Nature's Archive Podcast

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[00:00:00] Michael Hawk: My guest today is Chris Helzer. When I started this podcast nearly a year ago, Chris was on my short list of people I wanted to interview. So I’m very happy that the day has come. Chris is the nature. Conservancy’s director of science in Nebraska,

[00:00:12] where his main role is to evaluate, capture and share lessons based on the Conservancy’s land management and restoration work. Chris is the creator of the popular blog called the Prairie ecologist, where he combined his knowledge and insights with his photography to raise awareness about the value of Prairie’s.

[00:00:28] He’s also the author of two books, the ecology and management of Prairie’s in the central United States and hidden Prairie photographing life in one square meter.

[00:00:36] Chris has many more accolades and interest. You can find him on Instagram at Prairie ecologist. And in this episode, we discuss what a Prairie is and dispel common myths about Prairie’s. We get a quick lesson on ecological succession and how drought and fire play important roles in sustaining Prairie’s.

[00:00:54] Chris also describes the framework that’s used when making land management decisions.

[00:00:58] We have an interesting side discussion where we talk about how Chris combines his scientific background with his photographic and storytelling skills to create a very successful outreach portfolio through his blog and Instagram. Uh, Chris is a highly skilled environmental educator. So I also took the opportunity to ask him about his approach of meeting people where they’re at. To connect with people at any interest level.

[00:01:19] We also dove into how he’s used photography and his one square meter book and project to demonstrate the beauty and biodiversity of the Prairie, enabling him to connect with many more people. So without further delay, Chris Helzer.

[00:01:32] Chris, thanks for joining me today. Absolutely. So it’s hard for me to remember where I first heard of your work because I’ve been a follower of your blog, The Prairie Ecologist, for a long time. And not too long ago, I learned about some of your other work, like your book, The Hidden Prairie. And both of these are really good examples of someone just being at the pinnacle of knowledge on their subject matter.

[00:01:53] So what I’m curious about is what led you to this deep interest in prairies?

[00:01:57] Chris Helzer: Yeah, you know, I grew up playing outside a lot. So, I think I’ve had that my whole life. When I was a kid, I enjoyed going fishing or just sort of exploring in the yard or across the street for a while. When I lived out in western Nebraska, there was a pasture and a neat little road ditch that had water in it, so I could find snails and frogs and things like that.

[00:02:18] So, I think I’ve, I’ve been a long time. Outdoors person, but I really discovered prairies in college, and it’s kind of funny to me now looking back as I’m trying to, you know, lead other people into prairies and show them what’s there that they might not have noticed before my own journey is a good example.

[00:02:36] I think of where most people are, which is that I grew up around prairies. I drove through prairies to get to a lake that I was heading to or a place to go camping and never really paid any attention to it and didn’t really put a name to those places. And in college, I had a friend come up to me one day and just say, Hey, have you ever paid attention to prairies?

[00:02:56] You know anything about them? And I said, no, not really. And he said, that’s funny because most people I think in Nebraska are like that, even though that’s the dominant ecosystem of the state. I wonder why that is. And so we started talking about it and he said, I think the underdog status of prairies really drew me to them initially because I was a college kid.

[00:03:13] Underdogs are a big thing in college. You want to, you know, rebel against society and push the limits on things. And so I had a lot of fun learning about something that not many other people knew about. And then once I got into that, even just a little bit, I was hooked and I’ve never looked back. So that friend

[00:03:30] Michael Hawk: that approached you, that really doesn’t sound like typical college talk.

[00:03:33] I’m guessing that must have been a friend that you had through an ecology course or something like that.

[00:03:37] Chris Helzer: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn’t just random on the quad. Um, it was after, if I remember right, it was after an ecology class, actually. I don’t know if we were in the middle of some other conversation. I don’t really remember the details.

[00:03:49] I just remember class was over, people were milling around, and he came up to me and asked me that question. And that started me on a very long trip. And

[00:03:56] Michael Hawk: fast forward to now, and you’re Director of Science for the Nature Conservancy in Nebraska. So, transpired between those two points, uh, obviously your interest continued to grow.

[00:04:08] I’m sure there’s a lot in between though. Yeah,

[00:04:10] Chris Helzer: I, my friend Steve, who first brought it up with me, he and I were both in the wildlife club at the University of Nebraska. And we kind of moved into leadership positions eventually there and, and brought some other friends with us. And we turned that club into a prairie management club for a couple of years.

[00:04:31] And we basically taught ourselves everything we could. And we were just sort of voracious learners and the university at the time didn’t really have a lot of prairie ecology classes. We were wildlife majors, wildlife biology majors, and there were plenty of classes about fishery science or forestry or other other aspects of wildlife management, but there wasn’t really much on prairies except for Nature.

