The Emerald Horizon: The History of Nature in Iowa

7. Present Quandaries, Future Quests

7 PresentQuandaries,FutureQuests The people would act today if the situation were clearly understood. The question is whether we do the right thing now or wait until the expense shall have increased a hundredfold. The preservation of springs and streams and forests will one day be undertaken as freely as the building of fences or bridges or barns. When that day comes, Iowa . . . shall yield to wisdom’s guidance; forest and meadow shall receive each in turn intelligent and appropriate recognition; beauty will become an object of universal popular concern, and once again across the prairie state the clarified waters of a hundred streams will move in perennial freshness toward the great river and the sea. —Thomas Macbride, 1898 WehaveseenhowIowa’snaturalworldwastransformedintoa working landscape. Understanding the speed and magnitude of this transformation cannot help but direct our gaze toward the future. What will Iowa be like for tomorrow’s citizens? How can managing the land’s productivity blend with maintaining the quality of life through fostering native species and nature’s ecological goods and services? The following pages outline four major ways of doing this: preserving native remnants, restoring the land’s health through properly managing remnants and reconstructing additional native communities, extending nature’s benefits through establishing functional subsets of native species and natural processes, and building and maintaining an infrastructure for achieving these ends. With its diversity of suggestions, this chapter acknowledges that there is no single method for achieving the desired end. Concerned citizens with differing abilities and inclinations can all find some effort that appeals to them. Each action , from planting a native garden to restoring dozens of acres, from talking to one’s neighbors to changing governmental policies, will contribute to the final goal—as will many other actions not voiced here. There is plenty of room for creativity and exploration and plenty of need for picturing solutions outside the box. We need to think big. This listing is not intended to ignore the magnitude of Iowa’s environmental problemsortheamountofeffortrequiredtoreversethem.Anyonecouldrightly claim that funding and education will never be sufficient, that economic and personal gain will always supersede nature’s needs, or that society’s values will never encompass the worth of other species. These claims may indeed be true. Present Quandaries, Future Quests | 225 But dreams can be powerful, and ideas planted and given time to grow have a strange way of becoming reality. Some of this chapter’s suggestions are already maturing. Note, for example, the growing interest in combating invasives, the increasing use of prescribed woodland fire, and the expanding number of prairies and savannas that are being resurrected from grazed stubble and brushy overgrowth. All were unimaginable a few decades earlier. With time, small actions have the potential to transform our state in a big way. Thus the following pages, presented as a highway map with numerous alternative routes, all point toward a single endpoint: an Iowa that fosters life for its native plants and animals and by doing so creates a healthful, sustainable, and increasingly beautiful natural environment for its human residents. Goal 1: Preserve Remaining Remnants Preserving remaining native remnants must be the core of any program to save nature in Iowa. Distinct remnant communities with unique coherence to site ensure the long-term survival of Iowa’s diverse native species and genetic material . Remnants constitute crucial sources of locally adapted seeds. They serve as models for reconstructing native communities elsewhere and for reintegrating ecological functions into intensively managed landscapes. Considering the small percentage of Iowa they now cover, native remnants play a disproportionately large role in retaining the integrity of Iowa’s landscape and maintaining our quality of life. Yet even today remnants are being plowed under, used as fill dirt, logged improperly, covered with roadways, converted to housing sites, drained, filled in, and generally ignored—activities that have been ongoing since settlement. Whilethesetravestiesaresometimescommittedknowingly,oftentheyaredone inignorance,withoutknowledgethatanythingspecialisbeinglost.Sothequestions arise: How can remnants be recognized? Which ones should be preserved, and how? Searching Out Remnants Preservation efforts should attempt to locate and perpetuate the full spectrum of Iowa’s native biological and community diversity: varied prairies, oak woodlands, and bottomland forests as well as sedge meadows, fens, and native marshlands. These communities will provide habitat not only for now-common plants and animals that may be declining but also for rare species that are sensi- 226 | Present Quandaries, Future Quests tive indicators of environmental quality. Because adequate habitat...