Bringing Nature Back
There are two components to land conservation. The first is protection. Protection from what you might ask. The settlement of Michigan began 200 years ago and in that brief period of time the landscape has been changed dramatically. The land was logged, plowed, mined, fenced, grazed, drilled, drained, paved, and built upon. Not very many acres escaped even one of these activities. The cumulative effect was startling. There was little or no thought to sustainability and in many areas the removal of vegetation and water from the land was thorough. Land conservancies, also known as land trusts, exist to protect undeveloped land from exploitive human actions. They do this by writing conservation easements with landowners, which either restrict or prohibit such actions, or by acquiring fee simple ownership themselves.
That’s the first component. The second is stewardship. This is about caring for the land and the plants and animals that live on it. According to Michigan Natural Features Inventory there were about 30 different natural communities which could be found in MMLC’s seven-county service area 200 years ago – types of forests, marshes, swamps, prairies, and savannas. Today most of those have been obliterated, changed beyond recognition, or exist as remnants.
Can any of these communities be restored, brought back to what they were before human alteration? In most cases, probably not. There is little land in mid-Michigan that is not privately owned and assembling enough parcels to lay the foundation for even a facsimile of a landscape-scale oak-hickory forest is unlikely. But this is not to say that our land, fragmented as it may be, cannot be improved.
Managing land for habitat improvement is the core principal of environmental stewardship. The sharp decline in insect and bird populations is a worrisome development. Habitat loss and invasive species are two of the major factors. Non-native invasive shrubs crowd out and shade out native plants. Removing them allows the native flora to recover and adding new species appropriate to the site increases plant diversity which then increases the numbers and kinds of animals which depend on them. This work is an important element of land conservancies.
Protect and improve – that’s how we can restore ecological function and bring nature back, the nature that we have been trampling over, and upon which all life depends.
Written By: Jim Hewitt, MMLC Board Member
