Nachusa Grasslands Invasive Plant Monitoring Technician

Posted on July 9, 2026 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Clara Barton

Hello, my name is Clara Barton, I am the new Invasive Plant Monitoring Technician for Nachusa Grasslands. I recently received my master’s degree in ecology with a dissertation focused on studying the spatial biodiversity of grasslands. I worked as a seasonal restoration technician on the crew here at Nachusa in 2023 and 2024. Before that I was a restoration technician intern for the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Litzinger Road Ecology Center. Through my work, education, and research experiences, grasslands have become a cornerstone of my life. Spending time in prairies has taught me so much and given me a great appreciation for the amount of work required to maintain these absolutely gorgeous ecosystems.  Having a background in research and restoration has set me up well for this new position at Nachusa.

Clara Barton in the field

As the Invasive Plant Monitoring Technician my job is to run experiments to evaluate the methods we are using to manage invasive plant species at Nachusa Grasslands. I will be looking into many weeds including Honeysuckle (Lonicera maackii), Birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus), yellow and white sweet clover (Melilotus officianalis, Melilotus alba), Sericea lespedeza (Lespedeza cuneata), and more. I will be focused on which herbicides are effective, mowing practices and timing, and if treated plants are still producing seeds.

Clara Barton excitedly conducting research on plants

The goal of these experiments is to make sure the measures we are taking to control an invasive species are working, as well as finding out if there are any treatments that would be more effective. I intend to make blog posts here about each experiment I conduct. Sharing what I learn here will hopefully benefit many other restorations that may be struggling with the same invasives.

Some of the questions I am currently working on right now include:

  1. What herbicide works best for Butter and eggs (Linaria vulgaris)
  2. Do mowed sweet clover stems resprout?
  3. Do mowed sweet clovers still produce seed?
  4. At what stage in seed development does Wild parsnip need to be hauled off after spading?
  5. What herbicide is best for treating bouncing bet (Saponaria officianalis) and how much surfactant is effective?
  6. What works better for Crown Vetch? Transline or Milestone?
  7. What herbicide is most effective for foliar treating honeysuckle resprouts?
  8. Is the Carpet wick effective at killing unwanted woody plants?
Experiment site for BFT study

I work together with Bill to come up with the questions that need answering to best help us with our work. If you have any questions about invasive plant management, feel free to put them in the comments.  We are always looking for more questions to investigate to help with the greater effort of restoration.

I look forward to sharing what I find!

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Pest shields for ticks, chiggers and such

Posted on July 6, 2026 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman

The black flies of the Simuliidea emerged this week and congregate in the woods, especially areas with low wind. They will be a nuisance for a few weeks. And ticks are occasional. Mosquitos will be here soon. I thought I would share a few tips to deal with pests.

The bug net worked very well today. I forgot I had it on and could do all I wanted in the woods. The little pouch it comes in I hang from a carabiner off my pack or belt loop. The insect shield means it was dipped in permethrin pesticide at the factory, but I am not sure that was needed.

Permethin on the left by Sawyer is a pesticide you spray on clothing to ward off ticks and chiggers. Permethin is a synthetic version of a natural pesticide found in chrysanthemums. I see a one gallon of permethin for clothing by Insect Guard for $58.

On the right is Picaridin, which is what you put on your skin for mosquitos and such. It is not an insecticide but an effective insect repellent. Picaridin is nice in that it does not stink like DEET, nor does it melt or discolor plastic items like sunglasses and clothing. It is a lotion you rub on your skin. It works well. DEET is also a repellent, not an insecticide.

Treating all the clothing you wear in the field with permethrin is your best defense against tick diseases, bar none! Socks, underwear, hats, shirts, pants, boots. Permethin is expensive but worth it.

To treat clothes with permethrin I lay out my clothes to treat and wear a glove while spraying. You don’t want the water based solvent on your skin. I don’t know what is in that solvent but don’t get it on your skin.

You do a heavy spray on the clothes and let them dry for several hours and then they can be worn safely. This will repel ticks and chiggers and lasts for many washings. I spray mine maybe twice a season. I lay items like socks, underwear, hats, on top of bigger items like pants or shirts so I don’t wasted the expensive spray.

You can also send clothing items to a company, Insect Sheild, and they will dip them in a vat of permethrin and this apparently works well. I have heard from folks who did this and thought it worked great. Do this!

