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thanks to music attorney Ed Fares vision
there's a new crowd flocking to Commons Ford Ranch Metropolitan Park
he's learned a lot about restoring a prairie since he discovered the serene
park in 2001 as a first-time birder
there was this huge field that to me it looked
kinda pretty brown all looked the same
kinda amber waves of grain like blow in the wind
but there weren't a lot of birds in it and it was the centerpiece
of the park that sort of got me thinking about what is this and what's
going on so I asked I brought another birder friend out a gentleman by
the name of Byron Stone
who is an excellent birder and he knows grasses
so I said Byron what's going on here what is this
school is good he goes no it's all
bad its all invasive grasses
all that stuff is King Ranch Blue Stem
Bermuda grass and Johnson grass and it is not conducive
to birds at all so if we get birds in there
there's going to be passing through and he said wouldn't it be cool if
that was like we changed it all and that was
native grasses then it would be full of birds that sort of started the whole
process the first thing
I did was start doing a lot of research about what is
what are our native grasses why is it important why is it even matter
and I kind of knew the bird connection but what difference did it make so I
begin to look at why it was important and
if we wanted to change it how we would do it Ed started by connecting to local
regional and state conservationist and wild life experts
and then of course the first stop
that really mattered was going to the city this is
city property so I went to the park supervisor
Joan Sing with the green light from Austin Parks and Recreation
Ed enlisted energetic volunteers like Dianne Cheryl
he asked me if I would take over the fundraising committee so
are actually he was just creating the fundraising committee
for seed money they held events wrote grants and partnered with private
and business contributors now the Commons Ford prairie restoration
operates under the charitable umbrella of the Austin Parks Foundation
and then we began to put together a seed source driven by
two things what would be the most appropriate native seeds for
this tract given what the soil content is and on top of that
what would be the most appropriate for birds before planting the 40-acre tract on
former ranch land with
70 species of seeds they tackled the invasives
through tilling plowing and selective herbicide treatment
you can't just throw a bunch of
native seeds on top of it and hope they're gonna growth through it
in winter 2012 partner Native American Seed planted the first seeds in their
no till drill method quickly the mix of grasses and flowers took hold to feed different
species of birds and other wildlife
all year long still as any gardener with bermuda grass well knows
invasives are tenacious with more connections and knowledge behind them
the restoration team organized a supervised burn in August 2013
what people don't understand is that the burn doesn't destroy
anything its you know plants are
growing from seed and their growing from
roots and whatever else is curling along or just under the ground
just a few weeks after the burn spring blooming plants emerged clear of clutter
the battle isn't over yet when we first
started this all of this was Bermuda now we have quite a few the natives
going
this is Engelmann Daisy also known as
Cutleaf Daisy this one over here is Mexican Hat
this little guy here is called Silverleaf Nightshade
we have this one which is Bush Sunflower
that was as you can tell blooming recently we have
some of the nice native grasses out here this one is called Purple
Three Awn
and this one is Sideoats Grama, Sideoats Grama is
the state grass of Texas so you know you can see where we
we did the herbicide treatment we've got we have
Johnson grass in here which is the least of our three
invasive grasses it's the least problematic and we're not
terribly concerned about it also because
sparrow species actually like Johnson grass seeds so they will
come to this and then you can see just in the midst of this
we've got natives growing we've got the Mealy Blue
Sage in this area
using surveys based on Texas Parks and Wildlife methodology
they've track bird species from day one but before the restoration
one bird was all they noted
so the first post restoration
survey we had I'm I'm off by
one or two birds we had about 99
birds and about eleven or twelve different species
now counts in the prairie exceed 30 species
and over 60 in the 200-acre park we also did plant
surveys the plant surveys indicated
90 percent of the plants in that
40-acre tract were invasive plant species
now sure it's less than half were probably
were probably 70 percent native and 30 percent invasive
we are still fighting still doing some treatments
we're going to do some replanting in 2014
we want to continue to make this more and more
of a long-term sustainable native prairie
volunteer counts keep growing too since being part of such a significant restoration
has many rewards
without volunteers projects like this just couldn't even get off the ground the community has to work
along with all the public entities
to get things like this to happen
A Boy Scout Troop didn't wait long for results when they built bird houses
interesting thing is literally while they were
putting up one of the bluebird houses a blue
Eastern Bluebird which is the species that we would get here was watching
them put up the house and before they put up one house and went to the second and
third
while they're working on the third house a blue bird was on the first house
that's kind of fun to watch Travis Audubon conducts monthly walks at Commons Ford
not only to identify birds but to make connections between plants and animals
in today's prairie that holds tomorrow's future
One of the key reasons is that native
prairies and and tall grass prairies that once dominated
the southern portion in the United States almost completely
have also now almost completely disappeared there's less than one percent
left of those native prairies so all of the species
not just bird species but any species that depends on those for
sustenance food nesting they're in decline
so that's an important aspect right there
we need to preserve and protect and restore that
for those kinds of species that depend on it