Nature Conservancy Protects Native Grassland by Expanding Prairie with Easements

DES MOINES, Iowa – Two completed conservation easements will protect an additional 240 acres at the Broken Kettle Grasslands, Iowa’s largest contiguous native prairie, The Nature Conservancy announced today. The 80-acre and 160-acre additions to Broken Kettle, located just north of Sioux City in Plymouth County, push the protected acreage by The Nature Conservancy and its partners to more than 7,300 acres in that area.

“A conservation easement can benefit the landowner and be critical to our conservation efforts. All easement contracts are developed with individual landowners but most prohibit future housing developments, cultivation or tilling of the land and mining. Almost all allow for livestock grazing, native prairie seed harvesting, haying and other compatible uses like hunting. Specifically, these two easements will act as buffers to core prairie areas and will reduce fragmentation of the grassland,” said Leslee Spraggins, state director of The Nature Conservancy in Iowa.

The first easement was placed on the “Matthiesen 80” land owned by Bill and Dotty Zales. This 80-acre parcel is adjacent to Loess Hills land that the Zaleses protected with a conservation easement in 2003. The proceeds from the sale of the easement in 2003 enabled the Zaleses to purchase the 80-acre parcel from Gene Matthiesen, a native of LeMars, Iowa, now living in Florida. The Zaleses purchased their original Loess Hills farm in 1980 because of their interest in the extensive native prairie. Bill Zales is a retired botanist from Joliet Junior College near Chicago. He also has family in the area. This easement was acquired with financial assistance from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ Landowners Incentives Program.

The second easement, 160 acres, was donated by long-time Plymouth County residents Barry and Carolyn Knapp. This is an addition to the 1,300 acres the Knapps have already protected with easements since 1999 and is part of their 2000-plus acre ranch at Broken Kettle. During a baseline study of the property, The Nature Conservancy observed five bobolink (grassland birds) on the property, most likely nesting – a testament to the Knapps long-term care of the land through prescribed grazing management. The Knapps intend to put the remainder of the land they own in easements and have instructed their heirs to place remaining unprotected land in conservation easements.

The Nature Conservancy closed on both easements in June 2005.

Broken Kettle Grasslands is located in the northern portion of the Loess Hills, which rise 200 feet above the Missouri River Valley, snaking in a narrow band of wrinkled bluffs that cover some 650,000 acres along the state’s western border. This region supports some of Iowa’s best examples of tallgrass prairie, which originally covered 25 million acres across parts of Iowa and Minnesota. Today, less than one percent remains; making it one of North America’s most endangered ecosystems.

The extensive prairie ridgetops feature a variety of plants and animals typically found further west in the Great Plains.

Broken Kettle also harbors many plant species, including lead plant, big bluestem, silky aster, ground plum, side-oats gramma, downy painted cup, nine anther dalea, purple coneflower, snow-on-the-mountain, scarlet gaura, dotted blazing star, ten-petaled mentzelia, purple locoweed, pasque flower, bur oak, tumblegrass, little bluestem, buffalo berry, scarlet globe mallow and yucca. Animal life includes the black-billed magpie, upland sandpiper, western kingbird and the Great Plains toad.

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The Nature Conservancy is a leading international, nonprofit organization that preserves plants, animals and natural communities representing the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. To date, the Conservancy and its more than one million members have been responsible for the protection of more than 15 million acres in the United States and have helped preserve more than 100 million acres in Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia and the Pacific.

The Nature Conservancy in Iowa has more than 7,500 members and manages 33 preserves totaling over 6,000 acres. Since the Chapter began in 1963, with the aid of volunteers it has been involved in the protection of nearly 20,000 acres in the state, including native prairies, wetlands and woodland communities.