Newsletter title

March 2015

In This Edition

Docent Reorientation Addendum

—Bob Hamilton, Director of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve

I forgot to mention one important item during the recent Docent Reorientation. I have asked Harvey Payne to take on additional responsibility with regard to the recent acquisition of the Mathews property. To allow him more time to focus on this assignment, he and I agreed that he would not continue in his current role with the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve Docent Program.

As many of you know, Kay Krebbs has been serving with Harvey for the past year as co-supervisor of the docent program. Kay has agreed to continue serving as the supervisor of the Docent Program.

We are all very excited with the success we have experienced through the use of the Docent Council and its various committees this past year, and we look forward to the future with anticipation. Kay will serve as the first point-of-contact for any questions, comments or concerns that might arise; she will also welcome any new ideas or suggestions. If there is anything she is not able to answer or address, she will contact one of her supervisors for support or direction.

Thank you so much for all you have done — and continue to do — to make the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve such a special place for everyone.

Docent Reorientation: 21 February 2015

—Andrew Donovan-Shead

A fortunate break in the weather provided us with a lovely day for our first Docent Reorientation of 2015 at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve Research Station on Saturday, 21 February 2015. As you can see in the panorama below, we had unprecedented record-setting attendance of 75 total attendees: 31 returning docents, 41 new docents, and 3 staff from the Preserve and Nature Conservancy.

Docent Reorientation Attendees

Karen Cruce convened the meeting at 10:00 a.m., proceeding with a round-robin introduction; each attendee stood to announce their name, place of origin, length of service as a volunteer, and any additional information of interest to the meeting.

Agenda

Karen drew our attention to the agenda, saying that she will be watching the time to ensure that we remain on schedule; she pointed out the principal contacts listed on the back side.

Docent Reorientation Agenda

 

The Importance of Being a Docent

Jenk Jones took the floor to remind us that as docents we are of great importance to The Nature Conservancy and to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve because we are the people who interact with the visitors, explaining the goals and reasons for the existence of the Preserve. Without docents the work of The Nature Conservancy is largely invisible to potential supporters. Jenk said that none of us can know everything, but collectively we know and can share a great deal that can be enthusiastically communicated to the visitors we meet.

Bob Hamilton expanded Jenk’s theme, saying that the Preserve is a very interesting environment. At a glance there is wide expanse of openness periodically traversed by large brown ungulates; this is misleadingly superficial. When you invest yourself in the Preserve by absorbing information and becoming more knowledgable, the expanse of nothingness becomes a fascinating cornucopia of interconnected ecological systems that never ceases to amaze the diligent observer.

What is a Docent?

In our context, a docent is someone who knows. Our job as volunteers is to serve as guides and educators to further the public’s understanding of the work of The Nature Conservancy and Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.

If you are unable to answer a visitor’s question, you could make a note, find out the answer, and publish it in the Docent News. See Bill Alexander’s article below about the bison’s hump as an example of what you could do. By doing research and sharing the results in the newsletter, everyone has an opportunity to benefit from your diligence.

Docent Recognition

Karen recognized Anita Springer’s retirement from her years as leader of the docent program. In appreciation of Anita’s hard work, Karen presented Anita with a framed picture of the Preserve taken by Harvey Payne.

Anita Springer’s Service Recognized.

Nancy Irby was recognized for completing 100 days at the Preserve by having her name added to the Plaque of Fame that hangs in the Visitor’s Center, which you can see on the table in the lower left-hand corner of picture above, next to Karen. Dave Dolcater, Iris McPherson, Anita Springer, and Van Vives were recognized for their completion of 200 days service at the Visitor’s Center by a special hanger that attaches to their name tags.

Bob Hamilton, Director of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve

Karen introduced Bob Hamilton whose slide presentation on Tallgrass Prairie Preserve Ecosystem Restoration and Conservation Outreach is reproduced here with editorial embellishments.

Bob started his presentation with a slide showing the Osage and Flint Hills area of approximately five-million acres, extending from the southern edge of Osage County to north of Manhattan Kansas, an area of conservation interest to The Nature Conservancy. He said that we should keep this in mind while he discusses the specifics of conservation efforts focused in and around the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. The green areas represent untilled landscapes; the white areas represent modern cultivated landscapes. Roughly two-thirds of the remaining tallgrass prairie in North America is found in the Osage / Flint Hills.

Untilled Landscapes & Osage / Flint Hills

Originally, The Nature Conservancy raised $15,000,000 that it used to buy the 29,000 acres Barnard ranch in the fall of 1989. Since then, the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve has grown to 39,640 acres, plus 6,153 acres of conservation easements and deed restrictions.

The mission of The Nature Conservancy is to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends. A principal reason for the purchase of the Barnard ranch is that in doing so, the Conservancy acquired an entire watershed. 1989 was the first year that The Nature Conservancy moved into landscape-scale conservation, gaining control over both land and water, beginning with the formation of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. This acquisition represented a paradigm shift for the Conservancy, moving it across boundaries to think of itself as One Conservancy. For more than fifty years, The Nature Conservancy has been a private organization operating in all States of the Union and in thirty foreign countries.

Heterogeneity is the main tool used to conserve the landscape, which means promoting variability in vegetation stature, composition, density, and biomass; this is the complete opposite of homogeneity as practiced by traditional land management techniques that strive to reduce everything to a uniform sameness, the idea being to make management easier by reducing the number of variables. Unfortunately, homogeneity reduces biodiversity which is fundamentally important to landscape function through its interconnectedness. A heterogeneous, biodiverse landscape is healthier and more resilient to variations in climate.

The natural forces we need to consider to maintain diversity in the Great Plains are climate, grazing, and fire. Historically, the linkage between grazing and fire is what promotes landscape heterogeneity.

Heterogeneity Paradigm

The management model applied to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve consists in patch burning, patch-burn grazing, and pyro-herbivory, illustrated by the slide to the right. This is a neat graphic that deftly illustrates several closed loops. Our Earth is home to millions of similarly closed loops that sustain Life. In this micro-environment the heterogeneity of the standing biomass depends on the interactions between grazing and fire behavior.

  1. Fire razes the woody old-growth vegetation, exposing the soil.
  2. Sunlight warms the soil, promoting new growth from the root-stock protected from fire below the surface. Fire usually burns rapidly and doesn’t raise the sub-surface temperatures to root-killing levels.
  3. Depending on the moisture available, nutritious new grasses sprout, attracting the bison and insects. Bison provide manure and urine fertilization; their hoof impacts help to break through capped soil, allowing water to be absorbed instead of running off. Bison wallows create micro-aquatic environments where new closed-loop processes develop. Insects attract birds; birds attract predators; life in all its variety burgeons.
  4. Recently burned areas are more resistant to fire during regrowth. Bison eat about 35lbs of grasses each day and they prefer to graze on tender new growth. While they are doing so, other less well attended areas are growing older and more woody.
  5. Eventually, Pyro-Bob and his crew randomly select an old growth area for a fresh burning and the cycle begins again at step-1.

The heterogeneity of the standing biomass is improved thus promoting a more vibrant functioning of the ecosystem and greater biodiversity. All of this happens within the managed area without the need for fencing, bison-cattle drives, or supplementary nutritional inputs.

