Unplowed prairie, home to unique species, sprayed by Lawrence Parks and Recreation with broadleaf herbicide
Lawrence Prairie Park. // Photo by Haines Eason
The word prairie likely conjures images of bison, covered wagons, sod huts, barbed wire, and tall, waist-high grass.
On the plains, in the prairie, the eye goes to the horizon and the mind to travel. Maybe also to the sky and late-summer anvil clouds marching with the wind. But look down, and you might realize that “prairie” is an inaccurate word for the richness underfoot, especially in a virgin expanse of it.
“Virgin,” here, means relatively undisturbed and can include prairie that’s never seen a plow, even. Such land still exists. And, believe it or not, there’s a fair amount of quality prairie in just Douglas County itself. But, it is threatened.
“If we assume that all prairies not visited remain in a condition of A (excellent) or B (good), there are 76 prairies remaining for a total of 1,352 acres of high-quality prairie in Douglas County,” says Kelly Kindscher, KU professor of environmental studies and director of the Kansas Biological Survey.
The grading system referred to is outlined in a report dated February 15, 2016, by Kindscher and others entitled “A Natural Areas Inventory of Douglas County in Northeast Kansas.”
“We grade prairies, and everything above a C is considered high-quality,” Kindscher says.
Lawrence Prairie Park. // Photo by Haines Eason
Lawrence’s urban prairie is sprayed
As with any ecosystem, there are so many manifestations. One unique, unplowed prairie specimen is located in the southeast corner of Lawrence, Kansas, bounded on the south by 31st Street and surrounded by the namesake Prairie Park, which includes a nature center, a fishing pond, and lush woods totaling 100 acres.
The prairie itself is, as of this writing, unmarked and sits to the east of the nature center. There are no informational plaques explaining to visitors what a prairie is and what rare, regionalized, and ancient plants reside in this unplowed, virgin field. On April 27, the City of Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department dosed this remnant prairie with a broadleaf herbicide.
The city and parks and recreation department have been in the spotlight since and have effectively closed ranks on the matter.
Lawrence Prairie Park. // Photo by Haines Eason
Fallout and monitoring
Following the spraying, The Lawrence Journal-World and The Lawrence Times covered the fallout closely, chronicling the city’s initial dodge of the matter via a press release dated May 1. In that release, the city claimed it was managing invasive weeds according to plan and state law, but Kindscher and Native Lands, LLC owner Courtney Masterson (an organization that works to introduce people to native ecosystems and foster a love and respect for them) have since noted that broadcast spraying is not how the city had been or should be managing the prairie.
“Maybe they were trying to do the right thing,” Masterson says, “But you should never broadcast spray in a remnant prairie. And they sprayed too early. So, the invasives weren’t affected.”
The city disagrees with that claim, also made by Kindscher.
Masterson is being very generous as there is frustration from ecological experts like herself, Kindscher, and local longtime expert Ken Lassman, publisher of the ecological tome Kaw Valley Almanac.
Lassman was the first to notice the spraying as he is a regular visitor to the prairie and had traveled there to photograph emerging wildflowers on Sunday, April 30. Immediately spotting wilting plants and flowers, he knew something was wrong and contacted Masterson, starting the subsequent series of events in motion.
A day after the city’s May 1 press release, now-retiring Parks and Recreation Director Derek Rogers (who announced retirement on the heels of this incident) debriefed the Lawrence City Commission about the spraying and reversed course, apologizing and noting that the broadcast spraying of PastureGuard, the broadleaf herbicide used, was improper in the prairie setting.
Additionally, in email interviews for this story, it was learned via Interim Public Information Officer Laura McCabe that city protocol for spraying herbicide in a public area is to post signage one hour prior to and for 24 hours after and that the city did not follow this protocol.
In his May 2 debriefing, Rogers also promised to hold responsible any staff in violation of protocol, but the city has not released to the public any information about the staff involved or subsequent training or consequences for that staff.
Lawrence Prairie Park. // Photo by Haines Eason
The experts and the city
Masterson and Kindscher both indicated that spot applications of herbicide are necessary to control invasive plant species and that spraying should be done in consultation with properly trained experts. Both have noted, though, that working alongside the city to protect more nuanced ecosystems has been challenging.
“They own and manage a lot of native landscapes,” Masterson says. “None of them are being managed properly. I’ve been trying to advocate for native plant landscaping at the city level for 10 years. We’ve invited them in for training, and they never come. This is not meant to be negative or destructive—I’m not trying to scorch the earth with my anger. We’ll keep offering opportunities. The city did invite us to propose work, to recommend work, and to provide a proposal with us providing the services recommended. That’s a humbling thing. There are not a lot of folks who can do this work. I hope they will take this seriously.”
Kindscher also wonders about the city’s real prairie expertise, noting that, in his perspective, he feels the staff is largely skilled in “turf management” and lawn care, as most parks and recreation departments’ staff across the country are.
Lawrence Prairie Park. // Photo by Haines Eason
The land and the future
“I’m certain the prairie will survive,” Kindscher says, “but the numbers of wildflowers will decrease. The question is how much and what can we do about it.”
Kindscher’s tone is calmer than others around the time of the discovery of the spraying. There was concern in the community that the damage done to the prairie was catastrophic.
Kindscher, Lassman, and Masterson all have noted in public statements and publications just how unique some of the species living in Prairie Park are. And, the thing about long-standing ecosystems: You may see examples of plants in them that you think you’ve seen in other similar ecosystems, but these local specimens often have habituated to their niche. An aster in Western Kansas is not necessarily going to thrive in Eastern Kansas—or vice versa—if both are of ancient stock. Each has acclimated in its own unique way.
But Masterson and others do have faith in seeds, seed vaults, and saving plants via storage in the event of disasters such as this one.
“Every seed contains the potential to truly change a life, to change a landscape. They’re just full of hope,” Masterson says. “When you’re talking about a prairie plant, like a compass plant, it lives for hundreds of years, and its seeds live in a seed bank for hundreds of years. One seed can create a plant that lives through however many cycles of insects and wildlife and humans who have these amazing relationships with these plants for thousands of years. That seed has the potential to change the world.”
Though Masterson and Kindscher have partnered on efforts to catalog and store for safekeeping prairie plants’ seeds, Kindscher and others like him are taking a “wait and see” approach as it’s important to the research community to not make further changes to this now-altered ecosystem.
Furthermore, Kindscher is of the mind that it may not even be possible to regrow and fully restore the truly native prairie.
“It’s very, very difficult to increase the number of flowers in an existing prairie,” Kindscher says. “We don’t know how to grow all the species. You can scatter lots of seeds, but that doesn’t mean they come up. And, if they come up, that doesn’t mean they survive. There’s all that grass out there. Any seeds that get scattered out there are going to be competing against really big, tough, aggressive grasses. It’s a really hard thing to do.”
But, the herbicide used, PastureGuard, it’s nonresidual, meaning it should not linger in the soil and continue to affect Prairie Park’s ecosystem through the growing season.
Some of the broadleaf plants are holding on in Prairie Park. Some have emerged and, with some pesticide burn here and there, are persisting. Many are, though, by the look of them, fried. KBS staff are monitoring, counting, documenting, and hoping. Kindscher, Lassman, Masterson, visitors, and city staff will all have to wait and see. And they’ll have to work together if Lawrence’s urban prairie is to stay one for generations to come.