[00:04:53] you know, kind of a range management type course and talking about grazing and productivity. So we just became really interested and curious and found our own ways to learn and we went out and spent a lot of time in prairies and collected seeds and tried to do restoration work and learned about fire and tried to help other people do fire and take every chance we had and that was really a pretty amazing time because we were given a lot of freedom to explore and we were helping each other along the way.

[00:05:22] And then, once I got through that initial exploration and was really hooked. I did a master’s degree study in grassland birds, birds that nest in grasslands, and learned a lot of more of the science behind prairies and behind the sort of the landscape scale issues with prairies, habitat fragmentation, how the size and shape of a patch of prairie matters to the birds and the other animals that live inside it, how the context around it in terms of cornfields or, you know, sort of beat up pastures or what’s the difference, you know, why does it matter what’s around the prairies?

[00:05:53] Um, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And what can we do about that? Those really got interesting, and then I got a chance to sort of combine the two with my first job as a Nature Conservancy Land Steward, where I was given basically 5, 000 acres of land to manage, and my goal was to manage those for the most biodiversity that I could.

[00:06:14] So I got to put a lot of the science into practice, figuring out how to use fire and grazing and how to control invasive species in a way that, you know, promotes that biodiversity. My next progression there was after I was a land manager, I started to do more and more outreach, and I started to realize how important it was going to be for the success of prairie conservation to get a lot of other people behind us, because it’s just a few of us that are interested in it.

[00:06:38] Like anything else, nobody else cares, and there’s not going to be enough public support for it to succeed. So the more I got interested in that, the less time I had to do the land management work I really needed to do. And so I was able to sort of evolve my job description over time, and now I work with other land managers within Nebraska and beyond.

[00:06:58] And I help evaluate what they’re doing and help us all learn from what we’re doing on the ground. But then a lot of my job now is to translate that for other people to talk about what we’re learning on the ground, how people can use it in other places, and then. A lot of my job, honestly, is just to help people make that same journey that I made in terms of why they should care about prairies and why conservation of prairies is important.

[00:07:20] So as you

[00:07:20] Michael Hawk: proceeded down this pathway, the job description that you currently have at the Nature Conservancy, is that something that previously existed or did you sort of write your own ticket, so to speak?

[00:07:32] Chris Helzer: Yeah, mostly the latter. The job description exists other places in the Nature Conservancy, but the job that I have, or I should say the job title that I have, exists other places in the Nature Conservancy.

[00:07:45] But yeah, the specific jobs is, it’s really. It’s very much tailored to me. It’s tailored to what I’m good at. It’s what I’m interested in. And it’s tailored to what I think the organization thinks I can most contribute. So the fact that I’m a scientist who can write pretty well and who is a pretty good photographer, the combination of those three things is relatively unique.

[00:08:07] And so we’re trying to figure out how I can use that combination of skills to the greatest advantage. Well, I would throw one other skill

[00:08:13] Michael Hawk: into that mix, at least from what I’ve seen on your blog and following you on Instagram, and that’s humor. You throw A really good sense of humor into everything that you communicate about.

[00:08:22] Chris Helzer: Well, I appreciate that. I, I do think it helps. It’s, you know, the dry speaking scientist is kind of a trope, but it’s there for a reason. And so anything you can do to, I think, show personality and get people to connect with you as a person is the best way to bring them into the topic that you want to talk about.

[00:08:39] So I, yeah, I try, I appreciate that you think I’m doing a good job of that. Yeah. You had a post just.

[00:08:45] Michael Hawk: Yesterday, I think, on Instagram, that actually made me laugh out loud, and I don’t do that all that often. And you wrote a book a while ago, I can’t quite remember the name, it was something like Observing Wild Flowers While Driving on the Highway.

[00:08:59] Can you tell me about what that was?

[00:09:02] Chris Helzer: Yeah, so yeah, I can’t remember the exact title either now. It’s something like a field guide to wildflowers at full speed. I don’t know, it was an idea that floated around in my head for years. I just had this funny vision in my head of, you know, when you’re driving down a road really fast, you look off to the side and try to identify plants, they just look like a blur.

[00:09:19] And I thought, wouldn’t it be funny if somebody made a field guide of blurry photos? And then, you know, said it was a roadside field guide for wildflowers. And I thought, you know, that’d be funny. I mentioned to a couple of couple people now and then and said, Hey, you know, this would be a fun thing to do.

[00:09:33] You know, maybe you should think about doing it. Nobody ever wanted to do it. And then over a holiday break, my wife and I were sitting around and. There wasn’t a lot going on, and I just said, you know, I’m going to play with this idea a little bit and see where it takes me. And I made a couple of pages of a field guide that looked like it had fuzzy wildflower photos.