Grassland birds have evolved to depend on a heterogeneous landscape. Bob illustrated this dependency with the summary slide for breeding birds, below left. Species evolve to exploit small niches within an ecosystem. An homogenous parking lot supports far fewer species than a richly heterogeneous landscape.

Winter and Breeding Birds

During winter, the Preserve is home to an entirely different set of bird species; see the slide above right. Birds serve as a useful metric for the indirect measurement of biodiversity: the more bird species supported by a prairie landscape then the greater the overall biodiversity. It is a good health-check.

Greater Prairie Chicken

A marker of the general health of the prairie grasslands is the Greater Prairie Chicken, once numbered in millions when the settlers first arrived here. Today, the Greater Prairie Chicken is extremely diminished. through homogenization, fragmentation of and vertical growth both natural and artificial on the landscape. Life-cycle of the Greater Prairie Chicken has evolved to depend on the patch-burn process at work on the landscape:

  1. During lekking, the males need open areas of high ground that allow them to swagger about, booming, and challenging each other to prove their fitness as a mate to the onlooking females.
  2. While brooding, Greater Prairie Chickens need some cover for shelter, not too far from new growth where there are plenty of insects for the brood to feed upon. Too much separation between these areas will cause the chicks to die of exhaustion.
  3. Nesting areas require more mature growth to provide the security of vegetative cover.

Greater Prairie Chickens have a constitutional aversion to vertical structures. Through the ages, the birds have learned that a predator could be perched on high waiting to swoop down upon them. Trees, fence posts, utility poles, turbine towers all drive away the Greater Prairie Chicken. Research shows that a 350-foot wind turbine will scare away these birds up to a 1 kilometer radius.

TNC Bison Herds as of 2012

Bison

At this point, Bob turned to a discussion of Bison with an introductory picture to remind us what bison look like close-up.

The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is one of twelve Conservancy locations hosting herds of bison, as you can see from the 2012 summary of bison herds in the picture to the right, but the only drive-though bison herd is here in northeastern Oklahoma. Note the extent of the Great Plains bioregion identified by the thick brown border. The green areas are untilled landscapes.

At the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, the bison herd is productive. In 2014 it produced 516 calves. Long-term, it produces a 70-percent weaned calf crop annually. Since the herd is so large and spread over a large area, counting newborn calves is impractical.

Females don’t produce offspring unless they are ingesting adequate nutrition. For example, excessively wet weather will reduce the nutritional value of the grasses and unburned areas have less nutritious vegetation than recently burned areas. So, some years will be better than others for producing calves, but overall the nutritional value of the Preserve is high, as measured by the weaned calf crop. Not every female produces offspring every year, but a high percentage do. It’s another metric for measuring the worth of conservation practice and one that can be used to compare Conservancy to traditional range-management practices. Wm. Spear Design: Bison pin

At the fall 2014 annual roundup, November 5 through 11, the Preserve staff worked 2,503 bison through the corrals, giving each animal its annual veterinary treatment and recording its vital statistics. As usual the herd was culled; from this culling, 306 head were sold live in the fall 2014 and another 62 were sold during the summer.

Round-up is not a public event. In addition to the the main activity of herd management, it is used to facilitate fundraising by invitation-only to donors, news-media, and active docents. Round-up is where animal husbandry and Hollywood meet. Each bison spends 30 to 40 seconds in the squeeze chute. Round-up is a stressful time for the herd yet essential to their humane and successful management. It is scheduled late in the year when the weather is cooler and it requires a high degree of organization and skill from the Preserve staff.

The Preserve reached its target herd size in 2008. Stocking-rate is about 20- to 30-percent below USDA recommendations. The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is not a bison refuge. Bison are part of the ecosystem, providing services that support biodiversity. 2,004 bison overwintered in the fire-bison unit from 2014. 600 to 700 new calves are expected this spring. The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is home to one of the largest conservation-focused bison herds in North America.

Fire

Fire is a natural process

Changing the subject, Bob talked about fire on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. Fire is a natural process. Most habitats are dependent on fire for proper ecosystem function; see the green area on the map at right. Yellow areas are fire independent. Red areas are fire sensitive. Blue areas are either rock, ice, or lakes. White areas represent no data.

The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve depends on fire for its existence and good health. Fire helps check the invasion of red cedar and other invasive species.

Preserve staff form a rural fire department who assist neighbors to suppress all wildfires. The Preserve fire department is now a highly efficient mechanized fire program that uses specially adapted surplus military vehicles so that one driver can operate the water nozzles, using an in-cab joystick control. Wet lines are use instead of firebreaks to contain fires.

Preserve staff maintain a spatially and seasonally variable fire regime. Historical research discovered that the prairies burned all year. Fire exercises the prairie. Bob summarized the fire program activity from 1991 through 2014 thus:

Bob displayed Tony Brown’s compilation of the Preserve burn history from 2005 until 2013, below left. Preserve Burn Summaries

Recent history for the Bison-Fire Management Unit was shown on the slide reproduced above left. Here are the criteria for the spatially and seasonal fire regime:

Patch-burn grazing with bison is a strategy using fire-induced rotation to move the bison across their unit. Herbivores respond by following the burns through the seasons and the years to eat the nutritious new growth grasses. Burn it and they will come.

An intensive fire-graze event promotes a short-term flush of weedy native forbs. But by two to three years post-burn, the patch is dominated, once again, by warm-season native grasses. All herbivores are attracted to the lush, high-quality regrowth following a fire.

An ecological threat arises when much of the landscape is managed for uniformity, homogeneity, reducing the biodivesity. Since the 1980s, Intensive Early Stocking (IES) combined with annual spring burns has become extremely popular in the Flint Hills. IES is popular because it doubles the stock density for half the growing season thereby improving the rancher’s return on investment for a successful season.

OSU-TGP Research Partnership

In 2001, The Nature Conservancy and Oklahoma State University entered into an applied research partnership to investigate the feasibility of patch-burn grazing with cattle as an alternative to traditional grazing strategies like IES. Bob’s slide shows the growth variation in times since burn.

The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve has approximately 11,000 acres allocated to experimentation with patch-burn treatments using cattle.

Results show that cattle gain between 300 to 400 lbs when grazed on the experimental patch-burn areas. These gains are consistent results measured between 2008 and 2013. Statistics indicate no difference between conventional and patch-burn management.

Interest in patch-burning continues to grow. There are about twenty-two study areas located up and down the central plains of North America.

Results from the research into patch-burning are being exported to ranchers. Patch-burning can help reduce supplemental feeding and fencing.

Greater Prairie Chickens

Greater Prairie Chickens have drastically declined in numbers due to loss of habitat. Though the prairie chicken is supported by the the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve ecosystem, 40,000 acres is insufficient. Some species require range over a vast landscape to survive.

Greater Prairie Chickens have become a conservation strategy through their use as a restoration target.

By protecting/maintaining habitat necessary to sustain greater prairie chickens, the habitat needs of most prairie species in the area will also be protected.

