Photos of the Week – June 7, 2026 I don't have a favorite plant. I don't even even have a favorite milkweed. Having said that, spider milkweed, aka green milkweed (Asclepias viridis) is right up there. It has gorgeous flowers, but they aren't particularly flashy. Their yellow-green color doesn't…

Photos of the Week – May 27, 2026 Photography is all about light, and quality outdoor light often comes in short spurts. Now and then, though, a long window opens up and it sure feels good when I have time to take advantage of it. Last Saturday morning was cloudy, which meant sunrise light wasn't…

Photos of the Week – May 15, 2026 I spent a couple days at the Niobrara Valley Preserve this week. I'll be back again next week for our plant identification/habitat workshop on Tuesday May 19 (9am-2:30pm). If you're interested in joining us for that (it's free!), it's not too late to sign up. Just…

Photos of the Week – May 8, 2026 When I woke up early last Saturday, I rolled very slowly out of bed and said to myself, "This is fun. You do this because it's fun." I looked at the clock (6am) and then looked at the outside thermometer (31 degrees F). "Fun, I thought. This is fun." Normally, I…

Hubbard Fellowship Blog – Sarah Settles In Today's post is written by Sarah Kennings. Sarah and her colleague Leah Zuschlag joined The Nature Conservancy as Hubbard Fellows in early February of this year. Their Fellowship will run 12 months and end at the end of January 2027. Sarah comes from…

Bison, Bingo, and Other Bits and Bobs A bison bull at the Niobrara Valley Preserve this week Today, I want to share a bunch of announcements, a wonderful surprise I received last night, some photos from this week's trip to the Niobrara Valley Preserve, and some spring/summer prairie bingo cards.…

Catching up on a bunch of photos taken in April and accompanying stories

Kim and John ran 50 kilometers. I laid on the ground and photographed spiders, mushrooms, and flowers. It was a good day.

There are countless ways to create habitat heterogeneity and manage for biodiversity in prairies. Here's another example.

How Diverse Should My Prairie Restoration Seed Mix Be? “I’m doing a prairie restoration project - how many plant species should I put in my seed mix?” The answer to that depends on why you're doing the restoration project.  Do you want a planting that is both beautiful and resilient?  Are you…

Photos of the Week – March 22, 2026 I'm sorry not to have posted much lately. It's not you, it's me. Well, to be fair, it's also the roughly 1 million sandhill cranes that come through the Platte River each spring and all the people who come to watch them. If you've never visited the Central…

Prairie Bingo (if you like that kind of thing) I don't know about you, but a nice quiet walk through the prairie can often help me deal with everything else going on around me. Last weekend, I spent parts of both Saturday and Sunday cutting trees and fixing fence at our family prairie. I also…

Photos of the Week – February 25, 2026 We had a few days of real winter this last week, including a little snow and some freezing temperatures. As a result, I had a few chances to go out and photograph snow, ice, and frost. It was great! Now, the temperatures are back to a spring-like feel and it…

I’m Always Glad I Went Out I don't ever plan to write an autobiography, but if I do, the title might very well be, "I Was Always Glad I Went Out". And, of course, it will sell badly because that's not a very catchy title for a book. Plus, no one wants to hear about my childhood. Although it's a…

Ask The Prairie Ecologist (Again) I'll get to the Ask The Prairie Ecologist part of this post below. First, though... One of the best things about this blog is that it has connected me to amazing people and stories all over the globe. The most recent example came last weekend, when I got an email…

Photos of the Week – February 5, 2026 I'm very grateful to have been featured in a short (6 1/2 minutes) video on Nebraska Public Media's Nebraska Stories. A terrific film crew spent two days with me at the Niobrara Valley Preserve and the final product came out really beautifully. I hope you…

The Post-Grazing Year At the beginning of the 2025 growing season, I picked out three sites I could visit repeatedly to photograph/document how a prairie responded to having been grazed the previous year. That turned out to be overly ambitious, but I did manage to focus on one of those sites - an…

