*(VIDEO)*
Upland Sandpipers, Harrison County, Ohio
“Natural Grade”.
It’s what the natives
of Harrison County, Ohio, call the shape of the land left after epochs of
erosion of the once mighty Appalachians. That
shape is unusual now in parts of Harrison County because the coal interests
have deep mined, and high-walled, and strip mined 80% of some townships.
The recontoured lands – those mined after the law required smoothing and
seeding -- show a bloated uniformity contrasting with the angular “natural
grade” remnants, some forested. The recontoured lands grow grass tufted with
the alien invasive, autumn olive.
The dozerscape does
not affront the grassland birds of Harrison County. These synthetic hills offer
safe breeding harbor to Grasshopper Sparrows; Savannah Sparrows; Henslow's Sparrows; Vesper
Sparrows; Horned Larks; Eastern Meadowlarks with dialects suggesting
Dickcissel’s introductory notes; Bobolinks; and, wailing out of the mists of
myth, Upland Sandpipers!
What this polyglot singing on the dozered slopes says is that whatever mix of
plants the coal company planted for erosion control evidently is acceptable to
the native grasshoppers and other insects, for these invertebrates feed a
multitude. It is difficult to imagine a more vibrant community of grassland
birds.
After the first round
of strip mining, the company began liquidating the mined-out land in
tracts ranging from 5 to 200 acres. Then two things happened; a
new technology enabled the re-stripping of parts of the land for coal
that once had been deemed inaccessible or inferior and the Marcellus Age dawned. The coal
company lost all interest in selling and made plans to further work the
holdings, happily stripping and fracking into the 21st century. The
upside, if there can be an upside to a land torn by extraction, is land
stripped before the reclamation law and scarred by 80 foot highwalls will be
reclaimed to something approximating natural grade and large tracts of open
grassland will be formed or preserved.
But what to do with
the tracts of grassland while they are warehoused for future exploitation?
Leasing them to cattle farmers seemed logical; that generates a little revenue and it puts
someone on the land with a security interest. Grazing the reworked lands with
cattle in large boundaries also happens to mimic the imprint of bison on the
land – enriching soils, diversifying the grass and forb stands and, most
importantly for the grassland birds, creating grass stands of varying heights
and densities. In the words of Dr. Scott Pendleton, an accomplished field
naturalist and a veterinarian at Cadiz Animal Clinic, a large-and small-animal
practice near the Cadiz, Ohio, airport:
“More than half our Henslow’s nests and all of
the Upland Sandpiper nests are on coal company land that has been grazed. Also,
the sandpipers and their hatchlings like to forage on the newly-cut
hay ground. We are working with the leasing farmers to schedule
cutting and grazing after June 20th when the
young Uppies are out foraging with the adults and most of the passerine birds
have fledged.”
The take-home points
from this expedition to Harrison County, Ohio, are that:
The only place in the
county to host breeding Upland Sandpipers, an Ohio Endangered Species, is recontoured
strip-mined land, and
On that recontoured
land the Upland Sandpipers show a clear preference for grass stands that have
been grazed by cattle, a preference they share with many other grassland birds.
Does Harrison County
offer a template for an exciting conservation initiative?
