Production Funding for state of change is provided by the Backland Charitable Trust.

Since the beginning, Illinois has been in a state of change.

1000s of years ago, glaciers that covered our state retreated, leaving a flattened land, constant ice and snow gave way to seasons with hot, dry summers and cold winters.

8000 years ago, the tall grass prairie dominated the Illinois landscape, some species reaching 12 feet into the big blue sky, keeping the prairie in check millions of shaggy beasts grazing on the grasslands.

They inspired the first people to call our state home.

Bison are a keystone species, meaning they interact with everyone.

They are spreading seeds, constantly spreading microbes.

They are affecting the insect community.

Birds use their fur to make nests.

I read a stat that said the fur from one bison when he sheds it in the spring is enough for over 1000 bird nests.

Some tribes think of bison as their kin or or relatives.

Some tribes think of them as a sacred icon, meaning that they're a deity.

200 years ago, the prairie began a permanent transition.

Land was converted for agriculture, air and road, travel, cities and smoke stacks, and we now have less than 1/10 of 1% of the original prairie is in Illinois.

Now in the 1800s Illinois was covered in 22 million acres of grassland by 1978 that was down to just 2300 on this episode of state of change, the past and present in the Prairie State.

Hello.

I'm Tinisha Spain with Illinois public media.

Places just like this, old cemeteries and even abandoned railways are some of the last chances that you have to see the prairie in Illinois as it existed for 1000s of years.

Welcome to one of the few places where the original tall grass prairies still exist.

Here in Illinois, we're about 100 miles south of Chicago at the Lotus cemetery prairie nature preserve.

This is land that's never been cultivated or pastured.

In the next half hour, we'll introduce you to the magnificent plants that were part of the landscape long before the skyscrapers.

You'll meet people trying to restore the prairie.

We head north from here to the nachusa grasslands, where a walk through those tall prairie grasses is like a walk back in time.

Bison have been on this continent for eons, for millions of years.

In the 1800s we went from 10s of millions of animals down to near zero.

Bison have been in Illinois for 1000s of years.

They've been across all the way to the Atlantic Ocean.

They were pushed out of the Midwest in the 1830s the animals we brought back to nachusa grasslands is the first, or one of the first, conservation herds east of the Mississippi River.

The we have 4200 acres of prairie here, and woodlands and wetlands, but we only fenced 1500 of it for the bison to be housed in.

We have about 120 bison or so in the herd right now.

We fenced off 1500 acres.

And so basically you're giving them about 10 acres per bison, is what the carrying capacity is.

So they were brought here in 2014 to complete the ecosystem.

Illinois was mostly prairie, so grassland with oak savannas, extensive wetlands, beautiful oak woodlands, and we now have less than 1/10 of 1% of the original prairie is in Illinois.

Now, bison are the Keystone grazer of North America.

They graze selectively.

So they'll they'll go through and eat, eat grasses.

They have some favorites, and it's easy to see a prairie restoration dominated by tall grasses.

And they'll go through eat that grass down.

They disturb the ground with their hooves.

They'll eat the eat the veg.

Tation, their droppings, speed up that nutrient cycle, so it turns that grass back into organic matter, into the soil, which provides food for like dung beetles, so certain insects they're eating around the flowers, opening it up for more sunlight and allowing more types of plants to grow and keeping the tall grass from dominating the prairie here, but the body center, keeping it shorter and opening up, making more diversity.

You can see we got lots of different flowers growing right now and lots of different species, and that is what we want.

Diversity is what it's all about.

Their willows, where they they roll in the ground, stick their feet up in the air, and disturb the ground and get dirt and sand all over the cells those create these little micro habitats that end up filling with water sometimes, and creates little, little spots for amphibians and insects to to breed and live in bison grazing creates habitats that are sometimes less dominated by thick grasses.

So a species like a grasshopper sparrow, which nests on the ground and likes that more sparse vegetation, it ends up able to nest successfully in a grazed area from bison.

We can say things like, bison increase plant diversity.

Bison support various grassland birds that have had steep declines, and yet they do better in bison grazed areas.

These are some of the success stories of bison.

Bison are a keystone species, meaning they interact with everyone.

They are spreading seeds constantly.

They are spreading microbes.

They are affecting the insect community.

Birds use their fur to make nests.

I read a stat that said the fur from one bison when he sheds it in the spring, is enough for over 1000 bird nests.

The previous ancestors to that bison have long gone extinct because it evolved as its own separate species 10,000 years ago.

It is something then we know that humans were already here 10,000 years ago.

