Celebrate our heritage through prairie restoration

One might say we've just lived through Iowa's bicentennial.

Two centuries ago, on Dec. 20, 1803, France gave an immense swath of continental America to the United States in the Louisiana Purchase. Though President Thomas Jefferson was criticized for the $15 million payment to Napoleon, it was a pretty good deal. It came to about 4 cents an acre.

In today's values, that would be like buying all of Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana - plus good-sized chunks of Minnesota, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming and Texas - for $250 million. Contrast that with the 4.5-acre proposed rain forest-aquarium for Coralville, valued at $180 million.

Of course, back in 1803 most of the purchased territory was unexplored wilderness. The primary reason for the land deal was to secure the port of New Orleans and Mississippi River for the United States. Fur traders already had described much of the purchased prairie as a great desert.

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A few months after the territory was purchased, Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark's famed Corps of Discovery up the Missouri River to find the fabled Northwest Passage.

They crossed what is modern day Iowa's southwest edge. What the corps - and the pioneers who soon followed - saw was chest-high grasses waving beneath the wind.

Before white settlers arrived from the East, 25 million acres of prairie covered Iowa, making up about 70 percent of state's total acreage. Today, a mere 30,000 acres - about 0.1 percent of the original range - remains in prairie.

Most of the land was broken into fields, which gave Iowa a grand agricultural heritage we should be proud of and celebrate.

Today, of course, farmland is slowly being turned over to asphalt and manicured green lawns. Yet one more heritage is passing on to another.

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But urbanization, running at a fast click as subdivisions rise in Iowa City, Coralville, North Liberty and Tiffin and across the North Corridor, still allows us to reclaim part of what was lost after the Louisiana Purchase.

We can return roadsides, as is the case on Mormon Trek Boulevard, to prairie. We can return our yards to this state as well.

Doing so offers many benefits. Prairie wildflowers are natural water purifiers; their deep root systems filter toxins, resulting in a cleaner water table. They preserve our native wildlife as well. Many birds, butterflies and other animals feed only on native plants; monarch butterfly caterpillars, for example, rely entirely on milkweed to survive.

Ultimately, prairie restor-ation saves work, especially around the yard. A patch of prairie grass and flowers requires much less mowing and raking than a manicured lawn.

Of course, the neighbors may not like it. Many people still carry the notion that the only nice lawn is one yielding crew cut Kentucky Bluegrass - a foreign import that ought to rankle every true blood patriot.

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What would a yard in native prairie look like?

It would be full of asters, black-eyed Susans, blazing stars, butterfly milkweeds, white and purple coneflowers, little bluestem (a grass), monardas, purple prairie clover, and prairie dropseed (another grass).

On summer nights it would offer a concert of chirping and buzzing insects.

During the day, for those willing to explore, it would yield the stunningly beautiful (and harmless) black and yellow striped agriope spider, its webs connecting the varying plant leafs.

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Surprisingly, a lot of prairie enthusiasts aren't tree hugging college students in Iowa City or history buffs but farmers with soul.

An uneasy relationship always has existed between farmland and prairie in Iowa. This summer, for example, many farmers were forced to crop dust their fields so aphids wouldn't destroy soybeans.

Unfortunately, the pesticides often drifted onto prairie restoration areas, wiping out insects and upsetting the ecosystem.

Some farmers, of course, see only the bottom line and care little about land that provides no saleable crops. For them, it's cornfield or bust.

But many enjoy their deep relationship with the land and the environment, holding great respect for life's interconnectedness and what surprises it yields. They know the power of mother nature, of how in a few minutes wind and hail can destroy a season's crop, of how if it holds out on rain for a single day can mean the difference between bounty and drought.

They understand there's more than "x cents an acre" to life. They're the ones with soul.

And we urbanites in our air-conditioned homes and half-acre lots would be remiss to forget that affinity.

(originally published Jan. 4, 2004)