June 6, 2002

Plains Folk: Grassland Ecology

Tom Isern, Professor of History
North Dakota State University

Here on the plains we have certain habits of thought, and we don't know where they came from. Some lie in the religious beliefs or ethnic folkways of ancestors of whose languages we no longer can construct a sentence. In the Dakotas we not only leave prepositions hanging but also think in ways that originated on steppes and fjords.

Besides the habits of thought that come from folkways, we have others that originated from academics, intellectuals, and literary folk. I'm convinced if it were not for the Texas historian Walter P. Webb (author of "The Great Plains," 1931), we seldom would use the phrase "Great Plains" to refer to the great continental region in which we live.

And if it were not for Charles Bessey and his scientific disciples at the University of Nebraska, then we would not think about prairie the way we do. These are the people who, more than a century ago, invented grassland ecology. They worked out ways to study prairie as a formation, rather than focusing on individual species. They also worked out a scientific story that is really a sort of religion. You learned it in junior high biology--succession, climax, all that stuff.

My friends in grassland ecology or its applied branch, range management, don't like to hear me talk about this, because they are too sophisticated for such old-fashioned ideas. They know that there is nothing eternal about prairie, that the state of nature is not stability but rather transition.

In popular belief, though, we still ascribe magical qualities to prairie. We think of it as a symbol of continuity, even timelessness. John Ingalls of Kansas, in a famous essay, said--one of the most abused quotes ever to resound on the plains--"Grass is immortal." This is a sort of prairie Babel. Prairie is the creation of human husbandry, and it requires care, even renewal.

I was reminded of this with force not long ago during one of the toughest hikes I've had in years. This was in the semiarid interior basins of Central Otago, New Zealand. I pulled into Northburn Station, a sheep station now going heavily into viticulture, and called at the station house to let the folks know I was going in to look for the Cockayne plots.

Leonard Cockayne, a gentleman amateur scientist, introduced grassland ecology to New Zealand at about the same time as the Nebraskans did in North America. He got the idea he should fence off plots of native grassland and keep out all grazers or browsers, to see how the formation would do in the absence of animal interference. The little postage stamps of grassland also would serve as benchmarks to which the grazed lands all around might be compared.

Cockayne laid out 12 plots. Two have been lost to cultivation, 10 remain. Over the years the sheep-and-rabbit-tight fences fell into disrepair, letting animals in. More destructively, wilding pines and other introduced plants, no respecters of fences, invaded the plots and grew grandly. In the past couple of years the plots have been cleaned up and placed into the Queen Elizabeth Trust for preservation. I found all of them and took coordinates, along with photos.

Man, this was tough country, up Campbell Gulley and others without names, scrambling over shingle rock. Many times I found purchase only by hauling myself along a fenceline. Briar (the briar of ballad, introduced from England) and matagouri (a native thorn-bearer) tore my clothing and skin. European gray rabbits scrambled everywhere on the sunny faces. California quail chirped from the thickets.

Leonard Cockayne came here by taking the train to Clyde, some 20 miles away, and a pushbike to Northburn. He packed the fencing material in on foot. And he was way older than me when he did it. Cockayne was a great ecologist. I am a wimp.

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Source: Tom Isern, (701) 799-2941, tom@plainsfolk.com 
Editor: Tom Jirik, (701) 231-9629, tjirik@ndsuext.nodak.edu 

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