“This sucks,” Dave Griffith observed accurately.
We were wading through a patch of multifloral rose, a mess of prickles, Tuesday at the prescribed grazing demonstration project at Chain O’Lakes State Park.
That’s the crux of the matter of invasive or exotic plants, whether introduced or arriving some other way.
“We don’t have enough chainsaws in Chicagoland area to get this done,” he said.
Volunteering the last three years at a prairie restoration, I couldn’t agree more. It often feels like little headway is made.
Griffith, district forester for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, came up with a innovative plan to use unusual herbivores to help control the impact of invasives and exotic plants at Chain O’Lakes SP without relying heavily on herbicides.
Of particular concern are buckthorn, honeysuckle, multifloral rose, and oriental bittersweet, true in degrees at all wild spaces around Chicago. Buckthorn has become the dominant woody species in the area.
Griffith built his plan in discussions with Tyler Verba, founder of VISION313, in “prolific conversations,” as Verba put it.
“I feel like humans are unraveling the very system that allows us to exits,” Verba said. “I feel it is a far superior technology than spraying all these heinous chemicals.”
Griffith originally thought of goats, which eat like bush hogs chop through undergrowth. But as Griffith worked the pilot program through Springfield, the idea was refined to Verba giving the use of a llama (Llazarus), an alpaca (Caboose) and six sheep (another six will be added any day) to graze and live within a fenced 6.8-acre area, from the middle of May through September. There was a test period last year before the pilot took off in force a couple weeks ago.
“We’re trying to hit the sweet spot with the number of animals,” Verba said. “There’s a lot of learning going on.”
These animals work because deer are too selective as eaters and, as Griffith put it, “It’s not feasible to have bison or herds of elk.”
As we walked, I couldn’t stop baa-ing back and forth with the sheep, an old habit from growing up in a tenant house on a farm with a few sheep. As sheep baaed and moved around, Griffith said, “They’re down there eating away. It makes me happy.”
Site superintendent Brian Jeske said, “This is a great opportunity to see if it works, so we can start spraying less herbicide.”
It makes economic sense. Instead of pouring dollars into working hours and herbicides, “let animals do all the work,” Griffith said.
Current practice on restoration and conservation relies heavily on prescribed burns. Griffith, also a wildland fire sawyer, thinks prescribed fire is not enough, “We need that grazing component.”
He showed a patch of mayapples that appeared after just the impact of brief grazing last year.
“We’re starting to see mayapples because the floor is seeing some sunlight again,” he said.
The grazed areas were starkly more open than the ungrazed.
As the plan took shape, Griffith found 21 rolls of perimeter fencing at the old offices at the Chain O’Lakes SP. T-posts came from Moraine Hills SP and Illinois Beach SP. That became the fencing for this pilot project being held in public view.
The public is all in.
“The visitors love it,” Jeske said. “Visitors who visited in March and April asked when they are coming back to the park. They said, `We love seeing them. We love them being here.’ ”
There’s something delightful about seeing the perked ears and faces of a llama and an alpaca lift above the honeysuckle.
Now it needs to work. Griffith thinks it will because it is a way to tap into our ancestral knowledge of plants and animals.
“It can start that way,” he said. “Put animals back and let them select what they eat and crap everywhere.”
Yes, it’s an earthy project, but Verba had an ethereal thought, “We should have animals around us. They are speaking to us. We can’t hear with our ears, but we hear with our heart.”
Dreams come from the heart.
“In 20 years, I would like to see a functioning oak woodland ecosystem, where you’ve got oak seedlings, you’ve got adolescent oak trees, you’ve got the whole gambit,” Griffith said. “Here we do not have that. It’s all buckthorn and honeysuckle. It’s a non-functioning ecosystem in my opinion, so hopefully we can pull the wrenches out of the gears and get it working again using Mother Nature instead of fighting Mother Nature. Ideally.”
The project area is on the north side of the exit road before Wilmot Road.