The permethin that is sprayed on livestock is an oil-based mix that you likely don’t want on your clothing.

On the right is a tick & chigger gator. It has permethrin on it too. I rarely wear these as we don’t have many ticks or chiggers at Nachusa, and they are too tight on my calves. There are other versions out that that are more of a snap around gator with permethin in it. You can tuck your pants in your socks, which I do at times, but the seeds stick to my socks.

Don’t let the pests keep you inside.

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Carpet Roller Wick to attempt to control brush

Posted on June 25, 2026 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman, Nachusa Grasslands Director w The Nature Conservancy

Above, 17 days after a carpet roller herbicide wick drove over cottonwood saplings.

This is a Grassworks 22 foot wide carpet wick. A carpet on a long spool is soaked with glyphosate and it slowly spins as you drive through a brush thicket. Hopefully, you get enough herbicide on the brush to kill some of it, and you damage modest numbers of the good plants trying to grow under the brush.

Spoiler alert: We see modest success using this tool.

In its folded up travel position.

The carpet roller wick is soaked with glyphosate and spins slowly such that as you drive forward you are getting more herbicide on the foliage of the brush.

The carpet is spun with the little hydraulic motor spinning a rubber belt below the gray shield that turns the carpet roller.

In the cab of the tractor is a wired switch to start these electric herbicide pumps which squirt the glyphosate solution onto the carpet for a few seconds. Then about 20 seconds later you give another squirt of herbicide on the roller. You want the roller wet enough that it drips a little, but not a lot.

Results of a carpet wick on brush follows:

June 17, 2026 photo of a large patch of cottonwood saplings treated with a carpet roller wick two weeks before on June 2 and June 3, 2026. I used 33% glyphosate, 3% imazapic (Journey), and 10% LI700 Non ionic surfactant, and choice weather master water conditioner.

I wicked this patch two days in a row because the first day I did not use much surfactant in the mix. I think the best mix would be thick, like pancake batter, so that the roller could apply more herbicide and drip less. But the surfactant at ten percent still seemed to leave the solution looking watery. If you have used these before let us know how it went for you.

You can see the browned out cottonwood saplings which are about five foot tall. Some are alive. Maybe the browned out cotonwoods will still be alive next spring. We tagged some of the brown ones with tree paint to see how they fair next spring.

Above is that opening photo again after 17 days. Lots of brown cottonwoods now. If a bunch of those are dead I would call it a success. If they are just browned out and will recover later then not so much. We marked some individuals that look dead and will check on them this fall or next spring to see if they died. Applying blue tree marking paint is a good way to tag them. Flagging tape blows off.

A different unit. Above is the June 3 carpet wick work results on June 17, 2026. This is the Fen unit aspen clone. It was 10 foot tall! I had to run the wick at it full height so the stems would not break the wick. The results were some browned out, but I think the plants were too tall and robust to be heeled by a bit of glyphosate. We will brush mow the patch this winter, burn the unit again, and perhaps try the wick again.

For the wick to work you want the brush to be above the prairie, but not too tall. You don’t want big woody stems in there that wreak havoc on the tractor and wick. I plan to keep bringing this tool out to see what it can do.

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Shrub encroachment and fire

Posted on June 18, 2026 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman

We recently heard from Emily Wedel who worked on her doctorate at Konza Biological Station, looking at shrub encroachment in seldom and frequently burned units. Konza has been studying and pondering the shrubs which have established on their plots that have had infrequent fire. Emily showed us a slide where the infrequently burned unit was full of top killed shrub stems, shrubs that would all re-sprout come spring. On the other side of the fire break was an annually burned prairie that had no shrubs.

Emily showed us maps of shrub encroachment that showed that a 20 year fire return interval looks to have the same heavy shrub encroachment as the 4 year fire return interval. To me this suggests that the fire return interval should be one, two or three years. The unit with annual fire had essentially no shrubs even though just across a mowed fire break was a 20-year fire unit full of shrubs.

The above photo is at Nachusa Grasslands in our East Heinkel Unit, due north of Schafer Knob. On the left is a prairie planting that is about a decade old and frequently burned. It established well and is handsome this time of year with pale purple coneflowers and white baptisia. My photo does not do it justice. It has essentially no shrubs and has been burned every year or every other year since its planting in 2013.

