Applied Ecological Services, Inc.
Wisconsin Office
17921 Smith Road,
P. O. Box 256
Brodhead, WI 53520
Phone: 608.897.8641
Voicemail: 608.897.4898
AES Fax: 608.897.8486
TCRN Fax: 608.897.2044
Info@AppliedEco.com

Illinois Office
120 West Main St
W. Dundee, IL 60118
Phone: 847.844.9385
Fax: 847.844.8759
Info.il@AppliedEco.com

Kansas City Office
1904 Elm Street
Eudora, KS 66025
Phone 785.542.3090
Fax 785.542.3570
Info.ks@AppliedEco.com

Minnesota Office
21938 Mushtown Rd
Prior Lake, MN 55372
Phone: 952.447.1919
Fax: 952.447.1920
Info.mn@AppliedEco.com

East Coast Office
1100 E. Hector Street Suite #398
Conshohocken, PA 19428
Phone: 610.238.9088
Info.pa@AppliedEco.com

Kankakee Sands Update

Progress continues on TNC's largest grasslands restoration by employing unique methods and a healthy dose of imagination

Until the mid-1800s, the Grand Marsh of the Kankakee River covered a half-million acres in northwest Indiana and supported an amazing amount of wildlife. That is, until nearby Beaver Lake and its surrounding wetlands were drained into the Kankakee River by a small ditch that was dug with the intention of draining the swampland surrounding the shallow lake.

The destruction of the Grand Marsh began in 1853 when the small ditch eroded into a long spillway to the river that spelled the deaths of hundreds of thousands of waterfowl, fish and other species that relied upon the vast wetland ecosystem.

In 1997, the Indiana office of the The Nature Conservancy (TNC) bought the land which had been grazed or farmed for decades, and asked AES to design what is now growing into the largest grassland ecosystem restoration ever pursued by TNC _ almost 7,000 acres.

Today, the complex planning of the Kankakee Sands Restoration is finished and the arduous, meticulous and patient restoration work has begun.

Last December, we installed a dormant fall seeding of the first 220 acres as the initial step in establishing a restored diverse ecological community at Kankakee Sands. Eventually the TNC's restoration will include productive wetlands, upland savannas and tallgrass prairies.

These ecological communities have been mapped out to follow the contour of the land and drainage patterns. AES ecologists determined the boundaries of the vegetation zones through an elaborate process of technical investigation and mapping, and by walking the land, noting contours and determining which plant species could be supported at the sites.

Seeding nearly 7,000 acres is no small task

To be sure, designing a 7,000-acre restoration is an enormous undertaking. But seeding the entire 7,000 acres with diverse native vegetation is no small task, either. Once AES ecologists Steven Apfelbaum, Tom Hunt and John Larson had designed the seed mixes for each of the restoration's vegetation communities, the next obstacle was actually finding enough seed to plant 7,000 acres.

With this fertilizer spreader, AES was
able to seed 100 acres in only three
hours.

But it is rapidly gaining popularity among those who refer to conventional subdivisions as "cookie cutter," and among those who recognize that desires for living space amenities are shifting in the American culture. The Wall Street Journal recently cited a national study of home buyers who ranked "Natural open space," "Walking and bike paths" and "Gardens with native plants" as their top three wishes. Golf courses came in a distant tenth.

Looking for native species of local genotype, AES crews searched western and northwestern Indiana for remnant seed throughout the summer/fall of 1998 and spring/summer of this year. We found and hand-collected seed in remnant areas in small patches on both public and private land.

"We were very, very careful to use good collection ethics," said Hunt. "We had permission first, and when we collected, we would leave a large percentage of the seed in place."

AES paid landowners for seed we collected or we made barter agreements based on the quality of the seed at the collection site. Written permission was secured for any harvesting from state or county land.

In collecting seed from over 100 local native species, we timed collection efforts to coincide with the ripening of each different species, focusing on the most productive concentrations. Last year's collection efforts gathered one ton of seed material.

Most of the harvested seed was installed directly into the Kankakee Sands site. Some were shipped to greenhouses to grow 130,000 plugs which we transplanted this spring into a 100-acre on-site nursery that will provide seed for the restoration over the next 10 years.

Beyond standard planting methods

One of our biggest challenges, in fact, is that everything about the Kankakee Sands Restoration is big; it's one of the largest restoration projects in the country. That's why, knowing we could install seed on only 25 acres a day using standard restoration planting methods, AES field services manager Carl Korfmacher looked for alternative seeding methods to fit the grand scale of the project, and found a solution in agri-business equipment a wide-span, balloon-tire fertilizer spreader. In its intended use, fertilizer is loaded into a large hopper on the spreader. Fifty-foot booms are connected to the hopper, one to the left side, another to the right. When the spreader is moving and the boom is in operation, the fertilizer is delivered out along the length of the 50-foot booms by an auger. When our AES crews use the machinery, however, we are spreading seeds, not fertilizer. The spreader creates a measured `rain' of seeds along the 50-foot lengths of the augured boom. Once the seed has been spread, crews then press it into the ground using a 12 foot-wide cultipacker.

Last fall, we seeded three different zones _ emergent, wet prairie and dry prairie with seed mixes containing between 50 and 100 species, along with a cover crop and a chipped limestone "carrier" to move the seed along the booms. Instead of planting 25 acres in a day, the augured boom seeded 100 acres in three hours.

Hydrologic restoration of the land

Another part of the Kankakee Sands project is the hydrologic restoration of the land plugging ditches, identifying tile locations and blocking field tile drainage. Over 5,200 acres of wetland communities are being restored where it is appropriate and where it will not affect adjacent farms. Of course, the TNC doesn't want to flood their neighbors' fields. This intention is part of the TNC's specified "Good Neighbor Policy," which also included a survey of the project's neighbors to ensure that they're comfortable with the hydrology program. While activities like this help establish neighborly relationships, at Kankakee Sands it also had some other interesting results. Local farmers have become very interested in the project, and we have benefited from the local knowledge of these people who have planted, irrigated and harvested on this land for decades.

"The neighboring farmers know this soil better than any of us," said Hunt. "They can tell us the best time of the year to work it, and the best strategy to ensure that our grasses and forbs are successful. We are applying their wisdom and their techniques for the restoration.

"Not only are they buying into the restoration on a philosophical level, they are helping with the implementation. We depend on them to do the work for us, and they do good work; very dependable, with strong ethics."

Apfelbaum, too, noted the significance of the local connections, "The farmers helping us now to restore the land in the late 20th Century are in some cases ancestors of the farmers who broke the ground in the late 19th Century. I think the symbolism in that is pretty important, pretty remarkable."

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