the return to as-full-health-as-it-can-recover still seems far away.

… thousands of species of animals that are rare or uncommon in the modern landscape.    

We have reason to believe that many species were lost from Somme Woods (including the woodland lady-slippers, the gray tree frog, many snake species, the wolf, of course, and many others). Somme Prairie Grove has five snake species. Somme Woods (across the street) had none when we started and for decades as we slowly restored. We began finding three species of snakes there after three decades of habitat restoration.

Some ecologists have estimated that a thriving ecosystem has ten species of animals for each species of plant. With about 500 species of native plants, that would mean 5,000 species of animals (mostly beetles, pollinators, etc.), if the ecosystem was whole. Yet, at the Somme preserves, at least some species that were barely hanging on in small numbers in odd corners are now already thriving once again (see below).

Most of those thousands are insects.   

For example: when entomologist Dr. Ron Panzer studied Somme in the early eighties, he suggested that the savanna ecosystem may not survive, because he failed to find savanna indicator-species like the Edward's hairstreak butterfly. When Dr. Panzer repeated his survey after a few years of brush cutting and burning, he found many hairstreak species, with Edward's now being the commonest.

What about conservation-significant ants, bees, walking sticks, and so many others? No one has studied their response to the restoration. We hope someone will. In areas like this, with pockets of remnant ecosystem and large expanses of "Grade C remnant" restoration in process, there are some studies suggesting that much survives. Some expert studies are under way at Somme. But many more are dearly needed.

But many are species that the average visitor would be inspired by. 
For example, before we started ...  

When we started our restoration of Somme Woods (the part of the Somme preserves east of Waukegan Road), no tanagers could be found there. In fact, when we begged a well-respected birder to start monitoring there, he checked the site out and (kind of angrily) complained that we had wasted his time. "What's the point of monitoring when there are no birds there?!" he said.

He wasn't convinced it that important change was likely, nor that it was worth it to sample the "before." Scarlet tanagers do especially well in open oak woodlands. A "mere" two decades later, multiple pairs of tanagers nest here every year. We even see them foraging among the natural shrubs and wildflowers - now that they're thriving. Indeed, a great many species returned to that open woods, as they had to the savanna.

... none of these birds built their nests or raised their young in the deteriorating Somme Woods.    

Indigo bunting, male. These bunting were common in the savanna areas but completely absent from Somme Woods when restoration began. Now they can be heard singing in most of the "under restoration" areas - among much denser trees than we'd imagined likely.

Indigo bunting, female carrying material for nest.

Eastern bluebird is another species that has expanded from the savanna to the open woods.

Now – year after year – all these species nest at Somme.

Hummingbirds nest in trees - but spend much of their time catching insects and drinking nectar from flowers. Unlike the slow-dispersal of most frogs, snakes, plants, and even most insects, most bird species will find good habitat unaided, it it's restored. As large "Grade C" areas are restored, one high priority that's still in its infancy is the development of practical methods of restoring the animals of good and high-quality communities.

But the successes here are well under way. Somme Prairie Grove was dedicated as an Illinois Nature Preserve in 2021 - as the first savanna and first "large Grade C" area ever awarded that recognition and level of protection. 

This concludes the technical notes on the first quarter of the TED talk - 22 slides of this 80 slide talk.

Less technical comments for a broader audience are at: http://vestalgrove.blogspot.com/2017/06/ted-talk-all-secrets-revealed-part-1.html

In the meantime, other good references include:
"Miracle Under the Oaks: the revival of nature in America" by William K. Stevens
"Force of Nature: George Fell, founder of the natural areas movement" by Arthur Melville Pearson

Photo credits:
Lisa Culp Musgrave took all those outstanding bird, dragonfly, and salamander photos.
Larry Hodak took the photo of Prof. Betz, Eisenbeis, etc. mentoring us.
Gloria Fountain took the photo of the "Somme Prairie Grove" sign and people.