Greater Prairie Chicken distribution in Oklahoma is illustrated by the blue areas in the slide below, left. The green area is the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. Note that the Preserve is on the eastern boundary of the largest area supporting chickens; west of the Preserve is where wind energy is beginning to be extracted with turbine towers three hundred and fifty feet high. Net result is that Greater Prairie Chicken habitat will be further fragmented, putting an increased downward pressure on bird population numbers.

Greater Prairie Chicken Survey

A Greater Prairie Chicken observation team has been established by:

As shown in the slide, above center, they cover fourteen survey routes in Osage and Kay counties in Oklahoma, which represents 203 survey points along 189 miles. Bob said that it is a tedious process of driving one mile at a time, stopping the vehicle, alighting, walking clear of the vehicle, and then listening for the characteristic sounds of booming chickens, making note of the result, returning to the vehicle, driving the next mile to repeat the process.

Results of the Greater Prairie Chicken surveys are shown in the slide above right. Whereas, once upon a time, the Great Glains were home to millions of birds, the Greater Prairie Chicken now struggles to live in much reduced circumstances.

Sericia Lespedeza

Bob turned to one of his favorite topics, the invasive plant Sericia Lespedeza.

Each year, the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve spends a significant amount of time and money roving the landscape on a seek and destroy mission to prevent Sericia Lespedeza from crowding out the native plants and grasses. Each plant discovered is sprayed individually with herbicide. Fire helps to keep Sericia under control by burning off the woody material. Grazing helps to check the young growth, which is nutritious. Any plants that survive fire and grazing become enriched with tannins that cattle and bison dislike, making use of herbicide necessary. Sericia Lespedeza was introduced to the United States as a forage crop and its use is still officially supported, especially in other parts of the country.

Cattle will eat grass and forbs, including early growth Sericia. Bison almost exclusively eat grass. Sericia was used to stabilize depleated soils as well as for forage. Unfortunately, cattle won’t eat older growth Sericia because it accumulates tannins that bind to the protein in the rumen of cattle and bison, making it indigestible. Prairie Management spend approximately $100,000 and two to three thousand hours annually spot spraying Sericia during burn recovery.

Energy Extraction

Energy extraction has strong negative effect on Nature Conservancy efforts at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.

Industrial wind farms are a threat to intact native prairie landscapes through the fragmentation they cause to the ecosystem.

Prairie chickens are predicted to abandon an area of 2,000 acres around each turbine tower, represented by a circle of one mile radius. Each 350-foot tall tower supports a generator capable of producing 1,500,000 Watts of electricity. Mostly, the effect will be on nesting and brood rearing acivities. Prairie Chickens aren’t the only species affected by wind power. Bats are dying when they approach too close to the turbine blades and suffer collapsed lungs when caught in low-pressure air turbulence. Eagles are at risk too, mainly from getting brained by turbine blades. Theory is that since Eagles are at the top of the food-chain with no predators, they are naturally not on the look-out for threats to their existence; they spend most of their time looking down for their next meal and don’t see the blades in time.

The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation (ODWC) has developed a spatial planning tool for the Greater Prairie Chickens in Oklahoma. You can find out more about this by opening this link in another browser window or tab:
http://www.wildlifedepartment.com/grpcdevelopmentplanning.htm
The idea is that the planning tool is for use by energy developers who want to operate in harmony with the surrounding area by locating the wind farms for minimal effect on native wildlife.

Renewed exploration for oil and gas has resulted in undesirable activity on the Preserve. Horizontal drilling with fracking requires a larger surface footprint. Fracking requires large volumes of toxic water and special sand, seventy barrels a minute according to one geologist. Not only does fracking have a negative effect on the Preserve, it also has a negative effect on the places where the sand is extracted from the ground, and on the fresh water used to hydraulically fracture the rocks.

In order to pump at these volumes, large capacity electric pumps are used instead of the single cylinder pump-jack engines that run on caisson gas. Electricity must be delivered by wire strung on utility poles, further degrading the prairie chicken environment.

On the Preserve, the fracked wells produce a lot of hydrogen sulfide that can’t be used and must be flared off. These flares are fatally attractive to the American Burying beetle, an endangered species that has or had a significant presence on the preserve. Bob said that the oil production companies have worked with The Nature Conservancy and modified the flare stacks, so that combustion occurs inside the stack where it is invisible to the beetles.

Oil and gas exploration brings air quality risks to humans. Hydrogen sulphide is toxic and has a smell of rotten eggs in small concentrations. Unfortunately, in high concentrations it will overpower our olfactory sense so that we can’t smell it. High concentrations of hydrogen sulphide are lethal. Oilfield workers wear sensors that warn the presence of the gas. When hydrogen sulphide is burned off, it converts to a precursor chemical that transforms to sulfuric acid on contact with moisture, like that in human mucus membranes.

In recent years the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve has suffered an ecological setback. Luckily, the oil and gas exploration on the Preserve hasn’t yielded great results; output from most of the new wells has declined. Ultimately, change is inevitable. Gas and oil will be depleted and when the landscape is quiet again it will recover aided by the efforts of The Nature Conservancy and staff of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.

When the landscape is quiet again

Questions & Answers

Bob answered questions. He said that the Osage Nation own the sub-surface mineral rights; these rights are managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs who are the authority for oil and gas mining in Osage County. The Osage oppose wind energy because of interference it causes to sub-surface access. More modern wind generators will be mounted on towers reaching up above four-hundred feet; larger foundations will be required to support this increase, not to mention the other adverse effects. Wind energy companies have negotiated permits to kill a certain number of Bald and Golden Eagles each year as a result of bird-turbine impacts, which conflicts with the spiritual sensibilities of the Osage Nation. Some large ranchers in the area are opposed to wind power mainly, it seems, for aesthetics as turbines are ugly. Smaller, less affluent, communities in the area favor wind power for the tax revenue it produces and the annual rent paid for use of the land on which the towers sit. Bob said that the Conservancy and the Preserve are non-confrontational and support green energy as long as it is placed in optimum locations; as with any real-estate, the mantra is location-location-location. The Nature Conservancy is a science-based organization that works to reduce conflict with the natural environment.

Lunch

Bob yielded to Karen Cruce who announced that we would adjourn for lunch. The sun was shining enough for some of us sit outside at the picnic tables. The chill north wind was moderated by warm sunshine and wearing of coats.

Quick Response Codes

Quick Response Code Example

We reconvened after lunch and Betty Turner gave us a presentation on Quick Response Codes (QRC) and educational displays in the Visitor’s Center.

QRCs are matrix bar-codes that were first designed for use by the automobile industry in Japan. It is a machine-readable optical label that contains information about the item to which it is attached. Betty and David Turner recognized the potential of this technology to enhance the experience of visitors to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve who come equipped with smart-phones.

You can try this technology by scanning the barcode reproduced in the picture above right. Your ’phone may be equipped with scanning capability already; if not then you will need to download an application to do so from your app-store. The QRC encodes an Internet URL, which should direct your web-browser to a short video overview of The Nature Conservancy.

Betty and David had several operational concerns to consider:

QR Code Location

They addressed the vandalism and usage concerns by locating the QR Codes inside the main window of the Visitor’s Center, as shown in the picture at right. Betty’s slides showing the detail that appears in the window are reproduced below — you should be able to scan the codes on your computer screen with your phone.

