MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES

   The management of prairies includes the simulation of the natural mechanisms that have allowed the prairie to survive to our time such as grazing, fire, and at times, lack of these influences. Other factors include weather and geological and zoological agents. Management also includes active human intervention such as domestic grazing, mowing, and haying as well as manual, biological, and chemical means of selectively removing undesirable species. Passive techniques include monitoring sites that do not require intervention, fencing, and providing buffer areas

   Influences such as grazing, fire, soil disruption, weather change or nonintervention will cause certain species to respond either beneficially or negatively. Management techniques should be chosen for their beneficial effects. Such management techniques should be carefully applied to small portions of each biological community, so as to leave a refuge for species which may be harmed by the given management technique.

HISTORICAL FEATURES RELATED TO PRAIRIE MANAGEMENT

   In general, prairies thrive by occasional influence of grazing and fire. Without such influences, the prairie grasslands progress by succession to poor quality woodlands.

   Grazing is a natural phenomenon. Herbivores are an important component of the prairie ecosystem. Their natural actions include: grazing, uprooting and trampling vegetation, wallowing in mud holes, and creating hoof depressions. They cause considerable damage to woody vegetation by browsing, gnawing and rubbing. Grazing, like fire, probably was fairly random and irregular, although sometimes locally intense and repetitive.

   Fire patterns were probably patchy, random, and irregular, depending on wind, temperature, terrain of the land, and the amount of fuel left by grazers. Some fires were started by Native Americans. These factors would have left unburned swaths of land, which allowed the survival and enhancement of species adversely affected by fire.

   It is worth noting that many of our high quality prairies survived modern settlement most often by one of two means. One way was cutting the prairie for hay one or two times per year. The other way was light intermittent grazing. Most had a component of neglect and a lack of active management. Many had very infrequent fire exposure between settlement and modern day active management.

   Original fire and grazing patterns remain undetermined. Soil surveys, historical accounts, tree ring studies, and land surveyors' notes are used to help identify original biological components, and fire and grazing patterns. These findings may not represent original pre- 1700 conditions due to dramatic cultural influences and reduction in grazers during transitional times (1700's, 1800's). The reduction in grazers may have caused flammable biomass buildup resulting in more frequent fires during transitional times.

   Today, our prairies are fragmented and isolated from each other. Such fragmentation prevents the natural free flow of seeds, animals, and other genetic material from one prairie to another.