Photos of the Week – January 24, 2026 Well, I was out sliding around on the ice again this week. I made two trips up to the tiny reservoir north of Aurora to search for photo compositions on its frozen surface. I was not disappointed. Hemp dogbane seed (Apocynum cannibinum) Dogbane seed. Dogbane…

Prairie Boy Visits the Ouachita National Forest Well, Kim and I had another ultramarathon vacation last weekend. We were down in eastern Oklahoma for the Ouachita Switchbacks 50K race. While Kim and her fellow runners were performing insane feats of athleticism on very steep, rocky trails, I…

Photos of the Week – January 16, 2026 I spent several days at the Niobrara Valley Preserve this week engaged in long brainstorming discussions about conservation and land management. It was invigorating, but we basically worked from dawn until dusk, so I didn't have much time to wander with my…

Prairie Pet Peeves (Part 1) I'm generally a pretty happy person. Negativity tends to slide off my back. I hope this blog reflects that. I try to keep it pretty positive and full of wonder and exploration, not loaded with complaints, gripes, and negativity. I also appreciate alliteration, actually.…

Photos of the Year – December 24, 2025 Quick announcement. We are hiring a land steward for the Niobrara Valley Preserve. This person will join our land management team and work with prescribed fire, cattle and bison grazing, invasive species suppression, and much more, across 56,000 acres of…

Photos of the Week – December 15, 2025 First, a quick announcement that we are again offering up to five $1,500 grants to graduate students working on research related to conservation in the Great Plains. Read more about the Weaver Grant program here. Yesterday, I headed out to watch the sunrise…

Photos of the Week – December 5, 2025 It has finally gotten cold enough for my favorite winter wetland to freeze over. Mostly. I made two quick trips this week to the restored wetland at the Platte River Prairies. It's a former sand and gravel mining site and we converted it from a sandpit lake to…

Yet Another Intentional and Valuable Post People sometimes ask me if I have a certain number of posts I'm supposed to write in a year. A quota, if you will. I always tell them that if that were the case, you'd probably know because I'd occasionally post something that was clearly a space-filler. A…

Photos of the Week – November 19, 2025 Recently, I've spent some time mining my photo library for images to use in a couple different projects. While I was down that hole, I took advantage of the process to build some collections of some of my favorite photos and post them on their own web page. I…

Photos of the Week – November 14, 2025 I mean, you knew this was coming, right? If you're on any social media platforms, you've already seen enough northern lights photos this week to last a lifetime. Well, guess what? I took some too. Then I waited until everyone was already saturated with images…

Photos of the Week – October 31, 2025 I got my first frost photography morning of the season yesterday. I'd been watching the forecast and had blocked out a couple hours on my calendar to make sure I had time to get out enjoy it. I woke up early and drove out to our family prairie well before…

The Value of (Some) Non-Native (GASP) Wildflowers in Our Yard This might be an awkward week to laud the value of having a non-native wildflower in my yard. I'm an invited speaker at the Indiana Native Plant Society's annual conference this coming weekend. It's probably (?) too late for them to…

Photos of the Week – October 17, 2025 I've had too many hours in front of the computer this week and my eyes were complaining this morning. I looked outside and saw that some high clouds were nicely-diffusing the sun and decided that was enough of an incentive to take a prairie break. I scooted…

Photos of the Week – October 10, 2025 The fall migration is in full swing through our prairies. Dragonflies, birds, butterflies, and more are moving southward. Going out on dewy mornings is a great way to check up on butterflies and dragonflies because I can find them immobile and covered in dew…

Photos of the Week – October 1, 2025 Over the weekend, my wife Kim ran 100 miles. On purpose. The Cowboy 200/100 race has become an annual event for people who think marathons are more fun when you string a bunch of them together end-to-end. There were lots of those people on the Cowboy Trail (an…

How to Photograph Flat Prairies For some reason, there are people who find it difficult to see the aesthetic beauty of places with limited topographic variability. First of all, that sounds like a "them" problem, doesn't it? Who needs mountains, or even steep hills to feel good about their…

The One-Hour Square Meter Photography Challenge! Do you remember that square meter photography project I did? Twice? Whew, that was a lot of work. Don't get me wrong, it was more than worthwhile, but it was definitely a big commitment. I may try it again someday, but not right now. I continue to…