Mobile telephone signals are available everywhere on the preserve, except down by Sand Creek and the information kiosk. Betty said that, eventually, they would like to place QR codes at the scenic turnouts and other vantage points.

QR Code Left Window PaneQR Code Center Window PaneQR Code Right Window Pane

Educational Displays

Betty continued with a presentation on the educational displays inside the Visitor’s Center where a major reorganization occurred this winter with more emphasis on displays that communicate the restoration story of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. Changes within the Visitor’s Center were organized by a sub-committee of the Docent Council, co-chaired by Barbara Bates and Betty Turner, assisted by Dixie Collins and Nancy Irby. Now the Visitor’s Center is far less of a gift shop and more geared toward docent interaction with visitors. The walls have been repainted, except for the mural, the space is less cluttered and more open, and the exhibits are being revise, reworked, and updated.

Betty reported that an advanced class in museum curation, management, and design at Tulsa University has agreed to adopt the Visitor’s Center as a project in the Fall of 2015. With this in mind, the current changes are a temporary improvement.

Compliance Training

Betty yielded to David Turner who talked about the requirement for all docents to complete The Nature Conservancy compliance training, which is comprised of six modules. David said that, apparently, this has been an unmet requirement for several years. He is working to resolve the issue and said that we should expect something soon.

Docent Shirts

David talked about how to get a shirt embroidered with the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve docent logo. He said that we have a long-standing agreement with SignTec in Pawhuska who have the digital file needed to embroider any kind of shirt for $13 & $14. David said that anyone who wants an embroidered shirt should take a shirt with a collar and a solid color to SignTec for embroidering. Usually, they can do the work in a day, depending on how busy they are. Often, you can leave a shirt with them on your way to the Visitor’s Center and collect it on your way home.

Docent Calendars

David yielded to Bill Alexander who circulated an example of the 2016 Docent Calendar that will go on sale at the Visitor’s Center. Bill said that his wife Kathy had the calendars made from a series of photographs provided by Harvey Payne, Director Emeritus of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. This year any docent who takes a worthy photograph is invited to submit it for selection and inclusion in the 2016 calendar. Bill said that picture selection will be done by an outside entity unaffiliated with the Preserve and docent program.

Docent Mentoring

Bill mentioned that docent mentoring is still open for any existing docents who would like to participate.

Speakers Bureau

Bill yielded to Karen who spoke on behalf of Barbara Bates about the speakers bureau being organized by Barbara. The idea is to create a list of docents willing to speak on topics about which they have knowledge. Using this list, the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve can respond to requests for speakers by individuals and organizations. Docents who are interested in becoming a speaker should make themselves known to Barbara.

Inventory Tracking

Karen said that, beginning this year, we must write the inventory tracking numbers of the items we sell onto the yellow sales slip, or remove the sticky tracking label from the product and attach it to the slip.

Safety Protocols

Karen talked about safety protocols at the Visitor’s Center.

John Joseph Mathews Cabin

Karen mentioned the Conservancy acquisition of the John Joseph Mathews property and asked Bob Hamilton to give us a short briefing. Bob said that he would do his best though Harvey Payne is better placed to talk on this subject

Bob said that John Joseph Mathews was quite a guy; among other things he is best known as an Osage author and chronicler of Osage history. His magnum opus is the history of the Osage Nation, The Osages: Children of the Middle Waters. Mathews realized that the last full-blood Osage were becoming more eager to converse with him when he asked questions about tribal history. The Elders could see that Osage history would be lost if it wasn’t passed on to younger members of the tribe. It was these conversations that grew to become an important history book. Mathews saved Osage history by committing it to writing.

For many years, the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve has leased the 320-acre property from the Mathews family. Mathews called his property the Blackjacks. He built his 600-square-foot cabin there in 1930 where he lived and wrote for ten years. Eventually, the Mathews family entrusted the property to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve; sale of the Blackjacks closed in December 2014.

The Preserve has a plan to restore the Mathews cabin, which is derelict, that will be helped by pictures provided by the Mathews family; Bob referred to it as a fixer-upper. Restoration work will take place in collaboration with the Osage Nation and Chief Standing Bear with whom the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is in dialog.

During the last five years or so, the Preserve has been engaged in cleaning the area. More work is needed and a return of fire is planned. Eventually, the site will be opened for limited public access. Bob said that the Mathews property is a great addition to the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve that will help forge a strong partnership with the Osage Nation.

Ripple Effects

Jenk Jones said that the Preserve is having an increasingly wide effect. Last year the State Department sponsored a visit to the Preserve by seventy international teachers who came to learn about the work done here. Bob commented that he was intrigued by the wonder of visitors from more arid regions of the planet, like Africa and Saudi Arabia, who asked: Where does all the water come from? Bob continued saying that the soil restoration and remediation procedures developed by Tulsa University are now exported globally. More broadly, the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve has been the subject of more than 180 scientific publications.

TeamUp

Karen asked George Pierson to talk about TeamUp, the on-line docent scheduling application. George said that there are no logon names or passwords to remember. Access is granted by distribution of user-specific web-links that docents should save in the bookmarks section of their web-browsers. There are two kinds of link: read-only, and write. The write links grant users access to the schedule, allowing a user to make user-specific additions and deletions. George said that if anyone has trouble then please send email to tallgrass.docents@gmail.com. George monitors this address. Another alternative is to telephone Kay Krebbs at the Pawhuska Office, asking her for help.

Workdays

Kay said that two workdays are coming up when we need your help:

  1. The first day is scheduled for Saturday, March 14th from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and will entail picking up various leftover items that have been discarded beside our road ways. Meet on the front porch of the gift shop to receive your assigned section of road to clean. Bring your own gloves and don’t forget to pack your lunch. Trash bags will be supplied.
  2. A work day has been set for Saturday. April 18th to clean up around the newly purchased John Jacobs Mathews cabin at the south end of the preserve. Meet at 10:00 a.m. at the south entrance of the preserve and we will head to the cabin. Wear appropriate clothing and bring your own gloves, lunch and water. There are no restroom facilities so be prepared. We should finish by 4:00 p.m.

Science in Action: Coyote Distribution on the Tallgrass Prairie

Karen Cruce introduced Shelby Fraser who is a graduate student at Oklahoma State University, working on her Masters Degree. Shelby is investigating the distribution of coyotes, Canis latrans, on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and what effects, if any, human activities have on the population.

Bison grazing among the pumpjacks

Shelby is ebullient and, like most scientists, extremely enthusiastic about her research topic. She gave a thrilling presentation. Coyotes have been a topic in several recent issues of The Docent News, and her research project is a particularly nice continuation that is firmly grounded in science.

Shelby began her work in January this year. She is investigating how coyotes use the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, the largest remaining remnant left in the United States. Coyotes are the principal or apex predator in this rare ecosystem, filling the niche left by the absence of wolves and mountain lions.

Pronghorn Antelope via Wiki Commons

An apex predator has a controlling effect on the populations of creatures with which it coexists and, by extension, has a controlling effect on the overall health of the ecosystem it inhabits. If this is true, then the human species can be viewed as an apex predator; after all, in some circles the epoch in which we live has become known as the anthropocene, the period that began when human activities had a significant global effect on the Earth’s ecosystems.