[00:09:52] I used Photoshop to smear photos, so I didn’t, I didn’t go out and take blurry photos. I cheated and used Photoshop. And I made a page or two, and it’s like, this is, this is actually pretty funny. And, uh, I kept working and because it was a holiday break and I didn’t have anything else going on, I came up with like 30 pages of a book and then turn it into a PDF and put it online just for a few friends to enjoy.

[00:10:15] And it just blew up in a crazy way. I got interview requests from, you know, big online companies and it became a, a meme that traveled the airwaves in a lot of different places. It was, it’s just insane to me and I still see it pop up now and then. And I’ve had people that have really pressed me on trying to help me make it into an actual physical book.

[00:10:37] I had somebody from Brazil of all places want to make a t shirt out of the design. He was asking permission to use a blurry photo on the t shirt. I mean, just, it’s, it’s nuts. The whole thing is nuts, but it was a lot of fun. Well, it just goes to show that

[00:10:49] Michael Hawk: you just never know what is going to strike a nerve with people.

[00:10:52] I’m sure when you were doing that, it was just a fun aside, but look at the outcome. I’m sure that there’s a lot of people that saw it and they wanted to investigate you. And as a result, they learned a little bit more about prairies and who knows what they’re often doing now. Yeah, I

[00:11:05] Chris Helzer: think that’s absolutely true.

[00:11:06] I was doing it to entertain myself. I’ve, I’ve learned over the years that if I just focus on that, if I do what I think is fun or interesting, I think because it’s genuine, you know, people get that. And they, they are willing to follow along because they know that it’s something I’m genuinely interested or I find genuinely funny.

[00:11:24] And because people tend to connect with each other rather than to a topic, at least initially, I think that’s a really effective way to bring somebody into a conversation. Yeah. And

[00:11:33] Michael Hawk: this is probably a good branching point. I can think of about three different ways we could go. For example, as a land steward, I’d be interested to understand some of the trade offs that exist when you’re.

[00:11:44] optimizing for different things like preventing an invasive species. But before we go there, maybe we should just cover first what a prairie is. Where are they located? What grows there? What do they look

[00:11:56] Chris Helzer: like? So prairies are seen by the public, I think, as flat. And grassy. And both of those things can be true, but prairies are a lot more than that.

[00:12:09] They are a grass dominated landscape, or at least a graminoid dominated landscape. So grasses, sedges, sometimes rushes, you know, in a wetter prairie. But there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of diversity of plants that are out there, including a lot of wildflowers, even some shrubs that would fit within a prairie context.

[00:12:27] What separates them from a lot of other plant communities, I think, is the lack of trees. at least in terrestrial systems. So you can have prairies with rocks, you can have prairies with hills, you can have prairies that are flat, but when you start adding trees into the mix, it moves into either a savanna or a woodland with openings.

[00:12:45] And so that’s the, that’s the thing that I think is most important about a prairie is that it’s really relatively free of trees. And it’s a very, very diverse plant community that, that fosters a very diverse animal community, especially within invertebrates and other smaller animals. So you can have prairies that are big enough to support large animals like bison or grouse, or some of those things that are wide ranging, move around the landscape a lot.

[00:13:09] But every prairie, even if it’s a tiny little patch of prairie vegetation, is going to have a really rich diversity of invertebrates. Small mammals, potentially birds if it’s big enough. And I think that’s the thing that is most entrancing to me, at least, about prairies is sort of diving into that, the details, uh, that you only find when you really start looking more closely.

[00:13:32] You mentioned that the

[00:13:32] Michael Hawk: defining characteristic is a lack of trees. And when I think about how easily trees can propagate, you know, whether it’s a bird or a squirrel taking a seed or an acorn, perhaps many miles away, prevents these trees from taking root in a prairie.

[00:13:49] Chris Helzer: Yeah, you know, I think most people in high school, when they learn about succession, ecological succession, you learn this idea that if you start with bare ground, it gets taken over by some weedy vegetation, and eventually, if it’s left alone, it turns into grassland, and if you leave it alone, it It’ll eventually get some trees that start growing, and then it turns into a forest, and then like the pinnacle of success, the climax community is a forest, an old growth forest.

[00:14:13] Which is a very linear way to think about ecology, but it’s helpful, it’s instructive. And then what moves it backwards on that scale is some kind of a disturbance. So something like fire, or grazing, or a storm event, or something that, that sort of sets back that logical progression. And so in that context, prairies are a mid successional community, meaning that they are either a transitional community to something else, Or if they’ve been there for a long time, there’s something that keeps happening that prevents them from moving up along that scale, uh, into a woodland.

