NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/831879
66 NEBRASKAland • JUNE 2017 grants and procuring project funds from other conservation partners, such as the US Fish and Wildlife Service. To date, NPLT has completed nearly 330 projects which have enhanced roughly 70,000 acres of prairie and oak woods in the Sandstone Prairies and Southeast Prairies landscapes. By providing cost-share to landowners, they remove invasive red-cedars and brush, implement prescribed fire and planned grazing, and reseed cropland to grassland. These projects benefit biodiversity and simultaneously improve pasture quality and the ranchers' bottom line. Though Kuipers has since left for other professional endeavors, six other NPLT staff have joined Pfeiffer in Nebraska. Five are biologists implementing similar conservation projects in the Indian Cave Bluffs, Keya Paha, Middle Niobrara, Ponca Bluffs, Rulo Bluffs and Verdigris- Bazile BULs. Jamie Bachmann is an education specialist housed in the Commission's Norfolk office. Her mission is to spread NPLT's conservation message in the classroom and other settings. A popular event started by Kuipers, and now organized by Pfeiffer, is the annual Tallgrass Prairie Seminar held at Southeast Community College in Beatrice. The seminar consistently attracts about 100 landowners and conservationists who have the opportunity to learn about prairie, woodland and wetland management practices and how they can be applied to improve the health of the land they own or manage. Managing Oak Woodlands in State Parks For a millennia in spring and fall, Native Americans set fire to eastern Nebraska's oak woodlands with the intent of maintaining open groves for hunting and food gathering. With tree densities limited, plentiful sunlight reached the woodland floor stimulating wildflowers, fruit-bearing shrubs and the saplings of the sun-loving oaks. Euroamerican settlement brought the suppression of wildfires, and the woods are now thick with brush and shade-tolerant trees, such as elms and hackberries. Under the dense shade, the seedlings of bur, black and other oaks now wither for want of sun, and as the mighty, old oaks die, there are few young trees to replace them. Southern flying squirrels, timber rattlesnakes and other wildlife dependent on open oak woods are in severe decline. Located on the rugged Missouri River bluffs, Indian Cave and Ponca state parks are home to some of the largest and best remaining oak woodlands in eastern Nebraska. Extensive woodlands also occur on private lands bordering the parks. Unfortunately, bustling day-to-day activities in the two parks limit the staffs' time to manage the more than 3,000 acres of woods found there. Fortunately, in 2011, NPLT came to the Commission's aid when they hired the first of three woodland managers for the Indian Cave Bluffs, Ponca Bluffs and Rulo Bluffs BULs. On hot and humid summer days, Krista Lang and Chance Brueggemann are often deep in the mosquito-infested woods at Indian Cave State Park pulling flowering plants of the invasive garlic mustard or are herbicide-spraying the noxious sericea lespedeza on ridgetop prairies. In fall, they prepare fire breaks and conduct prescribed burns. On cold winter days, James Baker can be found Biologists Kelly Corman (left, NPLT), Cassidy Wessel (NGPC), Jen Corman (then Nebraska Forest Service, currently NPLT) and Josh Kounovsky (NGPC) plan an oak woodland project on the Niobrara River bluffs in Brown County. PHOTO BY GERRY STEINAUER