PRAIRIE AND SPIRITUAL RESTORATION

18 September 2009
Houston Endowment
Houston, Texas

Jaime Gonzalez

Jaime Gonzalez spoke first.  He is in charge of outreach at the Katy Prairie Conservancy, and previously worked at the Houston Arboretum and Nature Center.  He has a B.S. and M.S. in science education., and teaches at the University of Houston. 

Mr. Gonzalez noted that early 19^th century visitors to Houston were astounded by the richness of the prairie, seeing it as the “perfect flower garden”.  Prairie is estimated to have made up 78% of the Houston area.  The 1937 mural at Houston’s Ideson Library, which shows lilies and winecups, not the generic bluebonnets, suggests that the painter, and most Houstonians, had close and easy access to visit and know prairies even at that late date.

However, little now is left of that native coastal prairie.  The largest remnant in Harris County, the 92-acre Saums Road Prairie, was destroyed this year for use as a flood detention area.  While it hosted more than 200 plant species and populations of Swainson’s hawks and rabbits, it was discovered too late (only 5 years ago), and cost too much ($18 million), to be saved.  So, instead, 21,000 square feet of samples (about ½% of the entire site) were dug up by hand, with tree spades, and with front-end loaders, and then redistributed to a variety of sites throughout the city.  Remnants of the remnant can now be founded at the Katy Prairie Conservancy, Brays Bayou Wildscape, Mandell Park, Nature Discovery Center, Gulf Coast Bird Observatory, Harris County Flood Control District sites, Harris County Precinct 1 lands, and at a private home.

Mr. Gonzalez went on to describe the Katy Prairie that his group works to protect.  It is 600,000 acres in size, and historically was inhabited by 2 Native American tribes, and by a diverse population of buffalo, red wolves, and pronghorn antelopes.  However, the Katy Prairie is being rapidly developed:  the center of Houston’s development is estimated to be in Katy by 2029!  To save part of the Prairie, the Katy Prairie Conservancy has gotten fee simple title to 13,000 acres, and has made agreements to protect 4500 acres.  This is clearly a big area (Manhattan only has 14,000 acres), but ranches and megafauna (a cougar has been seen recently on the Prairie) need big acreage to survive.

With the rapid development in the area, the Prairie’s flood control role is growing more important.  Flood risks are rising.  In April 2009, following construction of nearby roads and subdivisions, downstream neighbors reported their first floods.  However, left intact, a prairie, with its plants’ roots channeling water to the soil, can absorb 9” of rain.  Each acre of prairie can hold up to 3/4 acre-foot of water, or 245,000 gallons.

In addition to the flood management role, prairies provide critical habitat for wildlife, including snow geese, river otters, beaver, even cricket frogs.  Further, the prairie has another significant value:  coastal Texas prairies underwrite a waterfowl hunting business worth $55 million per year.

But, prairies are exceedingly rare.  According to a recent survey by the Native Prairies Association of Texas, there are only 7 prairies known in Harris County, the largest being only 17 acres in size, and generally ranging between just 5 and 10 acres.  Only one-half of them are protected by land trusts.  Even the more outlying areas of Houston have few prairies left:  just 5 remnants were reported in Fort Bend County (4-9 acres in size), and only 13 remnants were found in Brazoria County (again, none bigger than 20 acres).

The decline of prairies has had ripple effects on the wildlife that depends on them.  Since 1969, populations of field sparrows are down 65%, northern strike numbers have fallen 71%, eastern meadowlarks have declined 72% and northern pintail ducks have slid 73%.

As a response, the Katy Prairie Conservancy has joined with other non-profits (Ducks Unlimited, Houston Audubon Society, Texas Master Naturalists, Texas Nature Conservancy, and the Wildlife Habitat Federation), schools (Texas A&M University), and agencies (Texas Parks and Wildlife, US Geological Survey) to collaborate on a joint effort to protect and restore prairies.  This group, the “Coastal Prairie Partnership, grew out of a April 2009 meeting, “State of the Prairies”, that was attended by 80 individuals and 15 institutions.  Their efforts include on-line training for restoration techniques, on-the-ground recovery work (one site is at Brazos Bend State Park), and new prairie plantings (the Blazingstar project at the Houston Children’s Zoo).  At this time, their greatest need is equipment, such as a balebuster (a device that shreds and distributes seed hay) and a seed drill.  Each implement costs about $15,000.  Their plan is to build up an array of prairie tools that could be operated as a co-op, rented or loaned out to members.

Mr. Gonzalez concluded with a simple card game to show the basic facts of prairie conservation.  He distributed 100 cards, and explained that the 2, 3 and 4 cards represented prairies that had been overtaken by exotic plants, that the 5, 6, 7, and 8 cards symbolized prairies that had been damaged by development, that the king and ace of hearts denoted prairies that had been literally paved over, that the aces of clubs and diamonds corresponded to prairies in decent shape, and the ace of spades was the only winning card - the only prairie in virgin condition.  The ink in the center of ace of spades design  represented still less - the tiny area within the departed Saums Prairie, the “Rolls Royce” of prairies.

Jarid Manos:

Jarid Manos is the CEO of the Great Plains Restoration Council, which he founded in 1999.  The group has been involved in the protection and restoration of the Ogallala Prairie Preserve (Badlands National Park, South Dakota), the Katy Prairie and Coastal Bayous Restoration (Houston, Texas), the Southern High Plains Preserve (northeastern New Mexico), and the Saltwater Country (Texas Gulf Coast).

Mr. Manos is driven by what he sees as a landscape of pain when he drives through the Great Plains, a picture of violence to wildlife and to ourselves.  He views it as a tattered landscape, a reflection of our culture of atrocity and separateness.  He thinks that there is a need to look for deeper health and interdependence within our bodies and the larger ecosystem.  He sees a connection between the condition of our nations’ creeks and the nature of our bloodstreams.  In the same sense, if there is no safe spot for wildlife then there can be no safe spot for young people. 