Majority of native people are native tribes where bison was kind of an ever present species or an animal.

Those tribes, over time, developed religion and religious practice centered around those particular bison.

Most of those tribes, for example, have a mythology, or mythological story that talks about how bison came to be here in North America.

Some tribes think of bison as their kin or relatives.

Some tribes think of them as a sacred icon, meaning that they're a deity, this mythological history of bison, that I feel like this revitalization is happening as well.

So I think that that's something that is important for our native communities.

But I also think in terms of kind of the diversity of human societies, I think it's important that when people re establish and revitalize their religion and their culture, that it benefits not just them, but it benefits the world you're given the opportunity to really create.

I never talk about the Garden of Eden, but that's what comes to mind, a garden of native species, and we're given the habitat and the opportunity to go make that happen.

The whole thing is just like this amazing natural puzzle, and in the process, you get to create this wonderful habitat that everybody can enjoy.

The balance to strike is that we need enough habitat to care for the rare things that are here.

1/10 of 1% of habitat is not enough.

So hence we're here trying to create new habitat.

The balance needs to be towards being good stewards of the land and creating enough habitat that species can continue to thrive.

I think that one of the things that a lot of communities are interested in, especially communities that have had a huge impact by development, by farming, by agriculture, that they want to re establish natural systems and ecosystems, that one of the animals that was part of that is bison.

People are very excited when they see bison.

They come all the way across the state to see our herd.

The animals always charm if you can get close enough, and people will watch them for a long time.

We have about 75,000 visitors a year.

We're trying to.

To take advantage of that enthusiasm and tell the whole story of conservation about the work we're doing with prescribed fire, seed harvesting, habitat restoration.

So bison are the hook, and then we're trying to tell the whole story more than 130 species of plants, flowers and grasses exist here at the Lotus cemetery prairie nature preserve, and Jeff Payton is here with us to talk a little bit about that prairie.

So Jeff, first of all, we're in what's called a remnant prairie.

That's right.

Tell us a little bit about what that means, because there's a difference between this and what's right next door, right?

So a remnant prairie is the original Old Growth prairie, what existed here prior to European settlement.

We have very few of these types of sites left in our state.

Less than a 100th of 1% of the original prairie remains.

So what we'll find here is plants and soil microbes and all kinds of organisms that we won't find anywhere else.

So this is pretty special.

I mean, what indicators do you have to prove that this is the original?

This is what it looked like back in the day?

What gives those clues?

Right?

So we look for things like plant diversity, the number of different species we have, the distribution how they're arranged.

We look for indicator plants that we almost only ever see in remnants, things like comandra umeta.

We look for the microbes in the soil, the diversity of the microbes, the types of microbes, the soil structure.

A lot of restored prairies, you'll see a lot of soil compaction from from years of agriculture or other use.

So you don't see that in a remnant.

We've got sunflowers here.

This is not the type of sunflower you typically see in a garden with the big, giant heads, but we've got lots of species of native sunflowers in the prairies here.

We've got some some asters down here, flower this time of year, in the fall.

A lot of people may not know is that there's lots of different species of goldenrod, so you'll find a lot more golden rods than just the common one that you see on the roadside out here in the prairies.

That is a Hawthorne.

So that is a shrub or small tree that's native that grows in prairies.

So if you were to draw like a box on the ground, how many different species do you think you could find in that small little quadrant?

Oh, gosh, it really depends where you are on the site.

There's a lot of variation in different areas of the site.

We have higher and lower, wetter and drier.

So you know, you could find as many as 50 species, if you got it in the right spot, but they're not all going to be flowering at the same time.

So when you come out here in the summer, you know you could come back every two, three weeks and see a different show out here in the prairie.

We've been talking a lot about bison and kind of their role in Illinois history and in the prairie history.

No bison here, no so how does the renewal process happen here naturally in this in this prairie, right?

Well, it needs a lot of help.

So we manage it.

We we cut out plants that aren't supposed to be here, invasive plants, plants from Europe and Asia.

We burn it.

We use prescribed fire to restore prairies.

A lot of the areas that are remnant prairie are heavily degraded, grown up with trees and brush, honeysuckle and things like that.

We have to use prescribed fire to keep it a prairie.

Knock out some of the brush that's trying to move in.

There's a lot more trees on the landscape of Illinois, especially in unmanaged places than there were when European settlement first arrived, when people started putting out fires.

So we were bringing fire back to the landscape.

When we can we avoid the use of of chemicals.

You know, sometimes you just have to with the amount of resources we have.