[00:14:45] And in some cases, that’s, uh, weather related, it’s climate related. So drought in the, in the western prairies especially is the main force that keeps trees from coming out of, you know, wooded valleys where there’s more moisture or fire. Is the other really big one. And if you get the two combined, if you get fire and drought combined, that’s a really good ticket to maintaining prairies.

[00:15:09] As you move further east in the central part of the U. S., drought becomes less of an issue, so fire becomes even more important. And when you start talking about fire, and especially in the eastern half of the Great Plains and into the Midwest. You can’t really separate fire from people. So the reason that we had so many fires historically on the Great Plains since the last ice age ended and prairies really developed was because people were setting fires.

[00:15:35] Indigenous people were using fire very frequently for a lot of different reasons, but they were essentially managing, they were not, it wasn’t essentially, they were managing the prairies with fire. And that influenced grazing patterns of bison. It influenced the way the vegetation grew. It influenced how easy it was to move around in the prairie.

[00:15:53] It was used as a way to protect a village from a wildfire. They would burn out an area around the, around the village to get rid of all the dead grass so that an accidental fire wouldn’t come through. And the result of all that burning. was that it happened often enough that it kept trees from invading prairies, because trees are much more vulnerable to fire than grassland vegetation.

[00:16:13] It forces them to start over at the ground, which is not something they’re really good at, where most prairie plants grow right out of the base of their, of themselves. So next year’s growth of a sunflower, if it’s a perennial sunflower, starts at a bud at the ground. And so getting burned off in the middle of the year is not a big deal because it knows how to recover quickly from that, where trees grow from the ends, ends of their branches.

[00:16:35] And so having to start from the ground is a real disadvantage. So where I

[00:16:39] Michael Hawk: live, California, we have a lot of oak woodlands, oak savanna, chaparral. And I interviewed a guest on the show a few months ago who was an expert in the chaparral fire regimes and fire ecology in that ecosystem. And what I learned from him is that there are actually ways to extract the historical record of fire.

[00:17:02] For example, there might be some places where there are ash deposits or a charcoal record. that allow you to figure out what the fire return interval may have looked like at different points in history. You mentioned the many centuries of indigenous people using fire on the landscape. Do you have any way to tell what the fire return intervals would have been prior to the indigenous use of fire?

[00:17:26] Chris Helzer: Well, there really wasn’t anything prior to Indigenous people using fire in the Great Plains, because again, as long as prairies have existed, people have been here managing them with, with fire. So, in fact, I would argue, and I think it’s, I think it’s a stated fact, that if we hadn’t had people using fire as prairies, or as the ice age receded, uh, we probably wouldn’t have prairie vegetation in a large part of the eastern Great Plains and Midwest part of the country.

[00:17:55] That it was, it was specifically the people using fire and using it fairly frequently that made prairies happen in the first place and then maintain them over over a long period of time. You know, we have records here that You can look at old tree scars and things and try to estimate fire frequency and inter fire return intervals.

[00:18:12] And, you know, in the tall grass prairie, it was something in the 3 to 4 year return interval on average. And then, as you move west to where I’m at in the mixed grass prairie is more like 5 to 7 years that on average, you would have a fire come through at least every 5 to 7 years. And then it gets less and less frequent as you go further west into the drier areas.

[00:18:29] But, and those, those things are important. It’s really helpful to understand how prairies happened. On the flip side, sometimes people use that too much as a guide for how to move forward in the future. And things are so different now that, you know, if you burned a prairie every three years, for example, in the Tallgrass Prairie, it’s not enough now to keep trees out.

[00:18:55] There are just, part of it is there are a lot more trees around. And so there’s a lot more seeds and other opportunities for trees to move into prairies than there used to be. And then the climate is shifting. We have additional things like nitrogen deposition, where we’re fertilizing prairies basically accidentally, you know, from industrial sources and livestock sources and all those things combined to mean that trees have an easier time becoming established in prairies.

[00:19:19] So while fire is still really important to help keep trees out, we can’t just say, well, if we just burn the way indigenous people did or burn on a certain average frequency that it’s going to. do the job that it used to do. It just doesn’t work that way anymore. So with things having changed so

[00:19:33] Michael Hawk: much these days, when there is a fire on the prairie, How much of that is a prescribed burn versus a naturally occurring fire?

[00:19:43] Because I guess when I think of about a prairie fire, I often think of situations like where you have a chinook wind that’s drying out things and moving a fire very rapidly. But at the same time, people will be quick to react to a fire and try to put it out. So, it’s a rambling question, but if you could give me an overview of what fire looks like today on the prairie.