On the right of the photo is a fallow prairie pasture that the former owner sprayed with broadleaf herbicide a number of times and then grazed horses on it. The prairie was nearly vanquished, but some diversity remains. This herbicide sprayed field likely supported shrub establishment. Notice all the shrubs in it. Abundant are smooth sumac, various Rumex briars, some multiflora rose, honeysuckle, cherry, and black oak.

This unit with shrub buildup has not been burning enough to top kill all the shrubs. It is on a gentle north slope which may lower fire intensity. We had shrub buildup in there before bison, and we have the shrub thickets now, ten years after bison have had access to it. The grazing at times makes the fires patchy with low intensity, which has benefits, but likely supports the shrubs.

This winter we hope to brush mow the unit to see if that later helps the fire come across the unit and top kill the shrubs. We work to keep shrubs and trees out of our open prairies to leave some habitat as full open prairie.

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A list of weeds and strategies

Posted on June 11, 2026 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman

This is a list of most of the weeds we manage against at Nachusa Grasslands. I give brief descriptions of our management strategies.

This blogsite has a search bar where you can quickly find other posts with various details. For instance, there are several posts on reed canary grass.

Here is a link to a short list of these weeds and others and my suggestions: https://www.nachusagrasslands.org/herbicide-use.html

Poison hemlock, Conium maculatum. Above. These can be spaded but beware it is poisonous so don’t handle it, like picking it up to carry it somewhere. Cut the taproot with a sharp spade, push over with your boot. Leave it. You can mow hemlock which may set it back and at least buys you time. Or spray before bolting with a broadleaf such as Crossbow or Garlon 3A. This hemlock was flowering when it was sprayed with 2% Garlon 3A and it just twisted it and will not kill the plant.

Wild parsnip, Sativa pastinaca. Bernie is spading this one and perhaps plans to carry it somewhere. Beware the sap on your skin will give you a sun burn boil. I tend not to haul it. Like hemlock, I cut the tap root with a spade, then push it over with my boot. Sometimes I use the spade to cut the plant near the top with the hopes of not having the seed mature on the stalk. Or you can mow it and deal with it the next year.

You can spray parsnip before it bolts with broadleaf herbicides such as Crossbow or Garlon 3A.

Yellow sweet clover, Melilotus officianalis. Here I point to a low leaf stalk. Mowing or cutting very low sets back sweet clover, but you want to cut below the lowest leaf. In this case that looks to be a few inches. We sometimes use tri-blade weed brush cutters, and the new battery clearing saws are nice. We have had success with old fashioned scythes, and various mowers. They all work pretty well and can reduce infestations.

We often use a weed spade, “parsnip predator”, to loosen the soil next to the sweet clover, then lean on on the spade handle and with the other hand pull the root up. Saves you body strains.

We spray it at times with Transline in the early part of its growth cycle, and then switch to Garlon 3A after it has been blooming for a several days.

White sweet clover, Melilotus alba. Similar to yellow sweet clover you need to mow or cut it below the lowest leaves. If you wait until the plant is late in flower the lowest leaves will have fallen and you can mow higher. It is also more stout and harder to cut.

Birdsfoot trefoil, Lotus corniculatus. We spray Garlon 3A, or Transline, Milestone, or Crossbow. Late in the bloom time we mix 2% Garlon 3A with half percent Milestone. Our thinking is that the Garlon 3A browns it out quick to beat seed set, and the Milestone has a residual that will kill emerging BFT plants that are likely around the target plant.

Bouncing bet, Saponaria officinalis. Milestone seems to be working well at 0.7 ounces per gallon. Walters uses tricopyr and 24D. He uses amine or ester tricopyr depending on the situation. Use surfactant.

Crown vetch, Corilla varia. Milestone at 0.7 ounces per gallon. Transline works too. Like a lot of weeds, making two or more visits a year makes a big difference.

Butter and eggs, Linaria vulgaris. Imazapic seems to work, but these are tough to control as there are lots of small plants for every flower you see.

Day lily, Hemerocallis fulva. The photo shows the vegetative day lily in a right of way. They are tough to kill. Use 3% glyphosate with 2% Habitat on these monocots. Add surfactant.

King devil, Hieracium pratense. Garlon 3A, Element 3A, Crossbow, Milestone all work. Some feel these are not a problem but we find them hard to extinguish. The seeds blow about. We treat the flowering plant and look for seedlings nearby. We pluck the flowers and dispose in the kitchen garbage.