Shelby’s research focuses on how the landscape influences the behavior of coyotes when bison and domestic cattle graze and fire moves regularly and randomly across the property. In addition, coyotes are potentially influenced by human energy development activity and by the fact that the landscape is less disturbed by virtue of it’s preserve status. Shelby is investigating the role the coyote has in controlling rodent and other small mammal populations and, as a result, find out what coyotes most like to eat. Another aspect of Shelby’s research is to detemine the feasibility of reintroducing the pronghorn antelope, Antilocapra americana, of which the coyote is the primary predator of pronghorn fawns.

Coyote Range

Coyotes are the most vocal canines in the world, hence their scientific name Canis latrans, which means barking dog. Closest relatives to the coyote are the grey wolf and the golden jackal. Shelby displayed a picture of a coyote eating a snake next to a picture of a golden jackal; they were difficult to distinguish. Coyotes can live for as long as fourteen years and grow to weigh between 12–16 kilos or 26–35 lbs. Now their range has expanded considerably to the point where they can be found in most parts of the country, as shown by the map above right. Coyotes are omnivorous, generalist, and opportunistic—they’re not in the least fastidious in their diet, eating anything available except frogs which they avoid. Shelby’s plan is to analyse their scat in order to determine what they are eating on the Preserve. To catch larger prey, coyotes must cooperate as a pack. Shelby said that the whitetail deer look well fed and healthy and doesn’t think that they suffer much from coyote predation

Coyote Trap Armed

Coyotes have excellent family values, being completely monogomous, staying together through the seasons until one of them dies. Very rarely does a breeding pair separate. Pair bonding can take up to three months; they mate between January and March. Gestation period is sixty-three days and the average litter size is six, though this can vary anywhere between three and twelve pups. Number of pups born depends on the resources available during the previous winter, which also influences how long the pups linger with the parent. If the winter was harsh then the pups stay with the parents longer. Usually, pups leave their den by July and remain with the parents through August. Coyote pups reach adult size and weight by the time they are nine months old. Generally, coyotes only hold territory during the mating season.

Coyote Trap Sprung

Shelby’s plan for her project is to follow five male and five female coyotes which means that she must first catch Wily Coyote. Shelby is a petite woman who needs to outsmart a very intelligent animal. She decided to set traps in areas frequented by coyotes like ponds and bison trails, but also in places where scat and tracks are easily found. Shelby set ten traps in five pairs and checked them twice daily. The traps are powered by strong springs that required all Shelby’s weight to compress. As you can see in the pictures, the trap is designed to hold the coyotes paw and do no damage beyond some inevitable bruising. Shelby said that at no time has she seen any damage to coyote paws and there have been no incidents of foot chewing. Interestingly, females are invariably caught by their front paw, whereas males are caught by their rear paws. Shelby uses scent lures on the males; when they smell it, they turn around and back into the spot to mark it with their own urine, at which point they spring the trap with their back leg.

First catch your coyote by Shelby P. Fraser

First catch your coyote. OK! Now what? Imagine how it feels to be responsible for this living creature: you can’t leave it to suffer like this and you can’t get close enough to release it safely. This female coyote looks in very good health; is strikingly beautiful; every inch of her wild, wild, wild; extremely pissed and frightened.

Blow-pipe anaesthesiology by Dwight Thomas

Shelby learned how to use a blow-pipe to fire an anaesthetic dart. Seeing her in the above picture conjured a mental image of her standing on a branch of a tree in the Amazon about to fire a curare-tipped dart at dinner. Someone asked her if she is a good shot. Shelby said: Oh, yes! I am a good shot. I’m a very good shot. If we had a cork board, I would show you.

The darts Shelby uses are high-tech. I didn’t get a picture, but they look similar to the auto-injectors used by the military to self-administer atropine as an antidote to chemical nerve agents. Shelby said that she had to get a veterinary certification to administer the correct amount of anaesthetic, which she does by visually estimating the weight of the coyote, another skill at which she has become adept.

Bagged and tagged by Shelby P. Fraser

Having trapped and anesthetized the coyote, Shelby approaches cautiously to be sure the animal is unconscious; she removes the paw from the trap; weighs the animal by placing it in a bag that she hangs from a fish-scale; checks respiration, heart rate, and temperature; takes pictures of the teeth to help estimation of age by the wear on the incisor and canine teeth; then she attaches a GPS tracking collar, reverses the anesthesia, and retreats to a safe distance to wait for the coyote to fully recover and leave the area, thus ensuring that there are no complications and that the coyote is safe.

Taking vitals by Shelby P. Fraser

Shelby follows the coyotes for eighteen months. The GPS collar records location coordinates every two hours and transfers the data via satellite every other day at 2 a.m. These collars remain active for eighteen months and then a timer inside mechanically releases the collar from the coyote’s neck. If, by misfortune, a coyote dies from natural or unnatural causes during the project, an additional coyote will be captured and fitted with the same GPS collar from the previous coyote. Automatic release of the collar is vital because coyotes are never caught twice by the same method.

Tracking by Shelby P. FraserShelby P. Fraser

While answering questions, Shelby said that all the coyotes she caught are healthy; only one small male had ticks. All the coyotes are free of sarcoptic mange, which is a highly contagious infestation by the burrowing mite Sarcoptes scabiei canis that causes intense itching and scabbing of the skin. She has no plans to analyse the scat for alimentary parasites. She hasn’t seen evidence of rabies. The males hold territory and an interesting preliminary result is Shelby has noticed that the coyotes on the Preserve have small home ranges, which means that resources are abundant; also, coyotes will eat deer in winter. Shelby says that the deer on the preserve are fat and in very good health.

As we can see in the pictures, the coyotes are in prime condition. This alone is a good metric indicating the successful restoration of the ecosystem. Another good metric is the small range area that indicates the abundant availability of resources to coyotes. Shelby’s has made a very promising start with her research; already there are clear indications that point to the outstanding success of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. Compare the pictures above with the one below taken in Año Nuevo State Park in San Mateo County, California.

Mangy coyote in Ano Nuevo State Park via Wikipedia

A healthy ecosystem is one that is vibrantly bursting with life in a multiplicity of forms: an unhealthy ecosystem is one that is impoverished and unbalanced. Our role as the supreme apex predator is to be caretaker of the global environment, to insure that life is healthy and remains so into the future.

Conclusion

Our Docent Reorientation was very good. Karen Cruce closed the meeting. David Turner and the new docents continued with a written test. Returning docents had the opportunity of going on a short hike to the Mathews cabin with Bob Hamilton.

The second reorientation meeting was postponed until 14 March 2015, due to inclement weather.

Thanks to David & Betty Turner

—Kay Krebbs

Kudos to David & Betty Turner for taking on the training of new docents this year. They have worked diligently to bring a quality training program to over 60 people, with the support of several other docents, staff members, and docent mentors. They have updated procedures, created training materials, and scheduled special sessions for those who had issues with the regular dates; thus, they have moved the Docent Class of 2015 through their class sessions with wonderful results. The class has now started their on-site two day training with docent mentors at the Visitor’s Center. It appears that most of the class will complete on-site training before May and will be scheduling themselves as docents in the Visitor’s Center from then onwards. We are so pleased with the enthusiasm of the new class, and want to recognize the Turners for their professional approach to training this amazing group. Be sure to give them your personal thanks for a job well done.