[00:20:03] Yeah,

[00:20:03] Chris Helzer: there’s a saying that I can paraphrase, but it’s basically the only difference between a wildfire and a prescribed fire is that we choose the time and place for a prescribed fire. And we hope to, you know, kind of control the outcome and control the situation while it’s happening. I would say overall, the vast majority of fires that happen, In prairies these days are, as they have always been, are set by people, and there are certainly wildfires, and some of them, some of them become.

[00:20:34] You know, really dramatic and really large. And a lot of those are lightning strikes. Some of those are, you know, accidental fires set by cigarette butts or other things that spark the fire. But while some of those can be really big, I should back up. With wildfires, I think a lot of what drives the extreme behavior that we see is drought conditions.

[00:20:56] So you were talking about Chinook winds. Uh, when we are in a severe drought, the likelihood of a wildfire is obviously higher, and the likelihood that that wildfire is going to become really large and hard to control is also much higher. So there are certainly wildfires that happen, and they happen more often in drought years, and that’s probably always been the case.

[00:21:16] With prescribed fire, we are usually, if we’re doing our job well, we’re burning for a particular reason. And so we will pick an area and we say, okay, this needs to burn because of this right where we have this particular tree species that’s moving in, or we’re trying to, to influence grazing in a certain way.

[00:21:34] And so it’s a really prescribed area. And then we also prescribe the conditions. So we want a hot fire or we want a relatively cool fire that leaves a patchiness afterwards. Uh, we want a fire at this particular time of year when this particular tree is most vulnerable, so we’re choosing the time and place in a way that both makes it easier to achieve objectives, but also because we’re, you know, being careful about the weather conditions and making sure we have the equipment and the people and the expertise on hand to control the fire, we can do it in a very, very safe way.

[00:22:06] Where, you know, it’s, it’s awfully, awfully rare to have a prescribed fire become a wildfire. It happens for sure, but it’s, it’s a really unusual situation. Got it.

[00:22:16] Michael Hawk: And you mentioned that one of the variables that you consider when designing a prescribed burn is the influence you want to have on grazing.

[00:22:24] So I know that grazing can be useful, sometimes detrimental, seems like always controversial. So how is grazing used on the lands that you oversee?

[00:22:35] Chris Helzer: Sure. Yeah, it’s all of that. You know, again, back to indigenous management of prairies, one of the biggest reasons that they were burning was that they knew that a recent fire would change the vegetation and the nutrition of that vegetation in a way that was really attractive to bison.

[00:22:54] And so you could sort of predict where bison were going to be the next year by burning out an area this year or burning out an area in the spring and, you know, within a few weeks that would draw bison in because the, the quality, the nutrition, the protein levels, all these things change. in vegetation after a fire.

[00:23:13] And because the bison were attracted to those recent fires, they grazed those areas very short, and that created a very different habitat structure as compared to an unburned area that grew fairly tall. And there are animals that like, some, some animals like tall areas, some animals like short areas, and having both of those on the landscape is really important.

[00:23:35] And then the really interesting part is that when you have an area that gets burned and then grazed by bison or by cattle, which is what we use a lot today, if it gets grazed for a long period of time, whenever the next burn happens and those bison would move off or whenever we move cattle to another location, the grasses have been grazed for You know, say, weeks or months, uh, or a large part of a year, and they don’t have a lot of energy left to grow, which makes them a lot less competitive.

[00:24:04] And in a grassland community, grasses are the dominant vegetation, meaning that they suppress the growth and diversity of other plants around them if you leave them alone. With grazing, what we can do is we can actually suppress the dominance of those grasses for a little while, and until they fully recover, which they will, There’s kind of an opening there for other plants to come in and thrive.

[00:24:26] And that’s one of the most interesting and one of the most valuable aspects of prairie in terms of grazing is that recovery period of grasses, that kind of transitional period between intensive grazing and long periods of rest is when you have all these opportunistic plants. just start to flourish and and flush in bloom.

[00:24:45] And you get both a high diversity of plants, often you get a lot of nectar and pollen resources for pollinators in a really positive way, but you also get this third kind of unique habitat structure in between the very short and the very tall is this this mixed height Mixed density prairie with typically short grasses that are fairly easy for a small animal, for example, to walk around in.

[00:25:10] And then there are tall wildflowers all around. It’s almost like a savanna at a smaller scale where you have these scattered wildflowers that are tall and provide shade and provide cover from, from predators or from the elements. And yet underneath that canopy. it’s really open and really easier for animals to move around.

[00:25:28] So there are birds, for example, like quail or grouse species that will nest in heavy cover, but as soon as their chicks hatch and they can start moving around, they’ll move them into these transitional areas where they can move around and do a lot of feeding on the abundant insects that are also using that habitat and yet be covered by, you know, some protective cover above.