Fortunately, he believes that damaged youth can heal themselves as they work to restore and heal damaged landscapes.  Mr. Manos notes that there are 10,000 in jail in Harris County, 7000 of whom are incarcerated for minor offenses, but who will often leave jail in worse shape, more bitter and desperate and likely to break the law.  Many of those in jail have never worked.  Ecological restoration can provide meaningful work for them:  in weed control, native planting and the like.  Work heals!  His goal for the Council’s “Restoration not Incarceration” program is to put 1000 workers in the field per day, restoring ecosystems, reducing community violence, and bringing down recidivism (a 77% fall was seen after the Sheldon Lake project).  He sees this work as a bridge to cure immediate social needs and to remedy more long-term environmental needs. 

He thinks that we need to remember that most crimes are related to desperation, a lack of value of self, of place or in others, and a crisis-driven chaotic reaction to a belief that one has nowhere else to turn.  Taking care of the earth, and refusing to accept the loss of the prairie, allows us to see the value and the importance in damaged people.  This attitude can stabilize desperate people, and rehabilitate them.

Climate change has raised the stakes for this and other landscape efforts.  The American Dust Bowl of the 1930s and the current forest destruction in Indonesia release large amounts of carbon, destabilizing our climate.  Mr. Manos believes that only 50% of us will survive the crisis of climate upheaval.  However, prairies can act as major carbon sinks, reabsorbing dangerously high carbon levels. 

But, Mr. Manos stresses that this ecological work is more than about restoring lands, it is about rehabilitating people and civilizations.  He sees it as an audacious effort to somehow reconcile the two sides of Jane Goodall’s human ape, the half-sinner and the half-saint, to, in the end, recover an empathy-based culture. 

Coments, questions and answers:

C: One donor said that Mr. Manos talk reminded him of the precepts of Urban Harvest, of efforts to work with the soil to build self esteem, find a higher sense of self, and fight desperation.

C: A second donor recalled her 9-day prairie tour, where she visited with one of Jarid’s crews, and met a horribly burned young person named Michael.  She learned to respect Michael as a self-assured, smart person, and saw his intense work as helping him come up from very little advantage.

Jarid Manos pointed out that his group is participating in the conference, “Breaking the Color Barrier in Nature”, a youth town hall, which Michael will attend, and remind the public that people of color do care for the environment.

Q: Please explain more about the proposed work with the Harris County Jail.  Mr. Manos said that the program would work mostly with the temporarily incarcerated, most in their teens and 20s, bringing them green jobs, providing social workers to supervise them, recruiting restoration scientists to lead them, and enlisting the County to provide security, food and shelter.

Q: How can these restoration efforts be used to teach environmental appreciation? Mr. Manos said that his organization is working with the Botanic Research Institute of Texas and the Texas Master Naturalists to use a Socratic method with the inmates to make sure that the ecological restoration work is scientifically defensible.

Q: The prairie restoration vision is moving, but how can landowners be persuaded to restore prairies, especially those in the rice industry who are struggling to survive in a tough business and to compete for limited water supplies?  Mr. Gonzalez recognized her concern and said that there needed to be an effort to reach beyond the choir, to get more politicians and landowners involved in the Coastal Prairie Partnership to find shared economic and political solutions.  He hopes that the planned CPP conference, scheduled for November 2010, will help broaden participation.  At this point, he is disappointed with the low level of ecoliteracy:  he recalls how schoolchildren visiting the Houston Arboretum’s pine and post oak forest would often be discouraged that it was not a rainforest, not seeing the value of what is local and special.

C:  A donor commented that he thought that some farmers and ranchers might come around to the value of prairie restoration when they saw how water and fertilizer costs might fall, dropping below what was required to support improved exotic grasses and hybrid crops.

Jaime Gonzalez noted that farmers might be encouraged to know that ethanol could be produced from switchgrass more efficiently than from corn, and that this switchgrass/ethanol industry could actually become a carbon-sink operation.

Jarid Manos added that he thought that the agriculture industry might be encouraged by the income that they could receive from prairies seen as carbon-trading assets and ecotourism destinations.

Q:  How can partnerships with cattle ranches be found?  Mary Anne Piacentini noted that the Katy Prairie Conservancy had been operating a 6000-acre ranch in tandem with the original landowners, and had been excited to see the potential of raising native prairie grasses and forbs to produce restoration seed for sale.  The Pierce Ranch near El Campo is currently doing this 

C: A donor noted that prairie can be restored by using cattle as a tool, particularly if highly intense, “mob-grazing” techniques are used.  He has seen nonnative Bermuda pastures yield native stands of eastern gamma grass after the hoof action of intense, brief grazing.

Mary Ann Piacentini felt that prairie restoration was costly in some respects for ranchers near Houston due to the high value of land, and the high cost of leaving it fallow while the prairie is recovered.  On the other hand, due to the urban development around many of the remaining ranches, there was great value in the ranches’ flood detention role.  Ms Piacentini also thought that retained floodwaters could be put to good use to restore damaged creeks on ranchlands.

C:  A grantmaker noted that he was recently surprised by the high cost of grassfed buffalo - $33 for 2 ribeyes - and thought that that might provide good financial support for restored prairie and roaming bison.

Jaime Gonzalez said that there were many values for prairies, but two key obstacles to their restoration.  First, acquiring the few small remnants, for their own value and as seed sources, was essential.  Second, it was important to collect balebusters, seed harvesters, seed drills, prescribed burn material, and other restoration equipment that could be maintained and shared by a cooperative network.