2015 Docent Training

—Bill Alexander

David Turner volunteered to do the training for the docent interns for 2015. Betty Turner and Barbara Bates worked to lead the recruiting efforts; both have had amazing success getting over 60 people to attend the training classes. David had so many people signed up that his scheduled location for the first two Saturday morning Owasso training sessions had to be moved to the Bartlesville Arvest Bank seminar room to hold everyone. Docents will continue to see training sessions at the Visitor’s Center for the next several months as interns complete their first and second day on-site training sessions with a mentor — noted on the schedule by the blue bar that begins with S1… or S2…. You are welcome to signup on a day where you see a single docent with the blue schedule bar showing the docent name followed by mentor. This would be a help to the mentor for that day so they could be free to work with the interns while you handle the desk, though be sure to ask the docent mentor how you can best help out. Kudos to David, Betty, and Barbara for their work to bring a new group of docents onboard at Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. This will be a tremendous help to improve the Visitor’s Center coverage percentage in 2015.

Docent Training: Bartlesville Arvest Bank Seminar Room by Bill Alexander

 

Spring Work Days

—Dennis Bires

Once again it is time for some outdoor spring cleaning at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. All Docents, prospective Docents, and friends are invited to take in some warm breezes and spring wildflowers while beautifying the prairie landscape.

Prairie Road Crew — Saturday, March 14th, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

We will pick up various leftover items that have been discarded beside our road ways. Meet on the front porch of the gift shop to receive your assigned section of road to clean. Bring your own gloves and don’t forget to pack your lunch. Trash bags will be supplied.

John Joseph Mathews Cabin Clean-Up — Saturday, April 18th, 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.

Please assemble at the ranch gate 100 yards south of the cattle-guard at the south entrance to the Preserve on the road from Pawhuska. The drive in to the cabin will be on dirt roads, possibly muddy, so we should car-pool from the gate in high-clearance preferably four-wheel-drive vehicles. Bring work gloves, old clothes, water, and a lunch to eat in Mathews’ yard — lawn chairs would be useful. The wooded site lacks running water and restroom facilities.

John Joseph Mathews was an Osage historian, novelist, biographer, memoirist, and diplomat who lived and wrote in solitude at his stone cabin in the blackjacks on the prairie’s edge from the mid-1930s to mid-1940s. His naturalist’s perspective on the prairie seasons and wildlife is published as Talking To the Moon (1945, reprint available from University of Oklahoma Press). The cabin site is on the Mathews family’s Osage allotment, recently purchased from the family by The Nature Conservancy to become part of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve.

Carolina Chickadee, (Poecile carolinensis)

—Nicholas DelGrosso

Carolina Chickadee via Wiki Commons

The Carolina Chickadee is Nature’s acrobat. This small bird, about 12cm (4¾ inches ) is a bundle of energy, zipping here and there. It is never in the same spot twice. On winter mornings it is often the first bird to the sunflower seed feeder. It will fly to the feeder, pick up a sunflower seed, and fly back to a favorite perch. Like a king on its throne, it pecks open the husk and consumes the seed.they will make multiple visits to the feeder stopping only when all the seeds are gone. Seeds and berries are important winter foods the chickadee.

The Chickadee does not have a strong beak, but what the beak lacks in strength the bird makes up in intelligence. They have mastered the technique of hammering the seed open on a tree or branch. So in a way they are convenient tool users, but not tool makers. They also have the ability to plan ahead, when there is an abundance of seeds they will store the excess for later use. In addition to the flurry of activity around the feeder, the Chickadees will often hang upside down from a wind tossed twig or branch as they politely wait their turn at the feeder. Sometimes you will see them clinging to the bark of a Hackberry tree as they search for a hibernating beetle.

Fall and winter are interesting times to watch Chickadees because they often flock together. When Chickadees are flocking the fee-bee call is often used to lead the flocking in the desired direction. It is directed movement not random wandering, they know where they are going as they flit through the brush. When Chickadees find a good food source they call out alerting the flock to the potential bonanza. In addition to attracting other Chickadees the calls attract other small birds. This creates an interesting phenomena called a mixed flock. Chickadee mixed flocks usually include Juncos, Kinglets, Nuthatches, Titmice and Warblers. The Chickadees calling out forms the cohesion that keeps the flock together as a group, allowing the other birds to find food more efficiently. Another advantage to a mixed flock is that multiple eyes are better than two at noticing potential dangers. These two advantages help the mixed flock overcome the hazards of predation and starvation on the winter landscape.

Another advantage of a mixed flock is that the increase in numbers gives the flock an advantage over small avian predators like the Eastern Screech Owl. I have often played a Screech Owl call by the picnic tables under the large BurOaks at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and watched as a mixed flock came in on the call. The Chickadees are usually the first to arrive on the scene, darting and flitting from branch to branch trying to locate where the Owl is. They are soon joined by their allies. It’s exciting to watch them as they hone in on the call. When you consider that Chickadees and other small birds are the Screech Owls common avian prey, you can understand their concern when they hear the Owl’s call and admire their preemptive attack. They understand the military doctrine that a fierce attack is the best defense.

In Oklahoma the Carolina Chickadee is a year long resident. It announces its presence by calling its name — chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee. It likes a diverse habitat of open woodlands, forests, parks, and residential areas with mature trees. I have never seen a chickadee in a prairie habitat, on the Tallgrass Prairie they can be found in riparian habitats where trees invade the prairie. Blackjack oak groves are also good places to look for them. You can often see Chickadees along the hiking trails along Sand Creek where there are lots of mature trees.

This bird is very noticeable with its black cap and bib and gray blue back and wings and white cheeks and belly. There rapid movement also draws your eye to them as they flit from branch to branch. Both sexes are similarly colored. This fact in itself brings up an interesting fact, when avian males and females have the same color and feather patterns they will tend to be monogamous.

Wm. Spear Design: Chickadee pin

By late March or early April the small flocks which have robed the woodland all winter long break up and the individual members become shy and quiet as they retire to their chosen breeding haunts. They also change their diet in the spring and summer which becomes primarily insects. This gives them the necessary protein to successfully nest and stimulates egg production. Interestingly enough, Carolina Chickadees are cavity nesters. Both the male and female will excavate a tree cavity in decayed wood or use an abandoned woodpecker cavity or a nest box. The nest lining is made up of a thick cushion of moss and other soft materials like hair, fur or plant down. When nesting the female will lay 3 to 9 whitish eggs evenly spotted with reddish brown at the large end. The female will incubate the eggs for 11 to 14 days. The male will feed her while is is incubating and both parents will feed the hatchlings. The young will fledge about 16 or 17 days after hatching.

There are a lot of Chickadees on the preserve, but you need to be looking along streams, creeks and seeps to find them because on the prairie that’s where you will find trees. The 15 year average on the Christmas Bird Count at the prairie is 109 Chickadees. That’s a lot of little birds. Take a walk in the wooded areas in the preserve and look for this hipper little fellow.

Prairie Watching: The Cross Timbers

—Dwight Thomas, Ph.D.

