Piedmont Prairie Partnership

A land of rapid change

The Piedmont is home to one of the fastest-growing urban megaregions in the country, stretching from Raleigh-Durham, Charlotte, Greenville, to Atlanta and into Birmingham, AL. Historically, much of the Piedmont was covered in grasslands and open tree savannas maintained by frequent fire and grazing by bison and elk. Now, after decades of fire suppression and rapid population growth, most of the Piedmont has either been converted to agriculture or subdivisions, or has grown into dense mixed forests. While the rapidly growing population of the Piedmont can be a challenge, it also can be a huge opportunity. The desire of so many new residents to reconnect with nature and history is creating the coalition of passionate people needed to protect and restore prairies throughout the Piedmont.

Find a Piedmont Prairie

We’re just getting started adding publicly accessible prairies to the map. Here’s what we have so far

How you can help

• Go Native! Talk to your local botanical garden about sources for native plants to use in your yard

• Encourage your city, county, and local land trusts to create Piedmont Prairies on their lands

• Ask your power company and department of transportation to manage existing native prairies and plant new prairies in powerline corridors and on roadsides

Who we are

The Piedmont Prairie Partnership is a group of non-profit, state, and federal agencies working to bring back Piedmont Prairies. Organizations include the North Carolina Botanical Garden, Southeastern Grasslands Institute, Ellerbe Creek Watershed Association, South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, State Botanical Garden of Georgia, Atlanta Botanical Garden, U.S. Forest Service, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. We are also tightly linked to major conservation partnerships including: the Southeastern Grasslands Institute, Southeast Conservation Adaptation Strategy, and South Atlantic Landscape Conservation Cooperative.

We work to preserve, restore, and promote native prairies. We do this through developing a shared strategy for focusing conservation efforts, taking an ecoregional approach to seed and plant production, creating communication materials, and using traditional ecological knowledge to document and share peoples’ historic uses of and relationships with prairie plants and animals.

Current projects

• Developing resources for private landowners

• Mapping Piedmont Prairies

• Evaluating areas for Bison reintroduction

• Surveying the public to assess understanding of Piedmont Prairie issues

• Creating a traveling educational exhibit on Piedmont Prairies

• Developing and promoting short videos on the history, current status, and ongoing conservation work for Piedmont Prairies (first videos released: Feb 2020)

Resources

• Watch the longer version of the Piedmont Prairie video (11min).

• Read a report on mapping Piedmont Prairies in North Carolina. This report looks at the influence of soils, human-associated habitats (roadsides, rights-of-way, etc), and landscape position on the occurrence of rare Piedmont Prairie plants

• See examples of Piedmont grassland communities in the Piedmont Grasslands Gallery

Learn more

Read about the latest progress in the Piedmont Prairie Blog

To learn more about the partnership, contact Rua Mordecai (919-707-0122, rua@southatlanticlcc.org)

Reversing Declines in Grasslands Biodiversity

The Southeastern U.S., which is roughly 85% private land, has experienced widespread losses (90 to 99%) of its native grasslands. In fall 2019, research published in the journal Science, found that since 1970, bird populations in the United States and Canada have declined by 29 percent, or almost 3 billion birds, while grassland birds have suffered losses in excess of 50%! 

For this reason, a big focus for SGI is addressing the lack of adequate habitat for wildlife and at-risk species experiencing widespread population declines by working to restore native grasslands on private lands across the Southeast. As part of a 10-partner team led by the American Bird Conservancy/Central Hardwood Joint Venture, SGI is helping to implement a project under the USDA NRCS’s Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), with a focus on private land conservation in areas that can augment grassland habitats in federal and state protected areas.

Our Regional COnservation Program partners are

Nonprofits

• American Bird Conservancy

• National Bobwhite Conservation Initiative

• National Wild Turkey Federation

• Quail Forever

State agencies

• Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources-Nongame Branch

• Tennessee Dept. of Environment and Conservation

• Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency

Federal agencies

• Arnold Engineering Development Complex

Businesses

• Bridgestone Americas Tire Operations, LLC

SGI’s team of three Farm Bill staff are employed by partner Quail Forever, but are supervised and based out of SGI’s headquarters on the Austin Peay State University campus. Their critical role is to help focus Farm Bill funds (under the EQIP, CSP, and WRE programs) from NRCS by assisting landowners to improve their land in ways that will help recover (a) populations of three key grassland bird species deemed in need of conservation attention and (b) the native biodiversity associated with the historic grassland landscapes of the Interior Low Plateaus ecoregion of Tennessee and Kentucky.

Habitat improvements for Eastern Meadowlark, Northern Bobwhite, and Henslow’s Sparrow—the project’s focal bird species of concern—can largely be accomplished by opening up suppressed native grasslands with removal of woody cover and prescribed fire, replacement of cropland or fescue pastures with mixes of native grasses and forbs, increasing forb-to-grass ratios, changing grazing intensities, and altering mowing/haying regimes. These efforts can employ lower-diversity seed mixes of 5-20 species, but restoring both vegetation structure and significantly increasing native biodiversity will generally require seed mixes of 20-50+ species. 

Focal species for conservation

Eastern Meadowlark

This species is a common bird in steep decline. According to the State of the Birds 2011 report, more than 95 percent of the Eastern Meadowlark’s distribution is on private lands, meaning farmland conservation practices are vital to the survival of this species. Losses are due to their disappearing grassland habitat. Prairie is scarce in the eastern United States, and the kinds of farms that once hosted meadowlarks—small, family farms with pastureland and grassy fields—are being replaced by larger, row-cropping agricultural operations or by development. Early mowing, overgrazing by livestock, and the use of pesticides can also harm meadowlarks nesting on private lands. There are many locations where glades and woodlands have simply been degraded over time and can be restored with thinning to open the canopy and fire to stimulate the groundcover. However, most of our prairies and barrens, with their deeper soils, have been completely converted to non-native grasses and cropland, and those need to be reseeded or replanted with native vegetation as an initial step in bringing them back. The Southeastern Grasslands Institute is emerging as an important ally in those efforts by developing locally-adapted native seed sources that can be used to recreate native communities with a grassland component. 

Henslow’s Sparrow

Henslow's Sparrow does not have federally protected status in the United States, but is listed as Endangered in seven states, as well as Canada. Henslow's Sparrow has been identified as the highest priority for grassland bird conservation in eastern and midwestern North America by Partners in Flight (PIF), a cooperative effort of many organizations dedicated to bird conservation. PIF is promoting establishment of large grassland conservation areas for this and other species.

Northern Bobwhite

Widespread, sharp declines between 1966 to 2014, up to 4% per year, resulting in a cumulative decline of 85%, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. The bobwhite’s decline probably results from habitat degradation and loss owing to urbanization, fire suppression, and changes to agriculture and forestry. Agricultural fields have become less suitable for bobwhites with higher levels of pesticides and herbicides yielding less insect and plant food, and fewer hedgerows to provide cover. In economic terms, the Northern Bobwhite was one of the most important game birds in North America. Population declines from habitat loss now mean that in many places there are no longer enough to hunt. 

Rediscovering and Recovering Grassland Remnants

Working with the support and cooperation of the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT), the Southeastern Grasslands Institute (SGI) has developed a plan to better conserve and manage the grassland and pollinator habitat found on Tennessee highway rights-of-way. A large part of this project involves finding and documenting the existing habitat along Tennessee’s highway corridors so that we can help TDOT prioritize areas in need of protection and restoration.

There are well over 4,000 miles of Tennessee highway in the SGI focal area—a task too large for SGI alone—so we’re recruiting and training community scientists to help with these grassland surveys.