Photo Gallery

Insert Photos

Pollinators depend on healthy prairies and savannas as refuges from pesticides and provide immense benefits to native plants and food production.

Pollinators come in many shapes and sizes!

A group of OWLS finishing up a 20 acre controlled prairie burn. Note the firebreaks and mowed prairie edges.

Finishing touches on a Spring controlled prairie burn.

Landowner sharing his experiences on a property visit (Walk-about)

OWLS Member setting fire using a Drip Touch 

Roadside prairie burn adjacent to Peggy and Mark Timmerman's: The county did some tree cutting and regrading on their roadway 10 years ago. They seeded some natives at my request. Since that time, they have burned the roadway regularly and collected seed to propogate in from the road. One side of the road in what was an old hay field is now a registered Monarch way station. They used a combination of collected and purchased seed to plant that area.

Timmerman Roadside Burn: Area was dormant seeded in Winter with yogurt containers containing native prairie seed. Peggy divided all the seed into about 40 containers, put the lids on, and hauled them out to the field. I spaced the containers out evenly over the field (about 3 acres), and then hand broadcast the seed in each "quadrant" when there was snow on the ground.

A controlled burn on an OWLS members property.

Wild Lupine on sandy soils propagates well with repeated dormant season burns.

Spiderwort blooming in June on a prairie burned in April.

Black-eyed Susan is a early succession beauty that will continue to pop up in disturbed or low plant density areas from time to time.

Controlled Prairie Burns can yield some amazing results!

Butterfly Milkweed, Sand Coreopsis, and Pale Purple Coneflowers. All came in strong after an annual early spring "dormant season" burn.

Butterfly Milkweed and Prairie Cinquefoil Early Summer Bloomers

Compass Plant and Pale Purple Coneflower

Rough Blazing Star

Prairie Coreopsis can take a while to show up in restorations, but it is worth the wait. Note the absence of thatch and the ash residue on the soil surface.

Joe Pye Weed can show up in moist areas

Yellow Coneflowers come in strong during the early succession stages of prairie restorations.

OWLS Teamwork is what makes Prairie and Savanna Restoration a viable and affordable stewardship option for landowners. Without this cooperative OWLS approach, many native restorations and reconstructions would not be practical.

A hardworking group of OWLS gathering for comradery after another efficient controlled burn.