About

Bill Kleiman started this blogsite n 2013. In 2024 I welcome Julianne Mason and Mike Saxton as co-administrators of this Grassland Restoration Network (GRN) blog.  Julianne’s day job is as a Restoration Program Coordinator with the Forest Preserves of Will County, Illinois.  Mike is the manager of Ecological Restoration & Land Stewardship of the Shaw Nature Reserve for the Missouri Botanical Garden.   Julianne, Mike and Bill encourage others to contribute blog posts.  By sharing lessons learned we help advance our field.   Whether you work in the Midwest, Great Plains or perhaps the Southeast or some other continent- share your lessons with us.

Top reasons to write a blog post:

• It is easy and fun to do
• It is free
• Your ideas are stored with tags on the blog-site so they are easily found on web searches
• You can include links in your post to longer reports or articles

The Grassland Restoration Network (GRN) is a loose affiliation of projects and project staff engaged in the restoration of diverse native grassland communities.  The Network was formed in 2003 by The Nature Conservancy but its members represent a wide variety of organizations, government agencies, and private landowners. There are three major objectives of the Grassland Restoration Network:

1. Facilitate communication and cross-site learning among large-scale grassland restoration sites.
2. Identify and close critical knowledge gaps regarding grassland restoration and measures of restoration success.
3. Foster a “grassland restoration culture” that increases the quantity and quality of grassland restoration.

The Network sponsors annual workshops, generally in the summer or early fall, at which participants meet at a restoration site, tour nearby restoration projects, and discuss topics such as seed harvest and planting methods, plant propagation techniques, invasive species challenges, ideas for long-term prairie management, evaluation of restoration success, and research needs and results.