Reed canary grass, Phalaris arundinacea. Lots of opinions on this blogsite about RCG. I like clethodim at 1.5%, with water conditioner added first, and surfactant or MSO added after. Spray twice a year if you can muster that effort but we tend to spray once. Glyphosate with Polaris kills it fully but you want to spray very carefully.

Red clover, Trifolium pratense. Transline works well. Crossbow and Element 3A do fine too. Most do not call this invasive, but we find red clover can be very aggressive in our prairie restorations.

Leafy spurge, Euphorbia eschella. 1.5% Imazapic. It is recommended it be treated twice a season. This is a tough plant to kill.

Sericea lespedeza, Lespedeza cuneata. Saxton likes 2% Garlon 4 in water. Look carefully for young and old plants. Jeff Horn and others find Pastureguard herbicide (Triclopyr with Fluroxopyr)  to work very well.

Try our blogsite search bar.

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Annual Workshop Success – Shaw Nature Reserve

Posted on June 4, 2026 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

Mike Saxton – Executive Director – Friends of Nachusa Grasslands

Since its inception in 2003, the Grassland Restoration Network has focused on sharing lessons learned, connecting practitioners from across the region, and supporting a community of doers who believe in the promise of prairie.

The 2026 Grassland Restoration Network annual workshop hosted by Shaw Nature Reserve was a smashing success! The landscape was rich, the work was impressive, and the discussion was lively. We heard a stirring, impassioned keynote address from Doug Ladd and enjoyed a wide variety of tour experiences: dynamic glades, diverse plantings, creative approaches to enhancing old grass dominated restorations, amazing native plant gardens, important restoration science and an organized, well appointed shop space. The Tuesday night dinner/social was well attended and offered workshop participants the chance to network and engage. The bat mist netting and emergence counts were unique experiences for many.

Well done SNR team! Congratulations on all of the great work and thank you for all the time, energy, and care invested in the 2026 GRN workshop.

The Grassland Restoration Network workshop 2027 will be hosted by the Prairie Plains Resource Institute and TNC Nebraska. The Nebraska Sandhills, spanning over 12 million acres, form the largest remaining intact temperate grassland in the United States. Dates and details TBD.

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Testing shows confounding results. Late spring applications of clethodim on Reed Canary Grass.

Posted on May 21, 2026 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman

This is a continuing update on an original post. At the end I post several links to related articles on controlling reed canary.

It is good to do simple monitoring or testing to see if a weed treatment you are using works. I will describe the simple way I tested a herbicide treatment. I retreated this patch and found it did brown it out, but then a year later the plants were still alive but weak looking. Read on.

On May 30, 2024 I sprayed eight distinct mature patches of reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea) with clethodim herbicide. Each patch of reed canary was about six feet in diameter, the plants 3 to 4 foot tall, and in flower. So their big growth spurt was done for the season.

As I have read, it is recommended to apply clethodim when the plants have emerged several inches and are actively growing. I have tested this and it works pretty well. I was hoping for a longer application window by spraying more mature plants. Would that work?

The herbicide mix was 1.5% Intensity (clethodim), ammonium sulfate crystals (three cups added to a 50 gallon mix), and a half ounce per gallon of methylated seed oil.

In each of the eight patches I drove in a four foot tall fiberglass rod. The rod could withstand a fire and be noticeable a year later. The rods worked well.

I sprayed the patches so the milky herbicide mix was starting to drip off.

I recorded this information into Field Maps.

I made a calendar reminder for a year later to look at the results.

I looked about a year later on May 28 2025 and all eight patches looked very healthy. The clethodim did not control reed canary grass that was applied when the plants were mature. Hmm. Did I forget to add something to the mix? Is an end of May application too late. See Juli Mason’s post where she found late applications to reed canary were showing control.

One of the 8 patches treated a year previously with clethodim. They looked like this last year when I sprayed them. And they look fine a year later after clethodim. This suggests clethodim applied to mature reed canary grass in late spring did not work in this case.

I tried a second application. The next day, May 29, 2025, I did make a new clethodim mix and re-sprayed the same 8 patches of reed canary to see what happens. Below are two photos of those patches about six weeks later on July 19, 2025. They are clearly top killed. I was surprised. Top killed but are the roots dead? I will leave the fiberglass rods in them and check back in May of 2026 and report back.

July 19, 2025 shows top killed RCG sprayed six weeks before
July 19, 2025: Top killed reed canary grass treated with clethodom six weeks previously.

