Sunday, July 7, 2013

A New Lease on Life

*(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?