By Harold Reutter
harold.reutter@theindependent.com

That was the most surprising slide Michelle McCormick, education assistant for the Nebraska Game and Parks Department, showed to the Grand Island Rotary Club Tuesday afternoon.

Although McCormick did not use the term, burning red cedar trees might be called an act of creative destruction.

McCormick said burning red cedar allows the re-establishment of tall grass, short grass and mixed grass prairies in Nebraska's almost 30 "biologically unique landscapes."

Burning the red cedar is a mission for the Nebraska Natural Legacy Project, McCormick said. Although the red cedar is native to Nebraska, today's abhorrence of prairie fires has interrupted nature's cycle for dealing with the red cedar.

McCormick said red cedar is filled with resin during the spring, which makes the tree highly combustible. A controlled burn will wipe out red cedar, but leave nearby Ponderosa pine unscathed.

At one time, buffalo grazed the prairie as part of nomadic herds, McCormick said. Today, the Nebraska Natural Legacy Project works with ranchers and farmers to make sure that cattle do not overgraze a particular section of land. She noted buffalo might heavily graze the land, but then will move on.

By rotating the areas where cattle graze, the Nebraska Natural Legacy Project is attempting to replicate that past, she said.

McCormick said the project is trying to do a similar replication with controlled burns. It does not want to eliminate all red cedars, but the project does want to thin out the trees.

McCormick noted that red cedars have root systems that tend to choke everything else out.

Ducks Unlimited and Pheasants Forever are two of the partners in the Nebraska Natural Legacy Project, which shows that those two organizations believe that the effort helps game birds.

In response to a question, McCormick said some deer hunters might object to burning red cedar. But she noted that she saw a controlled burn of red cedar, where numerous deer ran from that stand of trees to a nearby stand of red cedar.

While numerous biologically unique landscapes have been identified, only a few are active, McCormick said. They include Loess Hills and Loess Canyons in south Central Nebraska, Wildcat Hills in western Nebraska, the Middle Niobrara River Valley, Saline Wetlands in eastern Nebraska near Lincoln, Rainwater Basin in south Central Nebraska and Pine Ridge in northwestern Nebraska.

McCormick said her job includes writing school curriculum. She said many Nebraska students may know what a rainforest is, but may not know how to describe a rain basin. McCormick noted her home of Holdrege sits in a very large rain basin.

She said the emphasis of the Nebraska Natural Legacy Project is on forming partnerships, rather than having a top-down emphasis. McCormick said that is necessary in a state where 90 percent of the land is privately owned.

She noted that preserving habitat preserves wildlife. McCormick said that is important is Nebraska, which is part of the Central Flyway.

She said that there are five major flyways in the United States and the Central Flyway is by far the busiest.

In answer to another question about migratory birds and wind energy, McCormick said that wind may be Nebraska's greatest resource behind the Ogallala Aquifer. She said nobody will mind if a single goose hits a wind turbine blade, but she said wind turbines may be stopped cold if a single whooping crane is killed by a blade.

As a result, people working on wind turbines are working on the idea of shorter blades, blades that make noise that may warn birds and colored blades for birds that can distinguish color.