Cactus? In Iowa?

An ornate box turtle named Cuatro, age 60ish.

Taking a field trip from the Greenway today to explore a nearby treasure....

Near Muscatine is a little-known remnant of our state’s unique natural history, dotted with prickly pear cactus and home to several rare and endangered species, called Big Sand Mound Preserve. The name is apt: a huge mound of sand, in places over 100 feet deep, forming a sand prairie, along with surrounding forest and wetlands.

The 510-acre preserve is not open to the public save for a “field day” every three years, though a group of Iowa Master Naturalists were recently treated to a tour to learn about some of the species that are being monitored in the preserve, including the western hognose snake and the yellow mud turtle, as well as ornate box turtles.

With Iowa’s status as one of the most transformed states in the nation, it’s fortunate that this land was preserved from development. Much of the land that became Big Sand Mound Preserve was originally owned by MidAmerican Energy, which set it aside to be protected in the late 1970s after learning about its ecological significance (Bayer added another 90 acres a few years later). Since then it has been a researcher’s delight, a small scrap of what once was and will never be again, requiring significant resources to manage and maintain.

The preserve's benefactors loom
large in the landscape.

Imagine the fate of this unique ecosystem if not for the beneficence of two companies with the foresight and resources to protect it almost 50 years ago, and the countless hours that have been spent studying and maintaining it.

Now imagine how many unique ecosystems have been lost in the few hundred years since our state was turned over to agriculture. Imagine the streams that once teemed with trout that have been lost to pollution from animal confinements, or the diverse prairie that contained thousands of species, plowed up and replaced with a single cultivated type of corn or soybeans. The natural world is a treasure, something we don’t even have the capacity to put a price tag on because each remnant is irreplaceable.

Near the Greenway here in town is another sand prairie, a small remnant off South Gilbert Street. Without a benevolent corporate sponsor, the area surrounding it was developed and replaced with a housing subdivision, displacing more than 50 ornate box turtles. Local activists were able to protect just 38 acres of this unique ecosystem, which unfortunately is much degraded due to encroaching brush and lack of resources for the intensive management that would be required to restore and maintain it. If only ornate box turtles had property rights.

Identified as a Tile-Horned Longhorn Beetle

One of two western hognose snakes, getting its stats recorded.

Flags are used to mark turtle nesting spots.

A flock of pelicans pass overhead.