Brown Family of Iowa Gives Back to Prairie Through Nature Conservancy Project

Des Moines, Iowa—July 21, 2005—On Sunday, July 24, The Nature Conservancy in Iowa will dedicate the Browns Prairie, 188 acres of native prairie located in the Glacial Hills area, north of Storm Lake and southwest of Spencer near the Little Sioux River Valley. The Prairie is named in honor of the late William and Gertrude Brown of Ruthven. The acquisition of the prairie was funded by contributions from their children and grandchildren.

The Brown family has operated a family farm near Ruthven since 1883. The current operator, Michael Brown, is the fourth generation to farm the land. Many of the approximately 50 children and grandchildren of William and Gertrude Brown have dispersed to other areas of Iowa, Nebraska, Washington and other parts of the country. More than 25 of these descendants have contributed to the acquisition of the Brown Prairie to preserve a part of a vanishing resource, the Iowa prairie, which has nearly disappeared in the years since the Brown family first came to Iowa.

The significance is extraordinary on two counts.

First, this 188-acre tract of native prairie is within one of the largest complexes of remnant prairie left in Iowa. A rough estimate is that 3,000 to 5,000 contiguous acres of prairie remain within the area and time is running out for prairie restoration.

“Iowa has lost 99.9 percent of the prairie community that once dominated 85 percent of the state,” said Leslee Spraggins, state director The Nature Conservancy in Iowa. “The remaining .1 percent is under pressure as population grows and remnants are plowed under for farming or paved over for roads and cities.”

Second, the Brown family represents an emerging breed of Iowans: Those who have benefited from the land and are willing to give back to the land.

Don Brown of Des Moines, a member of The Nature Conservancy in Iowa’s board of trustees, said on behalf of the Brown family, “Our family has benefited because my grandparents and parents farmed the prairie and, in the process, made a better life for their descendants. As a consequence of their efforts and those of many other farm families, much of the prairie was inevitably lost. We want this contribution to commemorate Gertrude and William Brown and to protect some part of the prairie that was a part of their lives, in perpetuity, for the benefit of future generations.”

This particular tract of land was historically pastured, but much of the native grass has survived. After a year of rest, the re-growth of prairie grasses and flowers is spectacular. A special feature of the tract is a small, crystal-clear, spring-fed steam that meanders through it.

While it may seem that everyday more depressing environmental statistics are released, Brown is optimistic. “People of good will and who have ties to land can rescue threatened ecosystems such as the native Iowa grasslands from oblivion,” said Brown.

The Nature Conservancy in concert with others is working to save the remaining contiguous acres of prairie in the Little Sioux area, the well-known Loess Hills area in western Iowa, and in areas in southern Iowa through acquisition, conservation easements and private land-owner cooperation and commitment to prairie conservation.

Nature Conservancy scientists are hopeful that preservation of larger, connected tracts of natural prairie will lead to the preservation not only of threatened native wild flowers and grasses, but also of the bird, mammal, insect and reptile communities, which require substantial areas of such habitat to maintain genetic strength and to assure the survival of their species.

On a world-wide basis, the grassland prairies are the least protected habitat on Earth. The grasslands once dominated the Iowa landscape.