It’s early according to nature’s timetable, only the second growing season since the seeds went into the soil. But already prairie grasses and wildflowers are reclaiming sod on 600 acres of the Bilby Ranch Conservation Area in Nodaway County. The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) is restoring a tract on the area into the type of natural wildlife habitat that once covered most of northwest Missouri.
“Our goal is to restore a tallgrass prairie ecosystem, something that we don’t have a lot of acres,” said Phil Boyer, MDC wildlife biologist. “We want a contiguous grassland, uninterrupted. We’re trying to make it look like it might have been in the early 1800s.”
Purple coneflowers and yellow ox-eye sunflowers are blooming this summer on hills in the restoration tract. Warm-season grasses such as big bluestem, Indiangrass, and side oats grama are emerging. It will take years for the deep-rooted prairie plants to fully express their growth potential. But already they are providing overhead cover, insect hosts, and bare-ground openings at the base of plants that help ground-nesting birds like bobwhite quail. That change has already boosted the spring and fall quail counts at Bilby Ranch.
Source: mo.gov
Photo Credit: pexels-jeffrey-czum
Categories: Missouri, General