On May 10, 2026 I returned again to spray clethodim in this unit and I found half a dozen of my fiberglass rods still in clumps of live reed canary. All of those reed canary were there and alive, but diminished compared to those around them. The below photo shows two RCG clumps that I sprayed a year previous. These two happen to be pretty robust, but not as healthy looking as others nearby.

Overall, I like clethodim grass herbicide because it is not killing the forbs and sedges. I have seen areas that had a lot of RCG diminish and allow other plants to take over. In this particular case maybe I should have carefully applied glyphosate from a backpack. This is a new planting into a retired corn/soy field and the pattern is that you will see clumps of plants that are doing very well in a small patch. After six years of this new planting you might see a three foot circle of pussytoes, Antennaria plantanginifolia. The soil is pretty empty of competing plants and the pussytoes builds momemtum. I imagine a few decades later the pussytoes will be spread out through the planting. Likewise this reed canary grass established in the new planting and it has not spread very far via its rhizomatous roots. Hence glyphosate carefully applied by a backpack might be the best control in this case.

But let’s say the reed canary is covering an acre and there are some sedges growing in among the grass. A broad spray pattern aiming at the grass has yielded in the past a conversion so that the sedges dominate the ground. I can think of one area where the sedges still dominate there after a decade. I know of another area that floods a lot where the reed canary came back within several years of our ceasing grass spraying.

So the usual response to ecological questions, “It depends”.

May 10, 2026. White rod in RCG sprayed a year previous in May.

I encourage managers to test out their treatments. It was not hard. It was also not rigorous enough to publish a scientific paper or get a degree.

This GRN site has some great reed canary posts.

Clethodim Treatment Tracking – Reed Canary Grass
Herbicide Treatments to Reed Canary Grass – Clethodim vs. Glyphosate – Follow-Up Observations
Herbicide Treatments to Reed Canary Grass, Clethodim vs. Glyphosate

Control of reed canary grass
Invasive Reed canary grass control
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Post-Burn Basal Bark Treatments: A Game Changer for Invasive Shrub Control

Posted on May 14, 2026 by jmasonfpdwc

By: Julianne Mason, Forest Preserve District of Will County

Over the past decade, we’ve consistently found basal bark herbicide treatment to be the most efficient and effective way to control invasive shrubs. In fact, we now use basal bark treatments almost exclusively across thousands of acres of prairies, wetlands, and woodlands in northeastern Illinois, in place of traditional cut stump methods.

For anyone unfamiliar with the technique, basal bark treatment is an herbicide-only application. We typically use a 15% solution of Garlon 4 (or a comparable triclopyr ester product) mixed in a commercially formulated bark oil. The herbicide is sprayed onto the lower 3–12 inches of the stem, depending on shrub size. Smaller stems only need a narrow 3-inch band, while larger shrubs require a wider treated area. We apply the mixture with backpack sprayers set to low pressure and large droplet sizes to minimize overspray. It’s important to make a 360 degree application around the entire circumference of the stem.  It’s important to use an official bark oil (not diesel or other weird oils). 

Crew member doing a basal bark herbicide treatment to invasive shrubs (buckthorn) in a prairie.
Reddish oily sheen on the bottom 3″ of the shrub stem is the basal bark herbicide treatment. That’s it.

When done properly, basal bark treatment has proven effective for us year-round, as long as there is no snow cover (winter consideration) and as long as temperatures are below about 85°F to reduce the risk of herbicide volatilization and vapor drift (summer consideration).

Over the years, we’ve had many discussions comparing basal bark and cut stump treatments. Cut stump methods certainly satisfy our human desire for instant gratification — there’s something emotionally satisfying about cutting down a shrub and seeing it gone immediately. But once we get past that emotional reaction, I think the evidence strongly favors basal bark treatments for many situations. They are often faster, less disruptive, and, in our experience, more consistently effective.

Last spring, we stumbled into an unexpected discovery because of a scheduling mistake. An ecological contractor was scheduled to conduct basal bark treatments in a prairie and wetland near Braidwood, IL. However, we forgot to tell them that we had just conducted a prescribed burn there the previous day.

Lighting a flanking fire during a prescribed burn. Invasive shrubs are present (red circles), but they are obscured in the prairie vegetation.
After prescribed burns in prairies, shrubs stand out like sore thumbs.