But, but, yes, there are plants, invasive plants that can be managed effectively, just by hand pulling and so we get volunteer groups out here.

We we always need help from volunteers.

So we have, we have volunteer work days out in the prairie pulling weeds.

Excellent.

Okay, all right.

Jeff Peyton is the land manager here at the Lotus cemetery, Prairie nature and preserve, and we're going to come back to you just a little bit later on in the show.

But now we're going to travel from here to Springfield, where there's a transformation of sorts going on there as well.

Union Square Park, which is a part of our campus and is attached to Union Station, the old train station here in Springfield has been.

And a nice place for people to visit in when they're in Springfield, but it needed a little sprucing up, so we started working on a long term project to recreate the park and using a sustainable plants as well as native plants, to this area like it would have been in the 1850s when the Lincolns lived here.

I we worked with the U of I Extension Office as well as our landscaper, who designed the project to pick plants that were unique but were also native to the area that the settlers would have seen as they started migrating west from the east coast in the 1800s the these are our hydrangeas.

And as you can tell, they're going to make a nice border all the way around the bed.

And they do that for all of the beds.

They're kind of a nice border, especially right here in the section that is known as Mary Lincoln's garden.

You're going to get some texture in the green aside from color.

Later in the summer, they take less water, they'll need less maintenance, and they'll Thrive a lot better than plants that are not native to the area with sustainability options and worrying about things like chemicals in the soil and the amount of watering that it takes to maintain those kind of items, we really wanted to take a look at what would work better, what was here before long term, bring more sustainability to our campus, to the visitors that get to come and see it, and also to get a chance to see plants that they might not have seen before, that are really are native to Central Illinois.

These are two of the magnolias that we planted.

To give a little height.

We didn't do a lot of tree planting, but we did do a few and as you can see, they're just starting to get toward the end of their bloom.

They're early bloomers.

But I think I really love that we have two of them right here to frame the sidewalk as you come up to the pergola and enjoy entering the park.

The plants are just now being finalized into the ground, so we want to make sure they get a good establishment.

And in about mid July, we're going to have an event where people can come out and celebrate with us the planting itself and the section that is primarily called Mary Lincoln's garden.

Today, we're honoring two enduring legacies, the native and heritage plants that have thrived in our state for generations, and the life and legacy of Mary Lincoln, First Lady, mother and one of Illinois' most fascinating historical figures, this garden is a living tribute.

It connects us to the Illinois landscape that shaped Mary Lincoln's world and ours.

It reminds us that history isn't just preserved in books.

It grows blossoms and breathes all around us.

These plants are survivors, just like Mary herself, weathering storms, enduring hardship and still offering grace to those who visit.

You, all right, and we are back with Jeff Peyton, the land manager, here at Lotus cemetery prairie nature preserve, just north of Champaign.

And so let's get back into our prairie discussion.

You touched a little bit on fire earlier.

Let's talk about some of the historical significance of fires in the prairie.

First of all, what do they do?

Right?

Well, they do a lot of things.

The big thing they do is they knock out things like trees and brush that would make this into not a prairie anymore.

You know, if we, if we stop using fire, the trees start moving in.

Now the invasive plants start moving in.

So they really help keep it a prairie.

It's very hard to have a prairie without fire, and so naturally, this was just something that happened.

Occurred naturally in nature.

How did the fire start before we were doing prescribed burns, right?

So part of it was natural.

Yes, there were lightning strikes.

You know, you get good, strong winds ahead of storms and lightning strikes, and then the fire just pushes in front of the storm and burns the landscape that way.

But also, we had indigenous people lighting fires here for a long time before European settlers showed up.

So it's, it's really part of their land management tradition as well.

Excellent.

So they knew from very early on that that was a way to maintain and restore.

Yes, absolutely.

So in a summer like we've had like this, where it's been not just this summer, we've been dry for several years, and the thought of having a big prescribed burn might sound scary to people when it's dry.

So how do you control those and also use them to refresh?

Definitely, yeah, it's really important to keep everything safe.

You know, fire is an important tool for prairies, and we don't want to lose access to that tool.

So we have state certifications, we have trainings how to manage fire crews.

Directly.

We set fire breaks.

So we'll mow, mow a wide area around the area we're going to burn.

We don't burn the whole site all at once.

We want to leave some of the plants intact to shelter wildlife.

We will clear around an area.

We will make sure we have a big enough crew of people to control the fire when it gets to the edge.

But most importantly, we control the conditions under which we light the fire.

We burn every year.

Like I said, I don't burn the whole site, so I might burn a third of this site each year just to leave some refuges, leave some seeds on the plants to spread themselves.