Hiring Now! The 2026 Hubbard Fellowship with The Nature Conservancy in Nebraska It's time! We are now accepting applications for our 13th class of Hubbard Fellows. Please forward this to anyone you know who might be interested. I supervise our fellows each year, and can't wait to meet the next…

Celebrating Sticky Seeds Early autumn is a season of surprise and wonder.  Colors are changing and animals are scurrying all around, trying to check off all their pre-winter tasks.  For nature enthusiasts like us, it’s also a great time to appreciate the complex and sophisticated ways plants move…

Photos of the Week – September 2, 2025 August really flew by but it was a fun and interesting month. In addition to a full calendar of work and home events, I made time to explore several of my favorite prairies, including The Nature Conservancy's Platte River Prairies, Niobrara Valley Preserve,…

What Is High-Quality Prairie Anyway? Does this look like a high-quality prairie? What about this one? What if I told you the first one was 2 acres in size and the second was part of a 20,000 acre grassland block? Would it affect your opinion if you knew the first site was isolated from any other…

Hiding On Their Favorite Plant I've been working with prairies a long time, and there are some individual sites I've been studying, managing, or visiting for 30 years or more. Even so, I keep finding new species I didn't know about and stories I can't believe I'd not heard before. I made a quick…

A Frosty Mountain Morning Kim and I just got back from a week in the mountains of Colorado. As part of the trip, we camped several nights in the Lost Creek Wilderness. A year ago, we learned some lessons about how best to vacation together in the outdoors, and I think we applied those lessons well…

Photos of the Week – July 18, 2025 Quick Announcement: We are hosting two Plant Identification/Habitat Management workshops in August. The first is at The Nature Conservancy's Platte River Prairies on August 12 and the second is at the Niobrara Valley Preserve on August 19. During the workshops,…

Learning How to Live With Shrubbier Grasslands – Part 2: Experimentation In Part 1 of this topic, I wrote about the uncomfortable situation many prairie stewards find ourselves in - that our grasslands are getting "shrubbier" and it's increasingly difficult to prevent that. Because the drivers for…

Learning How to Live with Shrubbier Grasslands – Part 1: The Why Back in 2022, I wrote a post about the increasing competitiveness of woody plants - especially clonal shrubs like dogwood, sumac, and others - in prairies. There are lots of factors that have led to more shrubs moving into…

Photos of the Week – July 3, 2025 Reminder - we are hosting two public field days at the Platte River Prairies and Niobrara Valley Preserve, respectively. The first is July 12 and the second is August 2. Read here for more information on both of them and click here for a detailed agenda of the…

Photos of the Week – June 28, 2025 This was a really fun week, but it was one jam packed with social interactions. The America's Grasslands Conference happened just down the road and I gave a few presentations and several tours associated (officially and unofficially) with that. I also had a great…

Post-Grazing Party: Part 3 – Helzer Family Prairie As I said back in early May, I'm spending a lot of my photography time in three 80x80-foot plots this summer. Each plot in part of a prairie that was grazed intensively most or all of last year. I'm hoping to highlight why I enjoy exploring places…

Join us for the 2025 Platte River Prairies Public Field Day – July 12, 2025 It's time again for the annual Platte River Prairies Field Day. This event is free to the public and a great chance to explore prairies and learn about ecology and conservation. The field day runs from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.…

Exploring the Oglala National Grasslands I took some time off last week. Some of that time was spent just hanging around the house with family, but late in the week, I took a quick overnight photography trip out to the Nebraska Panhandle. I stopped a few times on the way there and back, but my…

Photos of the Week – May 21, 2025 I'm already missing my square meter plot and that whole project, but I'm soldiering on and finding other fun photographic opportunities. It's been fun to watch the growing season jump into full speed, despite really dry conditions. We've gotten some good rain…

The Penstemon Lumberjack Mystery Shell-leaf penstemon in a restored grassland at the Platte River Prairies back in 2021. One of my favorite wildflowers is the spectacular shell-leaf penstemon (Penstemon grandiflorus). It's one of the showiest of the opportunistic wildflowers in our prairies.…