The crew arrived, saw that the entire site had been burned, and decided to proceed anyway. They essentially sprayed the bases of shrubs that had already been top-killed by the fire. When I heard what happened, I was upset that they had wasted time and herbicide treating dead stems that would no longer be able to absorb or translocate the herbicide.

I was completely wrong.

All of the invasive shrubs died following the treatment. Without herbicide, those shrubs would have vigorously resprouted after the fire. In our region, dormant-season fire alone generally does not kill established invasive shrubs. Yet even large, 3-inch diameter bush honeysuckles, autumn olive, callery pear and buckthorns were effectively controlled after the post-burn herbicide application.

Shrub was killed by basal bark herbicide treatment after a prescribed burn.
Shrub was missed during basal bark herbicide treatment after the burn. Note vigorous resprouting.

Just as importantly, the treatment proved remarkably efficient. The crew raved about how easy it was to move through the burned prairie. The blackened, top-killed shrubs stood out visually and were incredibly easy to locate and treat.

Encouraged by those results, our crew spent much of the past winter and spring experimenting further with post-burn basal bark applications of Garlon 4 in recently burned prairies. I’m excited to report that the original results were not a fluke.

We’ve successfully treated sites anywhere from a few days after burning to as much as three months post-burn in areas burned last fall. Treatments in recently burned prairies have been especially effective because the invasive shrubs stand out so clearly against the burned landscape. In woodlands, where native and invasive shrubs are more intermixed, it can be more difficult to quickly distinguish which blackened stems should be treated. But in prairies, especially where the shrubs are mostly invasive and visually distinct from native ones, post-burn treatments have been outstanding.

Woodies stand out visually during the spring green-up after a prescribed burn.

The combination of visibility, ease of movement, and effectiveness has made this one of the most promising invasive shrub control techniques we’ve used in years.  So easy, so effective, highly recommended!

p.s. We may have finally defeated common buckthorn on the ridges of several of our dolomite prairie preserves. For more than 30 years, we intermittently cut the invasive shrubs, treated stumps, sprayed resprouts, and repeatedly top-killed them with prescribed fire. After decades of effort, a single post-burn basal bark treatment appears to have accomplished what all those previous efforts did not.

p.s.s. It feels like we’ve stopped spinning our wheels, and can actually make progress addressing the scale of invasive shrub control that’s needed. It’s spring, and hope feels great!

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Nachusa Grasslands Prescribed Fire Summary Report April 2026

Posted on April 30, 2026 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman

April 9 IL DNR Franklin Creek Natural Area, 21-acres. These very modest flames do some good if they can just keep going.

March 27: Yellow House Prairie burn 140– acres

The bottom line:

  • Number of burn days was 20, which is a limiting factor.
  • We burned 2,370-acres of Nachusa on 23 burn units
  • We assisted at 6 units for 278-acres.
  • Average size of a burn unit was 103-acres with a unit as small as 15-acres and big as 333.
  • Average crew size was 10.
  • These values are typical for us.

March 30: Kaleb Baker of INPC leads the fire safety briefing for a DNR fire at Franklin Creek State Natural Area.  At the briefing each crew receives a map and a crew roster which tells them which team they will be on & what equipment they will have.  The map and roster are printed and on the radio table when crew arrive, and they enjoy pondering the information gleamed from it.  The briefing lasts about 20 minutes.  Then each team gets together and figures out some last minute logistics, tests their equipment, then they leave to go inspect their fire line that they will control for the day.

What is better than one water tender?  Two tenders!  We find this extra army surplus water buffalo is nice to have when the burn unit is big.  Each team can have their own water tender in a place where it helps them refill an empty tank and return to the line quickly.  It also gives this new EV Ford truck which we don’t want scratched yet something to do.

April 7: East part of Main Unit.  Our fire scout in red, Joe Richardson, watches in the corner where we started ignitions.  The clockwise team is to the right, and the counterclockwise is off camera on left.

We like UTVs for their mobility.   I don’t like that a two stroke gasoline fuel can is there, especially behind the pump motor exhaust.  I removed it. You can find a GRN blog post I wrote about fire equipment here:  Rx fire pumper units and tenders | grassland restoration network

On the open prairie the pickup truck pumper is nice as it holds nearly 3 times the water the UTV carries.  Mark Herman was driver with Steve Lardner on the hose. 

