Prairie Project
Restoring Native Habitat
Salem UCC has been blessed with land
When Salem UCC moved to Mark Drive back in the 1960s, it purchased a substantial plot of land. This land houses our church building, a walking labyrinth, a community garden, a fire pit, and large lawns.
Prairie Project
In 2023, Salem began the process of turning (or returning) part of its large lawn to prairie. This restoration project will take multiple years to complete. Parts of the project along the way include a controlled burn of a part of our lawn, a seeding of native prairie grasses and plants, weeding out invading species, and then maintaining the land.
Why a Prairie Project?
Restoring Habitats
According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, less than .1% of the native prairie remains in the state today.
Reintroducing prairie land allows for greater biodiversity, including plants, insects, vertebrates, and other organisms.
Plants in prairies comprise species that cannot be found in other habitats, flowering plants that are a year-round resource for pollinators, and even rare Wisconsin plants like orchids and milkweeds.
About 2,000 species of insects, including butterflies, bumblebees, moths, leafhoppers, and dragonflies are exclusively dependent on prairies.
While we will not be home to the large grazing mammals that used to roam Wisconsin’s prairies, prairie lands provide habitat for grassland birds, small mammals, reptiles, and amphibians.
Prairies also provide habitat for moss and lichens, as well as improve fungus and bacteria in the soil.
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(image by Britt Gaiser @unsplash.com)
Clean Water and Environmental Improvement
Prairie grasses and native plants do a better job than lawn grasses in collecting, filtering, and storing water. The deeper root structures help to capture both sediment and nutrients. This has multiple benefits. It helps to filter water as it returns to the aquifer. It prevents erosion and runoff effects. It traps and sequesters carbon.
The positive environmental effects of prairie lands are evident in the watershed, the air, and the land.
(image by Brazil Topno @unsplash.com)
Learn More
Information presented here was gathered from
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https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/prairie/why-important/benefits-prairie.html
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and
https://www.cleanlakesalliance.org/prairies-and-our-lakes/
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Please visit these sites to learn more about prairie restoration and its benefits.
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