Restoring a Grassland

As I sit at my desk, I can hear the sound of a bobcat running into giant bushes and making them into mulch. Not really the sound you'd expect to hear at a Nature Center. But we have been working on getting our grasslands back (see May 2007 post-Men with Chainsaws) and this is part of it. As I have blogged about before, we have Autumn Olive. If you don't know what that is, you are lucky. It is an invasive bush from Asia brought here in the 1800's to help with erosion control and for wildlife habitat. No one apparently knew that it would be so weedy and completely take over entire areas. On our land, it has taken over the native grassland/meadow areas. Our property has been traditionally called Gleason Meadows and we have been losing our meadows! That also means losing grassland birds that use these areas for nesting and food habitat. We have had many species of grassland birds in the past including Bobolinks and Meadowlarks. No longer. We have had Grasshopper Sparrows in the recent past and that's pretty amazing since that species is in decline by 98% in New York. To get the birds back, we need our habitat back. Right now it kind of looks like a tornado ran through here (photo upper right), but you have to have VISION. To know that if we remove the invasives and manage them, we can let the grasses take back over.

The plan is to restore 30 acres and it had been slow-going until this week. Without the correct equipment, we have been hacking away at the tangled mess for several years now with chain saws, loppers, a chipper and A LOT of man hours. But this week, thanks to huge support (to the tune of about $800/day) from the USFWS...we have a Bobcat. Not just any Bobcat but one see aove with a drum and blades on the front and this big metal thing that pushes stuff over. What took literally days before is now taking hours. We only have it for 6 days and so staff and volunteers have been working furiously to get as much done as possible. So if you hike at Tanglewood any time in the near future, please don't panic. We haven't lost our minds or our mission. Know that we are working on something that will be better for wildlife in the future. Kind of like home improvements, you have to make a mess before you get it looking better than ever.