Thoreau's Legacy by Richard Hayes Read Free Book Online Page B

me. I want to prevent the loss of this one small space, this chapel, miniature and yet inestimably vast. Doing so is a work of love.

    Dorothy Boorse is an associate professor of biology at Gordon College, a small Christian liberal arts college in Wenham, Massachusetts. Her research focuses on wetland ecology.

One Acre at a Time
    Richard Baker
    LIVING IN IOWA, WHICH HAS THE MOST ALTERED landscape of any state, I appreciate Aldo Leopold’s statement about living in a world of wounds. All around us I see the effects of human use and neglect: endless monocultures of corn or soybeans, the loss of native plant communities to invasive species, intensive soil erosion and gullies, and stream pollution, which contributes to the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone. Global warming will only magnify these problems.
    Eight years ago I had the good fortune to move out into the country, to 125 acres of woods, overgrown savannas, ponds, and fields. It was then that I saw a chance to make a difference.
    Leopold said that the first step in intelligent tinkering is to find all the pieces. Historical records helped me determine what the vegetation and landscape were like prior to European settlement. Our area had been a mosaic of prairie on the uplands, forest along the Cedar River, and oak savanna in
between, with a scattering of springs and wet places. This mix
had formed a very stable landscape with little runoff and erosion. My wife, Deb, and I decided that our best legacy would be to return the land to this pattern, restoring where we could and starting from scratch where that was necessary. This strategy will produce stable plant communities and landscapes even in the face of global warming.
    In 2000 we planted a diverse mix of prairie species, such as compass plants and prairie blazingstar, on fourteen acres, the largest flat upland area on the property. In addition, we dammed the upper end of several steep valleys suffering from severe erosion. The dams allowed four small wetlands to form, which we planted with lovely local wetland plants, including wild iris, queen of the prairie, and arrowhead. Runoff and gully formation have virtually stopped, because the prairie sod retains so much moisture, and the wetlands act as holding ponds. Even the floods of 2008 had few adverse effects.
    Aerial photographs dating back to the 1940s and 1950s showed some beautiful oak savannas, but these areas, left unmanaged for sixty years, became overgrown with tall trees. Eight years ago I began burning the understory and also cut many of the fifty- to sixty-year-old trees, leaving the open-grown savanna oaks. Some savanna understory plants are returning, and visitors are charmed by the beauty of this restoration.
    It is a constant struggle to keep a handful of nonnative invasive species, like garlic mustard, autumn olive, and honeysuckle, from taking over the whole landscape. On the positive side, we are solving a number of problems, preserving our natural heritage, and preparing well for any future changes. The long walks I take every day convince me that I’m doing the right thing. Seeing the diversity and beauty of the prairies, savannas, and woodlands and of the birds, butterflies, dragonflies, frogs, and other wildlife gives us great joy. We have found most of the missing pieces of the mosaic, and paradise lost is becoming paradise regained.

    Richard Baker is a professor emeritus of geoscience at the University of Iowa. He and his wife, Deb, and two dogs live in the woods overlooking the Cedar River in eastern Iowa.

Steel Creek
    Amanda Keen-Zebert
    I don’t know how big a difference we can make or how long it will take for the climate to respond to our changes in behavior. I do all the little things in the hope that decades from now I will be able to go to Steel Creek on a cold winter day, hear the elks’ hooves crunch in the snow, and delight in romantic dreams of wilderness and great-grandchildren.

    Amanda Keen-Zebert, a native of northwest