Fire restoring farmland to natural state

BEARDSTOWN, Ill. -- With a thunderous roar, flames licked 15 feet in the air, crackling, snapping and slamming 1,000 degrees of heat over the prairie grass. Fire devoured big blue stem Indian grass, switch grass and Canada rye, leaving blackened ashes in its wake.

Flames only gnawed at invasive goldenrod, dogwood, fescue and cottonwood saplings, saving their real fury for native tall-grass prairie plants.

Despite the speed and intensity, the fire was a controlled burn at Spunky Bottoms, a 1,576-acre preserve in Brown County west of Beardstown -- land owned by The Nature Conservancy. The burn was part of a long-term plan to restore the former corporate-owned farmland to quality prairie and wetlands.

Spunky is different from other conservation restorations. It's being managed with an eye toward the rest of the world. What's being learned at Spunky will be applied up and down the Illinois River system, over to the Mississippi River, down to the Gulf of Mexico, and even as far away as Brazil.

Acquired in 1997 from the John Hancock Life Insurance Co., the land at Spunky was last harvested in 1998. Then the transformation back into prairie and wetland began.

Tharran Hobson, 35, is the land steward at Spunky and a lifelong river advocate.

"I grew up in and on the river," Hobson said. "I have known about Spunky since I was 10."

He is overseeing a $6 million project calling for construction of a gated, stop-log structure that will reconnect the land with the river after 80 years of man-made barriers. Once completed in about two years, it will be one of the few such structures on the Illinois River, and the only one used in the fashion Hobson envisions.

Hobson said fish will swim in to Spunky and breed. Zooplankton and phytoplankton will grow in the shallow, clean backwaters. He said diverse fish colonies are already repopulating the area. The fish attract water fowl and raptors. Even rodent populations have changed since restoration began.