Lessons learned:

  • Communicate.  Tell the chain of command what the issue is. If the radios are full of static, try that cell phone.  Line bosses need to communicate across to each other and up to the burn boss, without being chatty, vague, or cautious. 
  • Redundancy: We had a fire where a UTV went down with a flat tire. Hence we need enough boots and tires on the ground to fill in such gaps.

March 9: Hook Larson Unit, 114-acres.  Bison are typically very calm when we burn.  This bunch was in the burn unit.  We slowly moved them out of the unit and kept burning.  Bison seem to hover in grazed lawns where the fires hardly burn, and they will hang out in fresh black.   

March 25: Main Unit burn, 333-acres. A long line of smokey back burn.  If the backfire is burning don’t add to it by igniting a line further in, as this puts a bolus of smoke on the crew trying to observe the line and the extra ignition is more likely to send a spot fire.  Be patient and keep extending the ignition line.

March 23: Juanita’s burn unit. Ali Fakhari of the Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves joined us for a day.  When we burn with other crews everybody gains insights. 

March 28, Stone Barn Savanna burn, 300-acres.  Crew is gathered for the After Action Review to discuss lessons learned.  The UTV there is our fire scout vehicle, which carries snacks, drinking water, and torch fuel.  Four of these crew are staff, the rest are ‘civilians’.  Go team!

October 21: Big Jump West fire break preparation. The skid loader just mowed the fire break.  All that vegetation is now mulched.  Typically, we hay rake and then use a leaf blower powered by our tractor to move that mulch off the fire break.

November 11: Preparing fire breaks.  The tender truck towed the tractor to this unit and then that red leaf blower cleared about two miles of leaves and mowed vegetation from the fire break.

November 16, DNR fire at Mineral Marsh, 160-acres.  Russ Blogg was Burn Boss. About half of this crew are citizen volunteers who made this big burn possible.  Nachusa supports natural areas management in the region.  We care for our preserve, but we also turn outwards and support other preserves as they are important too.  Photo: R Blogg

April 14, FCNA: Spring green-up came early and this was our last fire.  The opening photo in this report is from this unit where oak litter burned slowly helping thin the brush.

December 19: Brush mowing opens brush filled habitats that the fires can then keep sunny.  Katie Jo Jackson was a regular operator of our brush mower.

January 23: Before brush mowing by Kaleb Baker at FCNA.

January 23: After brush mowing

November 6: Visitor Center Prairie burn, 31-acres.  Smoke blowing out of the east sending smoke away from the road.

Ecologists Tyler Pellegrini and Leah Kleiman

February 16: Big Jump East, 180-acres. The climate is such now-a-days, that in the last several years we can burn in February.   Paul Say is a food engineer by day and volunteer steward by weekend.   

Nachusa celebrated publishing 100 peer reviewed scientific papers this year.  Elizabeth Bach is our lead scientist.

To see the end of the report which has the map of what we burned, the list of fires, and list of fire crew you can find them here:

https://www.nachusagrasslands.org/uploads/5/8/4/6/58466593/nachusa_grasslands_annual_fire_report_2025_2026_opt.pdf

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Wild parsnip (Pastinaca sativa) control

Posted on April 16, 2026 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Don Osmond, volunteer steward

Wild parsnip is a monocarpic perennial, usually taking 2-3 years to flower.  I chose a 4 acre area in southwestern Wisconsin to evaluate my control efforts over time.  Habitats ranged from dry degraded prairie to mesic lowland planted with forage.  Spring burns occurred in 2021 & 2023.  All the work was performed by me, so the methods are consistent year to year.

Herbiciding was performed using a calibrated backpack sprayer with 0.5% Garlon 4 (1.1 quarts/acre of product) & 0.5% MSO.  This concentration was chosen based on an experiment consisting of a control plot & plots sprayed at 0.5, 1 and 1.5%, then monitored one year later.  All 3 plots had similar very low densities of parsnip one year after spraying, compared to the high density control plot.  It probably would be safer to settle on 1% concentration to account for variables, but I anecdotally had good results previously at 0.5%, so I stuck with that.  The minimum concentration for broadleaf weeds on the Garlon 4 label is 1 quart/acre.  Herbiciding was never done in the remnants.  Spring spraying started in the first 2 weeks of May, depending on how cool it had been.  Fall spraying started the second week of September (rosettes were in the process of emerging before then).  I limited fall application to known, higher density patches since tall vegetation makes area searches unproductive.