But yeah, we are.

We are burning every year at some of our sites, all right, so I see some Partridge is it Partridge peas?

That's right, Partridge peas out here.

Now, you talked a little bit about the difference in plant diversity, in the restored versus the remnant.

Tell us a little bit more about that, right?

So the section we're standing in right now is about 18 years old.

We restored it as a buffer for the remnant that's behind us.

Now, you'll see a big difference in the plant distribution out here, lower plant diversity.

If you could see the ground bare, you could see a step down from the remnant into the restoration, a literal difference in elevation just from the amount of erosion and soil compaction that happens for from agriculture.

Of course, we've got tall grass in the tall grass prairie all around us.

We can get well over our head.

It can get taller than it is on this site.

But, you know, 10 feet, yeah, yeah.

You get some very tall Yeah.

The dry summer, the the amount of competition from diversity can suppress it a little bit.

So it's it's a number of different factors.

And so with this being an 18 year old sort of re established area, how long or ever will it take for this to look like the remnant prairie?

It won't happen in our lifetime.

So, no, maybe in a few centuries, it might, it might start to look the same.

You know, above ground there are some pretty nice restored prairies that start to look like the same mix of plants as a remnant.

When you get under the ground, it's a different story.

And you just see, you can see the difference.

We've got a wide diversity of insects out here.

We've been hearing a lot about bees threats to bees lately.

Most of the focus we hear is on honey bees, which are an exotic insect from Europe.

But out here, we have a lot of native bees too, and they really depend on native plants in order to live and to pollinate.

So we got a lot of bees, we have a lot of spiders, we get some snakes, and we have some really unique species that will only see in prairies.

One example is prairie cicada.

So we have cicadas all over the place.

In Illinois, everybody knows that sound but but a prairie cicada is a little bit different.

It's a little bit bigger, and you mostly only see it out here.

Many of your neighbors are doing their part to help the smallest creatures who are crucial to keeping plants alive.

On a warm May afternoon, Prairie gardens nursery in Champaign is packed with people searching for the perfect plants.

Come on in a class gets underway in one of the greenhouses.

My dad gardened a lot and always sort of instilled that connection with the earth to me, Heather Miller is a 20 year master gardener.

Today she's showing people how to plant pollinator pockets, communities that house and feed the insects that spread pollen.

There's approximately 500 bee species in the state of Illinois.

We want to be sure people understand the importance and the different types of pollinators and how they can support those.

There's one honey bee, and those were brought over by the Europeans about 400 years ago as what we would call sort of the workhorse bees to help us with the agricultural production.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, more than 100 US crops rely on pollinators to grow.

The added value from these tiny winged insects is $18 billion dollars, but their populations are in trouble.

They are in decline.

We don't understand fully why.

There's lots of different factors from obviously, environmental loss with urbanization.

There's different pests like mites and other things that are causing colony collapses.

Another factor, much of Illinois' original Prairie has disappeared.

So those tall grass prairies are really important to over wintering of pollinators as well as obviously a food source.

And just you know, their apartment, that's where they go to live, right?

And so they need some.

Place to go.

On this day, amateur gardeners are getting their hands dirty learning how to attract pollinator insects with colorful marigolds and other plants.

A few weeks later, on a sunny Saturday in June, Heather shows how all that hard work pays off by opening up her backyard to strangers within two days of me planting that pension Maya bumble bees on that on that penston plant, just like people who work in the sun, bees need a place to refuel and hydrate after hours of hard work, we have our bee water over here.

So you can look here.

Bee water is really important for our pollinators, and they oftentimes don't have a place to go for water where they won't drown.

So it's really important to have something that they can light on, which is the marbles, and then you feed it, then they can get to the water without drowning.

Each place you look in Heather's yard, there's a plant that can feed or house a pollinating insect.

And if I could turn your attention over here, these are black eyed Susans.

This is a cultivar variety, you know, a native of our variety.

All that glitters is gold.

Those will be blooming here shortly, and again, will provide pollinator space later on in the season all the way through fall, Heather's put years of hard work into her yard and into teaching others.

Her motivation is simple.

We don't think about how valuable they are to us as little things just roaming around pollinators provide the pollination needs of more than 1400 crops around the world we don't eat if we do not have pollinators, the original tall grass prairie once covered 14 states in the US.

What's left now can be compared to a postage stamp on a billboard, and whether that remaining land is allowed to flourish or fail is in all of our hands for state of change.

I'm Tinisha, Spain, Production funding for state of change is provided by the Backlund Charitable Trust