The Nature Conservancy purchased the Barnard-Chapman ranch in 1989 to create the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve with the intent of preserving a fraction of the remaining tallgrass prairie ecosystem.

But if you enter the Preserve through the eastern gate on County Road 4220, you drive several miles through forests before you see any open grasslands. If you were to fly over the Preserve, you would find that much of the eastern part of the Preserve is forested. About 10-percent of the Preserve is in trees.[1] That means that about 4,000 acres of the Preserve are not prairie, but upland and bottomland forests. The upland forested acres are part of another ecosystem called the Cross Timbers.

East Gate Fall Color by Dwight Thomas

The Cross Timbers ranges from Southern Kansas through central Oklahoma into central Texas. It extends about 500 miles from the North end to the South end. This band of trees is as narrow as 5 miles and as wide as 35 miles from the East side to the West side. It skirts Tulsa’s west side, Oklahoma City’s east side, slips between Dallas and Fort Worth, and edges up to Waco from the North. Except for the Dallas to Fort Worth area, it is generally a rural area with only smaller towns or cities like Sand Springs embedded within it. In the zone between Dallas and Ft. Worth, the Cross Timbers provide the only area in the metroplex with native trees, making it a desirable location, and thus it is heavily developed.

The topography of the Cross Timbers is sharply rolling hills, with more relief and steepness than we see in the land to the West, which is prairie, and land to the East, which is a mixture of prairie and eastern forests. It is also an area where sandstone is the predominant rock near the surface. This means that the soil is mostly sandy and subject to erosion. As a result, the soils are thin and often depleted of nutrients. Most other conditions, such as rainfall amount and seasonal changes, are similar to the land just to East and West, so it is the soil and rock that creates and maintains this ecosystem. Even the topography, having steeper hillsides and more relief, is a result of the lack of soil and vegetative cover that would slow erosion. We often find topographic features such as cuestas in the Cross Timbers. A cuesta forms where the resistant sandstone cap has been broken allowing the underlying rock layers to erode away leaving an asymmetric feature with a steeper slope usually to the East and a gentle slope usually to the West. The gentle western slope is the natural dip of the rocks to the West. The photograph of the Cross Timbers within the Preserve below, that was taken along County Road 4220 on the East side of the Preserve, shows the upland and bottomland forests. It also shows a cuesta outside the Preserve boundaries in the distant center of the photograph. From the photograph we can see the steepness and increased relief of the topography. We can also see the density of the forest.

The Cross Timbers in Summer by Dwight Thomas

The Cross Timbers is dominated by two species of trees, species that are adept at colonizing and surviving in areas without much soil and nutrients. Those two species are: Post Oak (Quercus stellata Wangenh), and Blackjack Oak (Quescus marilandica (L) Muenchh). On a casual walk through the Cross Timers, it is easy to find other tree and shrub species, such as Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana L.) and Rough-leaf Dogwood (Cornus drummondii C.A.Mey), but the two oaks are the dominant species. They control the environment. Mature Post Oaks and Blackjack Oaks are generally resistant to fire, so when the prairie fires sweep through the cross timbers, small plants are burned and killed, even small oaks, but the mature trees are not significantly harmed. Thus, this ecosystem has evolved to contend with fire just as the prairies have. It exists where the conditions are not good for grasses. The Winter photograph of the same area as in the above Summer photograph shows the different species of trees even better than the Summer photograph. Note the tall Sycamores (Platanus occidentalis L.) with their white bark that can be seen in the bottomland in the photograph.

The Cross Timbers in Winter by Dwight Thomas

In many places on the Preserve, the edge between the tallgrass prairie and the forests is not a sharp line, but the trees gradually thin from a forest to a savannah to a grassland. In other places, the edge is sharp as shown in the photographs below.

Edges Fall Color and Savannah by Dwight Thomas

But in either case, the edge is especially valuable to wildlife. Many species of birds and mammals that exist on the Preserve exist because they need open spaces, and they need protected spaces for different life activities, deer and turkeys for example.

Edges by Dwight Thomas

Thus having a part of the Preserve in forests enhances its value to wildlife and increases the species diversity. Of course, there are species of birds, mammals, and reptiles that live only in the forests, woodpeckers and squirrels for example. Without the forested areas, the Preserve would not have these species. And the number of plant species on the Preserve is similarly increased by having part of the Preserve forested, oaks and sycamores for example.

Deer at Edge by Dwight Thomas

The Cross Timbers played an important role in the early human history of the area. Much of the Cross Timbers like the tallgrass prairie in Osage County has never been cut or plowed. You just can’t plow rocks, and cutting scrub oaks is not worth the bother. The trees rarely exceed 30 feet tall in the uplands, and the while the trees are larger in the bottomlands, there are not enough of them to make harvesting them economically feasible. So the Cross Timbers has been left intact and still is, even today. There are groves of these oaks that are hundreds of years old. To see some of these, you can explore the Keystone Ancient Forest Preserve just northwest of Sand Springs. It is owned by the Nature Conservancy and managed by the city of Sand Springs. It is open the second Saturday of the month. If you explore the Cross Timbers of Oklahoma, you find isolated human homes throughout, and you find some areas where the trees have been cleared, but you don’t find large areas of complete clearing or much productive use. Historical accounts tell us that Native Americans in this area used the Cross Timbers for gathering food and for shelter, but did not create any large disturbances. And as settlers began moving into the area, they too just passed through the Cross Timbers. But passing through was not easy. When the settlers encountered the Cross Timbers, they spent a lot of time and energy trying to find ways to get through. This is because the Post Oaks and the Blackjacks grow in thick stands, and both develop a branching pattern that often has branches turning downward at the ends as seen in the photograph below with Post Oak on the left and Blackjack Oak on the right.

Post Oak on Left: Blackjack on Right by Dwight Thomas

This means that these trees formed a network of tough branches sometimes extending all the way to the ground that prevented any large object, such as a person on horseback or a wagon, from getting through. Sometimes, a path had to be cut for the settlers to get through. These travails were described in some detail in the writings of Washington Irving and Randolph Marcy. Marcy, who was one of the most noted of the military leaders exploring and leading settlers into the area, described the Cross Timbers extensively in his mid-1800s reports and articles. An interesting book that compiles many of his writings is Beyond the Cross Timbers by W. Eugene Hollon (University of Oklahoma Press, 1955). Here is a passage from that book that describes the problem that the Cross Timbers presented to human activity.

Beyond the Cross Timbers Excerpt

At the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, there are no developed trails that allow casual exploration of the upland forests of the Cross Timbers. But simply driving along County Road 4220 provides a good close look and illustrates the importance to the ecology of the area.

Thus we see that the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve also preserves many acres of the Cross Timbers. Those acres are found on the eastern side of the Preserve, and they significantly increase the Preserve’s ecological diversity. The Cross Timbers is a relatively small ecosystem that could disappear. The main threats are the increasing human population and increasing agricultural and industrial development. The area has a history of petroleum exploration and development, which is showing signs of increasing. In that context, it is good that we have a large acreage of Cross Timbers protected in the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve and in the Keystone Ancient Forest Preserve. Not only do the Cross Timbers add to the ecological diversity of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, they also add interest and beauty to the area. This can be seen in the fall colors in the trees and the leaves on the ground in the fall photographs below. By being included within the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, the Cross Timbers will survive along with the tallgrass prairies.

