Restoring Pine Bend Bluffs A great close to the restoration season
Volunteer Gnia helps haul and stack invasive buckthorn.
Photo: Peter L. Johnson
The busy restoration event season of 2010 came to a satisfying close October 30th at Pine Bend Bluffs. Working on the Flint Hills Resources-owned Pine Bend property, FMR volunteers and Flint Hills employees cleared an impressive stand of invasive buckthorn and honeysuckle literally clearing the way for continued oak savanna restoration work at the site.
As 65 Flint Hills employees and volunteers continued to haul and pile up invasive buckthorn and honeysuckle, the scene began to call to mind Monets Haystacks. The event supported efforts by Friends of the Mississippi River, Flint Hills Resources and Great River Greening to restore this once-oak savanna.
This was the 11th annual volunteer event at Flint Hills Resources and is part of FMRs larger effort to protect and restore the Pine Bend Bluffs Natural Area along the Mississippi River. Since 2000, employees and volunteers have helped to restore over 70 acres of native tall grass prairie, oak savanna, oak forest and rare sand-gravel prairie. With each passing year, the special and diverse habitats in this area are not only recovering, but flourishing!
With tired limbs and a few buckthorn scratches, volunteers and employees left feeling proud of their Monet-like brush piles and contribution to the health of their Mississippi River and its bluffland heritage.
After the event, remaining ground-level buckthorn and honeysuckle stumps were treated with herbicide to reduce invasive re-growth. Otherwise, the invasives will crowd out native plants, which are greatly needed for local wildlife habitat, especially the songbirds that rely upon this stretch of the Mississippi River migratory bird flyway.
Volunteers had more fun than they thought they would building ever-increasing towers of invasive buckthorn.
Photo: Peter L. Johnson
Thank you to all of the event participants and partners! We greatly appreciate both the volunteers and Flint Hills Resources for their dedication to improving the habitat value of this important Mississippi River bluffland!
Meghan Dudle, Program Assistant