Restored Prairies

In the 19th century, this part of Minnesota was covered by a mix of hardwood forests and open savannas, grasslands with scattered trees often including oaks. When settler-colonists moved in, they turned most of the savannas into farm fields. Since the 1980s, park staff have worked to restore Wild River's grasslands. Each fall, naturalists and volunteers collect seeds from remnant prairies and plant them in areas that need restoration, and in this way hundreds of acres of old farm fields have been restored with native plant communities. As restored prairies, these areas support much greater biodiversity than they could as cropland. For thousands of years, prairie and forest have been engaged in a struggle driven by climate cycles: during dry periods with frequent fires, upland areas in the park opened into oak savannas, and when the climate turned wetter, forests reclaimed the land. Fire has long been the grassland's most important means of keeping woody plants from taking over, and in the absence of regular fires and without large grazers like bison and elk, remnant prairies need help to survive through prescribed burns.

Minnesota · United States