[00:25:50] Uh, so I think that’s one of the things that when people see grazing. In a prairie, if you drive by and you look over and you see a grassland that’s being grazed really intensively and all it all looks short, the immediate thought is, oh, that’s that’s an overgrazed site. Somebody’s doing something wrong or that’s not even a prairie right now.

[00:26:10] But the truth is, there’s a lot of valuable habitat in that short grass, but then also if it’s in a transitional rotation or it’s in a. you know, management system that allows that to be grazed and then recover and then grazed again. That’s part of what makes the greatest diversity and builds resilience more than anything else in prairies.

[00:26:31] So grazing historically by bison, grazing today by bison or cattle is really an essential part of managing larger prairies, especially That

[00:26:42] Michael Hawk: reminds me of a general principle where if you have multiple different biomes or habitats close to each other, like, say, a riparian corridor, or a forest edge next to a grassland, you end up with more biodiversity than the sum of its parts.

[00:27:00] And what you’re talking about is a much subtler form of that, where you have, say, vegetation density fulfilling that role.

[00:27:08] Chris Helzer: Yeah, and it, you know, it happens at multiple scales. It’s, it’s, at a large scale, if you have a large burned area that’s managed by, by bison grazing that’s really short, next to an area that’s unburned, that’s, that’s one scale.

[00:27:20] But you can also have it at a very small scale where a bison or a cow walks through the prairie and it, it, It puts its head down and it bites and it eats a, you know, a six inch square area of grass and then lifts its head and walks on. That six inch patch of short grass now becomes an opening and it becomes a really valuable habitat for something like an insect that might need to be in heavy cover most of the time, but if it’s a cool morning and it needs to get out into the sunshine to warm up, that little patch just created by that one bite by the cow or by the bison opens up a brand new patch of habitat.

[00:27:52] Patchiness in general is generally a very positive thing in grasslands.

[00:27:58] Michael Hawk: So on the more extreme side, if you did have a river or creek running through a prairie and it is densely wooded, say with cottonwoods or sycamores or whatever happens to grow in the area, How does that affect the prairie ecosystem?

[00:28:11] I mean, is that a good thing? A bad thing? Just a thing? Uh, yes.

[00:28:17] Chris Helzer: It’s trees, especially, especially trees along the edge of a prairie have both positive and negative aspects to them. On the one hand, Like you said before, it does provide an edge, it provides a different habitat, and there are a lot of species that are going to move back and forth.

[00:28:33] You see a lot of birds that you think of as woodland birds because they nest in trees that will come out into a prairie, if it’s nearby, to feed, and you’ll see them catching insects during the summer and then, or picking up nesting material or both and carrying them back into the trees. You’ll see birds using those trees as perches.

[00:28:50] Where they can sit up high and look out across the prairie, either as a hunter or as a way to kind of scope out the competition. But then there are also some real negative aspects from a prairie standpoint, where There are a lot of bird species, for example, that are negatively influenced by tall structures.

[00:29:09] They’ll, they’ll stay away from those tall structures. They won’t nest close by. Some of that is because of the predators we just talked about, that they know predators have an advantage if they have a perch to sit on up high and look around and see what they’re trying to go after. But part of it also is just there’s a visual obstruction.

[00:29:25] Grassland species, birds as a, as a good example, they’ve evolved with open country. They like open country. A lot of their behaviors are based on being in open country. And so if you see metal arcs or grasshopper sparrows or other grassland birds, you’ll see them dotted across the prairie and each of them is sitting up in the vegetation singing a song.

[00:29:45] And then moving around in a little defined area showing where their territory is. And they’re also watching all the other birds in the territories nearby. And they all have these territories sort of mapped out in their head. They know where they all are because they can see in all the directions. And they can keep track of all their neighbors and their competitors.

[00:30:01] Or if a female gets up and flies out of one territory and into another, everybody in the neighborhood sees that happens. And as long as that female is in the air, she’s fair game for all the males to try to, you know, attract into their territory. And so you see this, this big rush happen. at that female, and the female decides who wins, you know.

[00:30:18] None of that can happen if you can’t see a long distance across the prairie. So there are some visual obstructions. And then, you know, trees just change the microclimate. They change the temperature and the moisture and the soil underneath them. And so there are some plants, for example, that will grow well in a wooded area.

[00:30:36] And in some cases, it’s a, it’s a gateway for invasive plant species. You’ll have something that’ll get entrenched or get a foothold in a shady wooded area, and then it’ll start making its way out into the prairie in a way that’s, you know, not great for the prairie species. So having, having some scattered trees and, and like you said, areas along riparian areas can really be great at a landscape scale for adding to the diversity of the landscape, but it also has negative consequences for a lot of the prairie species, especially if you start to get too many trees and it Turns it into, again, more of a woodland with openings rather than a grassland with trees.

