Prairies once covered huge swaths of Missouri and Illinois, but now the majority of this ecosystem has been converted to farmland. Less than 1% of native prairie remains in both states.
In a new book, “Sea of Grass: The Conquest, Ruin and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie,” environmental journalists Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty chronicle the history and future of this essential landscape. Hage and Marcotty were guests on St. Louis on the Air on Wednesday.
“Many of us Midwesterners think, ‘Oh, it's that flat, boring part before you get to the mountains,'” Hage said. “What we discovered working on the book, and what many scientists and ecologists have discovered in the last couple of decades, is that, in fact, the prairie is an incredibly rich ecosystem and an invaluable ecosystem in terms of the health of our planet.”
Prairies are grassland ecosystems that clean water, store carbon and serve as home to some of the most iconic American animals, such as buffalo, prairie dogs and monarch butterflies.
Native Americans lived in and stewarded the prairie, but when European settlers first saw the landscape, they were horrified.
“When they encountered the grasslands here, they were astounded and often terrified by the sheer openness of it and the sheer wilderness of it,” Marcotty said.
The settlers soon set to work undoing the great prairie with inventions like the polished steel plow, which was popularized by the famous Illinois blacksmith John Deere, and Monsanto’s Roundup Ready Crops. Hage and Marcotty write that the Midwest was able to become the breadbasket of the world, but at the expense of prairie ecosystems.
“Agriculture is very important to this country, first of all, and it was also very important to the settlement of this country,” Marcotty said. “But it is through agriculture that we have completely redesigned and replumbed the center part of the United States.”
North America continues to lose its remaining prairies at a rate of about a million acres a year, Hage said.
“That's about as fast as the Amazon rainforest,” Hage said. “It's an ecological disaster. But nobody's paying attention because it's out in very remote places.”
But Hage and Marcotty found many examples of people who are working to bring the prairie back. And they found that studies have shown prairie plants and animals work quickly to share their beneficial properties for soil, water and humans when given the chance.
“Josephine and I came away with a certain amount of hope because, as we traveled through Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, South Dakota, Montana, we found lots of people — farmers, ranchers, conservationists — who want to restore prairie, protect prairie where it exists,” Hage said. “There are so many ingenious efforts out there.”
If there is a call to action in the book, Marcotty said it is to “go see a prairie.”
The Missouri Department of Conservation has a map of the state’s public prairies. The closest to St. Louis is at Cuivre River State Park in Lincoln County, which has an unplowed, original prairie. The Missouri Prairie Foundation also works to protect prairies in the state and has a map of its locations.
The Illinois Department of Natural Resources also has a list of prairies people can visit, including the Fulls Hill Prairie State Natural Area in Monroe County.
There are also many places near St. Louis where people are working to reestablish prairie plants, including about 400 acres of prairie plantings at Shaw Nature Reserve, which is owned by the Missouri Botanical Garden. There are also nine acres of restored prairie in Forest Park near Steinberg Ice Rink.
Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty spoke with Kate Grumke on St. Louis on the Air. Listen to the conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or by clicking the play button below.
