Prairie management plan : Herbert Hoover National Historic Site

Herbert Hoover National Historic Site

This report provides reasoning for the development of a prairie management plan and it also discusses the purpose of the plan. The principle action of the PMP is to guide the natural process of restoration in the reconstructed prairie. After thirty years, the prairie continues to develop and change. Although it does not fully represent the dynamic ecosystem that once occurred on the site, it is a good representation of a successful prairie reconstruction. The vision is to create a system that pragmatically functions as a prairie and that, in time, requires little human input to sustain it. The reconstructed prairie should contain plant diversity that reflects the diversity in the site’s physical characteristics. The plant community assemblage should consist of the greatest amount of genetic diversity practicable within and between species while using native genotypes. This diversity stabilizes plant communities for the long run and diversifies the habitat available for fauna. The emphasis on vegetation management recognizes that re-assembling plant communities is not sufficient to reestablish the bacteria, fungi, soil invertebrates, insects, arachnids, and wildlife. The plant community provides the basic structural environment on which all the other living components depend and therefore it is seen as the most important manageable level of the prairie environment.