Neal Smith Prairie Refuge

Where the Buffalo Roam in a Restored Prairie

BY ANDY DOUGLAS

Three dozen bison roam of portion of the refuge. (Photo © Lin Mullenneaux)

Dusk. A craggy soulful face with curious white eyes beneatha full black mane towers over us. Two massive horns jut from the creature’shead. He stops in the middle of the road and turns his attention to us. Hemust weigh a ton or more.

“Think we should get out of here?” my traveling companion asks.We look around. On the side of the road a frisky bison calf leaps aboutwith toddler energy, then races back to the safety of its mother’slegs.

Nearby a huge patriarch throws himself on the ground and scratches the backof his neck vigorously while clouds of dust rise around him.
“I think as long as we stay in the car, we’re okay.”

Magnificent. Thrilling. Even a little scary. Dusk is buffalo migration timehere at the Neal Smith Wildlife Refuge and Prairie Learning Center. My girlfriendand I are on the first day of a summer weekend getaway, and already the experiencehas exceeded all expectations.

Prairie Expanse

The refuge sprawls across 6,000 acres near Prairie City, a half hour eastof Des Moines. We were tipped off to this dusk bison experience by the ownersof the B and B we’re staying at, a cozy farmhouse called the CountryConnection on a rural acreage five minutes’ drive from here.

We return to our lodging for the evening and homemade ice cream. In the morningwe’re off again. To reach the Prairie Learning Center, the nucleus ofthe Refuge, you drive through miles of rolling prairie-seeded pastoral. It’salmost like traveling back in time, as we imagine what this land was likea hundred years ago.

Then, tallgrass prairie (as opposed to the mixed-grass varieties to the westof Iowa) bloomed across 85 percent of Iowa. Today just a tenth of one percentremains.

A Cool Learning Center

At the Learning Center, a busload of school kids wanders among the exhibits,calling out to their friends when something in particular arouses their excitement,which is often. A mischievous volunteer at the information desk demonstrateshow he teases the kids with a hidden bird whistle.

We watch a selection of short videos: one on sustainable agriculture pioneerAldo Leopold, another a look at pioneer life through the eyes of a land surveyor,even a cool little music video featuring children dancing around and protectingthe prairie.

It’s a very kid-friendly place. There’s an underground maze whereyou can pretend you’re a bug. And a rhizome exhibit showing how extensiveprairie roots are.

The exhibits reflect on all aspects of this land’s history – pioneerlife, native Americans, the railroad. Personally, I could have done with moreexploration of the importance of preserving habitats before they are destroyed.Nevertheless, there’s good work being done here.

This is the largest federal prairie reconstruction effort in the U.S. Thecenter’s mandate is to restore small prairie remnants, reconstruct prairiesby planting seeds, reintroduce bison and elk herds, use fire to encourageprairie and control non-native plants, and restore oak savanna by removingtrees that don’t belong.

The Lure of the Grasslands

The main attraction, of course, lies outside this building.

As we exit, the kids are getting a guided tour of the land, which includesthe identification of plant and animal habitat and a little weed pulling.

Nancy Gilbertson, Refuge Manager, says public education is a top priorityhere. “The kids learn what the prairie was like prior to development,and what the refuge is doing to bring back part of Iowa’s heritage,” Gilbertsonnotes. “They learn about the natural history of the bison, and hownative Americans used every single part of them.”

My companion and I decide to strike out on our own. An auto tour is available,but we choose the four-kilometer tallgrass hiking trail, which winds throughpart of the refuge.

It’s a beautiful, sunny day. A number of red-winged blackbirds zipby. Something that looks like a pheasant erupts from a slough. We don’tsee any elk, or fox. Overall, not a lot of activity today, but it feels goodjust being out here. The wind is fierce and there are few trees to stop itsflow over the rolling hills. A single craggy tree presiding over a distanthill has a Willa Cather prairie feel.

A brochure I picked up in the Center notes that over 350 species of birdsand nearly 100 species of mammals once called this prairie home. Three typesof ecosystems then common to Iowa exist side by side here: prairie grassesand wildflowers, savanna trees and plants, and woodlands. Savannas are scatteredtree groves with prairie plants beneath them, including Iowa’s statetree, the Burr Oak.

In the 1970s this land was held by an electric company. Weirdly, these rollinghills could have become home to a nuclear power plant. But the company decidedto divest itself of the land and in 1990, U.S. Congressman Neal Smith gotinto the act. A strong environmental education proponent, Smith had a visionto create a place where the children of Iowa could see what prairie was oncelike.

It wasn’t the kind of set-up the National Park Services dealt with,since they only preserve what is already there. Instead, the U.S. Fish andWildlife Service came in to oversee an actual restoration of the land.

The Role of Volunteers

Nowadays, some 200 volunteers show up at least once a month; others comeless often. Knees-in-the-dirt folks, they tear down old fences, plant flowers,cut trees, work in the resource library, staff the bookstore. The Friendsof the Prairie Learning Center logged 23,000 volunteer hours last year.

Another cool thing: Volunteers have formed groups called Seed Seekers, whichcontact landowners with remnant prairies and ask for donations of local ecotypeseeds. They catalog these seeds, which are then planted on the refuge accordingto their type, wetland or savannah, say.

Birds & Wildlife Return

A staff land management and research biologist oversees research here, rangingfrom hydrology to erosion studies. A number of universities are also conductingresearch.

“We have a long way to go, a lot to learn,” Gilbertson says. “Theland had all been artificially drained. The river had been channeled, andmost of it was tiled for agriculture. It’d be expensive to cut all thetiles out. We’d like to do that, maybe down the road.”

But one measure of the refuge’s success, Gilbertson says, is the wildliferesponse. Lots of grassland nesting birds are coming back, like the HenslowSparrow. “We’d also like to bring back the prairie chicken,” shesays. The bird, which thrives only on large prairie sites, is a bird-watcher’sfavorite and disappeared from the state in the ’50s.

Does the idea of restoring some land to its original state conflict withthe needs of those who make their living off the land?

“We all need to eat and make a living,” Gilbertson says. “Farmerscan take advantage of programs designed to help them work with nature, suchas CRP.”
“Besides,” she notes, “the private landowners are reallythe ones who will save the ecosystems. The government can’t buy enoughland to do this.”

Connected by Nature

It’ll never be like it was, Gilbertson admits, but she’d liketo see more green infrastructure in Iowa. “If you can work with a communityto put green spaces here and there, work with zoning, you can have connectivityto larger pieces of land, river corridors, prairie corridors. It’s allabout connections.”

As for the Refuge, Gilbertson sees it as a kind of experiment. “Giveit another 50 years. Think about what was here before people took the ploughto it. We’re [replicating] it as closely as we can.”

Far off across the hill, my friend and I spot the bison herd—35 to40 animals, roaming on 700 acres.

We’ve strolled the four-kilometer trail and we’re getting hungry.It’s time to leave the prairie behind. But we carry with us the memoryof those grand creatures striding across the blooming prairie.

For more info, see www.tallgrass.org.

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