Wild parsnip with pink flagging was herbicide treated, with untreated plants behind. Photo by B Kleiman

For mechanical control, I use a sharpened Parsnip Predator shovel to sever the root a few inches below the soil.  I place the shovel at the parsnip base to center the shovel notch on the stem, move the shovel back 2”, hold it about 30 degrees off vertical & slice the root with even force (no stomping or prying).  If the plant doesn’t pull up easily, I move the shovel laterally & make another slice.  If the plant isn’t swollen at the top of the stem, I throw it on the ground.  If swollen, but flowers aren’t emerging, I throw it on the ground & cut the stem below the swelling with the shovel.  Before June 15, if the plant is blooming or close to it,  I throw it on the ground & cut the stem below the terminal flower & also below the lowest flower.  Cutting the stem reduces the possibility that stem carbohydrates will be used to reflower, although I have no proof that is possible on a stem without a root.  After June 15, I bag the cut plants & let them compost on site.  I deposit the bags away from roads & trails since animals may break the bags open, allowing seed spread.  My method is an attempt to keep the job manageable for one person.  A 2 person team is ideal for digging & bagging.  Keep in mind the plant is toxic to the skin, so long gauntlet waterproof gloves & a long sleeved shirt should be worn.  Peak bloom for the early plants in my area occurs in late June.  The first pass of mechanical control is in the first 2 weeks of June, with a second pass starting the 3rd week.  The latter is to find late blooming plants, which are small & not in bloom during the first pass & thus easily missed.  Many plants will have green seeds by July 9.  Mechanical control can continue until July 15 (when seeds start to drop), but I try to be done by July 1 so I can switch to white sweet clover control.  Despite trying to be meticulous, I always find a handful of plants each year that were missed & went to seed.  For example, I did a second pass on June 19 & found a small but surprising amount of blooming plants July 1 to July 19.  So a 3rd pass may be necessary.  I’ve even occasionally found blooming plants, some quite tall, in September.  If you only have limited time for one pass, shoot for July 4 in southern Wisconsin & stack the cut plants in as few piles as possible, away from roads & trails.  This is well before seed drop, yet late enough to catch the early as well as many of the later blooming plants.

Bernie Buchholz with a Parsnip Predator weed spade. These are for sale by The Prairie Enthusiasts. It is a modified spade with the blade cut down, and the handle turned 90 degrees. The pink tape helps you find it in the grass. Photo by B Kleiman

Here are the results:

Gallons of herbicide solution used

2020 (fall only): 9

2021: 30

2022: 9

2023: 9

2024: 6

2025: 2

Hours for mechanical control

2021: 19

2022: 12

2023: 6

2024: 7

2025: 8

Estimated plant density over this 4.5 year time period decreased from moderate-dense to light.  Notice that mechanical control hours plateaued after 2 years, probably because at that point most of the time was spent walking around looking for plants.

The results roughly correlate with the following:

1) Cain, Nancy, et al.  “The biology of Canadian weeds: Pastinaca sativa L.”  Canadian Journal of Plant Science volume 90 (2) page 217 (2010).  They report the seedbank is viable for 2 to 4 years.

2) A prairie expert plus the above reference indicate most parsnips produce flowers in the 2nd or 3rd year but some take 5 to 6 years.

Using my method, 2 factors can lengthen the time for adequate control.

1) Missed plants due to poor visibility in heavy vegetation, plants that bloom at very low heights or very late blooming plants (as late as September).  It is very easy to miss short, blooming plants in tall vegetation.  Especially since invasion was widespread at this site, requiring a search of the entire area, except for the dry remnants where parsnip success was poor.

2) Digging disrupts soil, bringing seeds to the surface where they are more likely to germinate.  Proper use of the Parsnip Predator (no prying) minimizes this.

If practitioners are not meticulous, time for adequate control will be longer than what I experienced.  For example, not making a second mechanical pass, thus missing a surprising amount of late blooming plants.  Or missing a year, allowing substantial seed drop.  That would severely set efforts back & illustrates the importance of careful site selection & control area size to match the predicted resources over the years needed.

Herbiciding is particularly effective after a spring burn since thatch removal makes rosettes quite visible.  Herbiciding can be skipped if there are enough people to complete 2 thorough mechanical passes for the number of years needed.  My results are a good example of how herbicides can be a force multiplier if resources are limited.  Without them, there would be no hope of making a meaningful improvement at this site with just one worker.

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