Fall color by Dwight Thomas

Endnotes

  1. Hamilton, R.G. (2007). Restoring heterogeneity on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve: applying the fire-grazing interaction model. Pages 163-169 in R.E. Masters and K.E.M. Galley (eds.). Proceedings of the 23rd Tall Timbers Fire Ecology Conference: Fire in Grassland and Shrubland Ecosystems. Tall Timbers Research Station, Tallahassee, Florida, USA.

 

Eagle Scouts on the Prairie

—Andrew Donovan-Shead

Eagle Scout Project by Oliver Dash

At the Docent Reorientation this year, I sat next to Chris Dash and Deb McCormick who are new docents in training. During our conversation they mentioned that their son Oliver Dash is an Eagle Scout who managed a service project at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve on Saturday, 9 February 2013; that was the year when the Preserve acquired new land at the south end that needed to be opened for the bison. Oliver organized a work crew to remove about one half-mile of barbed wire and fence posts. He liaised with Kevin Chouteau to scope the work, picked a suitable day for the work, solicited a donation of gloves and safety glasses from Lowes Hardware, mapped the route to the worksite, arranged for a Pawhuska contractor to materialize a TURDIS in the vicinity as there would be ladies present that would preclude peeing in the tallgrass, and completed the project in about three and half hours. Oliver is the guy holding the blue bucket in the right-hand picture above.

Eagle Scout Project by Oliver Dash

Oliver managed to enlist the help of more people than originally expected and was able to remove more fencing than planned. I examined Oliver’s Service Project Proposal worksheets. Being an Eagle Scout is an exercise in leadership and organization. A key role of any leader is to lead by example and to be willing to do whatever you ask your team members to do. In response to the question What do you think will be most difficult about leading them? Oliver answered: Finding a weekend with enough unit members available will be the most difficult part. Oliver discovered that the technical problems are trivial in comparison to the personnel problems.

Eagle Scout Project by Oliver Dash

 

Why the Bison’s Hump?

—Bill Alexander

Bison Skeleton

During the training, an intern asked if the bison hump is like the camel hump, and a visitor came forward with the same question that day. After the I don’t know the answer to that question, and some research on the Internet, the answer is that the bison hump is not like a camel hump which is fat to be used when food is not available. Rather, the bison hump is muscle that is attached to the vertical bones of the vertebrae, used for support of the head. The head of the bison weighs between 50 and 75 pounds. These muscles permit the bison to use its head effectively as a snow plow when grazing during the winter. The bison also uses its head and horns for defense against predators. The picture shown here and on the bison bone table in the visitor center shows the skeleton of the bison, and the bone going vertical from the vertebrae.

Common Butterflies of the Tallgrass Prairie: Eastern-tailed Blue (Cupido comyntas)

—George Pierson

Eastern-tailed Blues on Scat by George Pierson

Blues are small blue-gray-brown butterflies with wingspans generally less than an inch. They comprise the blue subfamily of the gossamer winged family of butterflies. There are five species that have been found at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, Eastern-tailed blue, marine blue, summer azure, spring azure and Reakirt’s blue.

The Eastern-tailed blue (Cupido comyntas) is one of the most common butterflies at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. They are very small and often overlooked or ignored. They stay very low to the ground feeding on small flowers like clover. Their larval host plants include a wide variety of legumes. They can be found everywhere on the Preserve, but are very common along the trails near the Visitor’s Center. Often you will find groups of them clustered on animal scat or around puddles. These groups consist largely of males who are collecting minerals needed for reproduction.

Eastern-tailed Blue: Male at left, Female at right by Geourge Pierson

The males and females are different with the males being bright blue on the top of the wings and females a grayish brown. They are the only blue species on the Preserve that have tails on the trailing edge of the hindwing. Near the tails they have up to three orange spots. These can be very faint on some specimens.

Docent Calendar

—Kathy Alexander

2016 Docent Calendar Cover by Harvey Payne

Save your best shots of the prairie for the docent calendar next year.

This is the first year for the gift shop at Tallgrass Prairie Preserve to offer a calendar of pictures of the prairie. Many of you have already seen a copy either at one of the re-orientation sessions or at the gift shop. Harvey Payne graciously supplied photos for this first effort, which began in the fall, to get us started on the concept of a calendar and to test whether or not something like that is of interest to our guests at the Visitor’s Center. Although that determination has not yet been made by the guests, we would like to open up the opportunity to our docents to submit their pictures for a follow-up calendar for 2017. For those interested, keep your camera close by when you visit the prairie. Here are the guidelines:

Photos must be of sights on Tallgrass Prairie taken from places you have had permission to go, or using a telephoto lens. They do not have to have been taken in 2015. You may submit up to 14 entries for the calendar. Resolution should ideally be 1 MB or more and submitted electronically in .JPG format. Do not send any of the photos for the calendar until requested in the fall.

An outside independent group will be asked to select the pictures for the calendar from your submissions. Remember that photos appropriate for each of the twelve months and a cover and information page will be targeted in the selection process. If selected, your name will appear in the calendar as copyright owner for your submission.

Visitor Counts

—Iris McPherson

Monthly reporting begins again in April 2015.

Visitor Counts

Docent Coverage Of Season Days

—Bill Alexander

Monthly reporting begins again in April 2015.

Docent Coverage of Season Days Annual History

Other Places to Visit

Here we provide some links to other places worth visiting.

Tallgrass Prairie Preserve Visitor’s Center Latitude & Longitude

Here is the latitude and longitude of the Visitor’s Center that you can give to visitors for entry into their GPS navigation device.

These coordinates are a verified position on the parking lot in front of the Visitor’s Center. This link to Google maps shows the position superimposed on satellite imagery: https://goo.gl/maps/hBUIu.

Back Issues

Some printed back issues of the Docent Newsletter, to February 2009, can be found in the two green and one blue-black zip-binders, stored in the Perspex rack by the file cabinet in the office of the Visitor’s Center.

All back issues are available electronically via the links shown below. All newsletters prior to December 2007 are available in Portable Document Format (PDF), which means that you will need Adobe Reader installed on your computer to read these files. All newsletters from December 2007 onwards are in HTML format that is easily read using your web-browser.

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2000January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December2000
1999January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December1999
1998January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December1998
1997January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December1997
1996—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December1996
1995—January  February  March  April  May  June  July  August  September  October  November  December1995

Selected Topics Index

This persistent index of selected topics should make finding articles of interest easier. The list will grow as I move further into the past and it will grow as I add interesting topics from each new newsletter. Iris McPherson lent me the paper copies of the newsletter from the very early years of the docent program; I ran them through a scanner equipped with a document feeder, saving them as PDF files, then added them to Back Issues section above. Let me know of any dead links that you discover. Also, please lend me any paper copies of the newsletter that are missing so that I can scan and add them to the list of back issues.

Newsletter Publication

Deadline for submission of articles for inclusion in the newsletter is the 10th of each month. Publication date is on the 15th. All docents, Nature Conservancy staff, university scientists, philosophers, and historians are welcome to submit articles and pictures about the various preserves in Oklahoma, but of course the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in particular.