[00:31:10] Mm hmm.

[00:31:11] Michael Hawk: You mentioned that that could be a gateway or an entryway for invasive species. So when it does come to land management and invasive species, there’s trade offs for everything. And there are some things that obviously we just don’t know. So, I’m wondering, as a land manager, what kind of framework do you have to help you decide when you should take an action to either promote a given species or remove a species?

[00:31:35] Chris Helzer: It’s really tricky, especially because there are so many species that are non native. In terms of, you know, they were brought in to this continent by somebody rather than something that was here when Europeans showed up. That’s the definition we have of non native, but non native and invasive are very different.

[00:31:55] And trying to decide when you see a new species show up in your prairie, whether it’s something that you want to leave alone or fight against, is hard because, like you said, we’re short on resources. I don’t know any land manager who feels like they’re ahead of the game. We’re all, we’re all feeling like we’re always playing catch up.

[00:32:11] And I think the rule of thumb that’s most helpful for me is, is this species going to add to diversity? Or is it going to simplify the community in a way that’s bad? So almost all of the management that we’re doing is aimed at maintaining or increasing the diversity of life, the diversity of species in the prairie.

[00:32:31] So if you have a species that comes in and forms a monoculture, um, And sort of pushes other species out of the way, or, you know, decreases the other species chance to bloom or to thrive in any way, that’s probably a bad thing. But if it’s a species that comes in and sort of adds itself into the community, and is additive rather than subtractive, that can be at least a neutral thing, and maybe a good thing, even if it’s a species that not, is not necessarily native to that area.

[00:32:55] And the problem, I mean, that’s a great rule of thumb. And if it was easy to apply, uh, everything would be great. The problem is a lot of times we don’t know when a new species shows up how it’s going to act. Sometimes we’ll have information on it from other places. You know, in my case in Nebraska, if there’s a species that shows up, I can, you know, talk to somebody in Iowa or South Dakota or Kansas and one of those adjoining states and say, hey, have you seen this?

[00:33:20] How does it act? What have you seen in your, in your area? And sometimes they’ll say, yeah, it doesn’t seem to be any problem. And other times they’ll say, oh, it’s super aggressive. So based on that, we can decide whether to be aggressive or not, but that’s not always foolproof either, because every species acts differently based on its surroundings, and so sometimes you can have something that’s no problem in Iowa and becomes just a rampaging, aggressive, terrible thing in Nebraska.

[00:33:43] So it’s guesswork, it’s a lot of keeping track of things, and sometimes it’s one of those that The highest priority invasive species often are the ones that you can actually eradicate if you wanted to, because they’re just starting to arrive. And so if you can catch them as soon as they show up and just say, okay, I’m not going to take a chance with you.

[00:34:03] You know, there’s only six of you now you’re gone. That’s the most effective strategy. A lot of times, one of the primary

[00:34:09] Michael Hawk: reasons I wanted to have you as a guest is because you’ve been so successful with your outreach efforts. And speaking of frameworks, we just talked about the framework for land management.

[00:34:20] You have a framework for outreach about meeting people where they’re at. Can you tell me a little bit about what that means and what some of the steps and missteps were along the way as you develop that

[00:34:29] Chris Helzer: framework? Yeah, for sure. The, there have definitely been plenty of missteps. I think as a scientist, the inclination is To use facts and statistics and show people why prairies, for example, are really important because, you know, they sequester carbon and we’re trying to, you know, reduce carbon from a climate change perspective or grasslands are important because they filter water and everybody wants clean water.

[00:34:55] Look at all the things that prairies do. It’s so fascinating and it’s so important to our own lives. And all of that is true, and all of that is really important, but what I’ve learned is that those are discussions that are best had sort of secondary to discussions about, you know, why a particular species is interesting, or something that I saw in a prairie that I was fascinated by, or, hey, look at this picture of this little bee.

[00:35:19] Did you know that this bee, you know, specializes only on this flower, or look at this beetle that It’s larvae group up together and emit a pheromone that bees are attracted to, and then they ride the bee back to the nest and they eat all the babies out of the bee’s nest. I mean, those kinds of stories are what really attract people to anything, really.

[00:35:38] That’s, that’s how we connect with each other. We tell each other stories about our lives, and that’s what makes us interesting to each other. And so I’ve started to learn over time, and it’s not just me, I’ve learned from other people who do this better and have been doing it for longer, that storytelling is a crucial part of conservation.

[00:35:54] It’s a crucial part of evangelizing about whatever natural system you’re trying to get people interested in. And so I’ve tried to take advantage of the fact that I’m, that I am a scientist. I know a lot of facts, but I start with little facts. I start with little things that are interesting about a particular species and I combine that with photography and writing and try to introduce people to the inhabitants of a prairie in a way that it makes them feel like a new neighbor that somebody’s just met.

