"Just as the barbarians burned the libraries which explained the origins of human culture, so have we plowed under the prairie plants which explain the origins of our prairie empire."
From For the Health of the Land : Previously Unpublished Essays and Other Writings,by Aldo Leopold.
J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle, eds. Copyright (c) 1999 by Island Press. Posted to this website by permission of Island Press/Shearwater Books, Washington, D.C. and Covelo, California. All rights reserved.
Anderson Prairie is a remnant of the great tallgrass prairie that once covered the midsection of our nation.
Because of the rich soil created by the decay of deep-rooted prairie plants over thousands of years, the prairie was almost entirely converted into cropland by the early 1900's. Only portions too small or remote for agricultural machinery were spared. Today, old railroad right-of-ways and forgotten cemeteries contain some of the few remainders of the prairie ecosystem. Anderson prairie is such a remnant.
Prairies were usually dominated by grasses, but included flowering plants as well. A few scattered oaks
which survived the prairie fires were also present. Where the prairie met the forests of the east, grasses and flowers were interspersed with open oak woodlands called "savannas."
Large mammals such as wolves, bison and elk roamed the vast expanses. These have all disappeared. Many grassland birds, such as the prairie chicken (above right), are all but gone from Illinois as well. Today, prairie chickens are found at only a few places in southern Illinois. When settlers arrived, they were thought to number in the millions.
