Author Archives: Grassland Restoration Network blog

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About Grassland Restoration Network blog

Bill Kleiman, Julianne Mason, and Mike Saxton publish this blog. Bill's daytime job is director of Nachusa Grasslands with The Nature Conservancy. Julianne works for the Forest Preserve District of Will County. Mike Saxton works for the Missouri Botanical Garden at their Shaw Nature Reserve. We are looking for guest authors on various topics of grassland habitat restoration. Contact us with your ideas.

Testing shows confounding results. A late spring application of clethodim on mature Reed Canary Grass did not work, but then a second round of clethodim did work.

Posted on June 5, 2025 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman This is an update on an earlier post. 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 … Continue reading →

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Spring beauty, spring clean up and biological pollution

Posted on May 1, 2025 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman Spring beauty are one of the early wildflowers to come up in our oak woods. They are crazy beautiful making us thankful for spring.  Spring cleaning. Above is old junk dumped in a ditch that we are … Continue reading →

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Nachusa Grasslands Prescribed Fire Program Annual Report

Posted on April 17, 2025 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman Below are a few highlights of our annual report. You can read the entire report with many more photos here: nachusa_grasslands_annual_fire_report_2024_2025_opt.pdf The bottom line: I have been walking around units we have burned this year to see … Continue reading →

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Trailering UTVs for fire work

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

by Bill Kleiman Is the trailer above a CDL setup? My daughter was telling me about how they need a Commercial Drivers License, CDL, to haul two UTVs on one trailer to their prescribed fires. I told her that there … Continue reading →

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Fire Breaks make or break you

Posted on February 14, 2025 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman February is not the ideal time for us to prepare fire breaks. Frozen ant mounds are hard to mow. The mowed vegetation does not dry well if you want to rake and blow it. A tractor with … Continue reading →

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Save the Date! Grassland Restoration Network Workshop

Posted on January 23, 2025 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

September 10–11, 2025 Join us in Lawrence, Kansas, to share insights from grassland restoration work, research, and outreach while experiencing this unique ecotone region. Small remnant prairies in eastern Kansas host exceptional levels of plant diversity, and the combination of … Continue reading →

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Nachusa Grasslands hiring

Posted on December 5, 2024 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

We have upgraded our job description and increased the job category. So skip last weeks posting. Here is the text. Nachusa Grasslands Restoration Ecologist (CP VI) – 55997 – The Restoration Ecologist develops, manages, and advances conservation programs, plans, and … Continue reading →

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Nachusa Grasslands hiring for two positions

Posted on November 22, 2024 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman The Nature Conservancy is hiring for a full time permanent Restoration Ecologist. The job is open another two weeks. We are looking for someone who is a good person and has skills like these: Prescribed fire, chainsaw, … Continue reading →

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Brush and fire frequency

Posted on October 11, 2024 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman On a recent blogpost I mentioned that I mowed a gray dogwood patch, Cornus racemosa, in about 1994, so 3 decades back. I only mowed it one time with a rotary mower on the back of a … Continue reading →

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Weed management

Posted on September 26, 2024 by Grassland Restoration Network blog

By Bill Kleiman, Director Nachusa Grasslands, TNC The recent GRN workshop was all tour based, with 5 themed tours that ran concurrently every two hours over two days. All participants could go on all 5 tours. I led the tour … Continue reading →

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