RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Crisis on the Prairies Revisited
JF Ecological Restoration
FD University of Wisconsin Press
SP 64
OP 76
DO 10.3368/er.42.1.64
VO 42
IS 1
A1 Gannon, Jill J.
A1 Grant, Todd A.
A1 Vacek, Sara C.
A1 Dixon, Cami S.
A1 Moore, Clinton T.
YR 2024
UL http://er.uwpress.org/content/42/1/64.abstract
AB The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) is a primary manager of federal public lands in the northern Great Plains region, with over 400,000 hectares (ha) of mostly grassland and wetland administered under the National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS). More specifically, the Service manages > 100,000 ha of mixed-grass and tallgrass prairie in northern Great Plains states. Prairies range from small, isolated < 16-ha tracts embedded in agricultural landscapes to > 10,000-ha contiguous tracts embedded within grassland-dominated landscapes. The mission of the NWRS is uniquely wildlife/wildland oriented, with human uses secondary in importance. As such, the expectation is that natural plant communities occur as relatively high-quality habitats. Grant et al. (2009) explored this expectation, concluding that “Despite 40–70 years of protection, the integrity of many prairies held in public trust continues to decline, primarily because of invasion by cool-season, introduced plants and woody vegetation.” To address this concern, the Service proposed a program to evaluate restoration of Service-owned prairies following principles of adaptive management, including a decision support function. Our purpose in this paper is to update 14 years of development and implementation of the Native Prairie Adaptive Management (NPAM) program. We confirmed that Service-owned prairies continue to be degraded by invasive plants, especially Bromus inermis (smooth brome) and Poa pratensis (Kentucky bluegrass). However, NPAM has facilitated a significant gain in our understanding of ecological restoration and management of prairies in the region, increasing hope that restoration successes can occur when viewed over the long-term (i.e., many decades).