[00:36:23] And by doing that, I think People feel a connection that is not like an obligation. If you, if you start out by saying you have an obligation to do something to save prairies, that’s kind of a turnoff, right? But if you can start out by saying, did you know that this species does this? Or, you know, look at how much you can find if you focus on just a little bit of area of a prairie over a year.

[00:36:49] Look how much stuff is out there. That’s something that people are going to be more likely to relate to. And then you can start from there, and then once they sort of are interested in that, then you can bolster that by talking about climate change, and you can talk about carbon, and you can talk about clean water, and you can talk about why prairies are important as a food production site, and all those sorts of things.

[00:37:09] But those, I really think those have to be secondary, unless You’re talking to a politician or somebody who’s really looking at dollars and cents and wants to know like, okay, what does society get from this prairie beings being here that sometimes you started that point on that kind of discussion, but really, for the, for the most of us, storytelling is where it’s at, I guess, to get the other part of your question in terms of meeting people where they’re at.

[00:37:35] I think a lot of us who are in conservation and who are in nature all the time forget that not everybody is like that. You know, you forget that there are people who maybe have grown up and lived in the city their whole life and they’ve never seen what we would think of as nature. And that to them, an insect that, something really benign, like a box elderbug, or a ladybug, that they see inside their house can be scary, right?

[00:38:01] It’s not just not interesting, it actually could be something that they’re afraid of, and when you realize that there are a lot of people at that stage, you have to craft your stories in a way that to. Meets those people where they are. And so maybe the first step in getting somebody interested in a prairie or in nature in general is to talk about the fact that seeing an insect in your house or a spider in your house is not gonna kill you.

[00:38:22] It’s not something you need to be afraid of. And actually that little spider or that little bug has a very interesting life. Did you know that this box, elder bug, you know, whatever, and then you can sort of start to slide them in the right direction. And as they move in that direction you can start to change the messaging and, you know, continue to draw them in.

[00:38:41] Michael Hawk: I think that’s partly what drew me to your work. One of the ways that you draw people in and open people’s eyes is through your photography. Obviously photography is a great medium and there’s a lot of famous photographers that photograph mountain lions and grizzly bears, but there are amazing things happening all around us all the time at small scale.

[00:39:00] So I’m wondering what drew you to photography and especially macro photography? Well,

[00:39:06] Chris Helzer: I was lucky in college. I did a volunteer job where my boss, as part of my job, handed me a camera and said, hey, here’s a vehicle and a camera, go out and take pictures of some different conservation practices, which was a very broad and almost meaningless task.

[00:39:20] But he said, you know, if you’re out there and you see something else that’s interesting, go ahead and take a picture of it. So I basically had a license to take as many pictures as I wanted that summer, which was pretty amazing. And by the end of the summer, I was definitely hooked. It was a lot of fun.

[00:39:32] And then I realized that from there on, I was going to have to pay for my own equipment, my own film at the time, but I got into it. I enjoyed the process, but what really changed my world was when my parents helped me buy my first macro lens, my first closeup lens. Which is basically like sticking a microscope on your camera and then going out in the world and the entire landscape changes dramatically when you start carrying that lens because you are looking for the small things.

[00:40:02] And when you start looking for those small things, you realize how many are around you and how much diversity there is there. The world just opens up and it’s hard to describe and it happens to me daily. It’ll happen when I’m, when I’m walking around in the prairie as a scientist, I’m looking at certain features.

[00:40:16] I’m looking at habitat structure. I’m thinking about management questions. I’m looking for invasive species. And then as soon as I get the camera out of my bag, my brain switches to a different gear. And now I’m looking for grasshoppers and dragonflies and the way the light hits a flower in a certain way.

[00:40:32] It’s just, it’s a totally different way of looking at things. And I can’t recommend it enough. I mean, even if you’re just using a cell phone camera, having the ability or having the inclination that you’re going to go out and take pictures of something, just, it puts you into an explorer mode in a very different way that I think is really helpful.

[00:40:50] And I, and I think, so what I do as an outreach person then is I try to share the way I feel. I try to share that sense of exploration, that sense of discovery. And I’m you know, sharing my legitimate, real excitement about finding something new and learning about what I just found out about. And I think because I’m genuine in that way, and I am excited about it, that comes through and other people can sort of share that.

[00:41:12] So that

[00:41:13] Michael Hawk: reminds me a little bit of a project I started a year ago, or close to a year ago anyway, when COVID first hit. And that was to document every animal I could find in my backyard with my macro lens. And it’s led to a series of amazing discoveries of my own, you know, everything from learning about the diversity of hoverflies or flower flies that we have in the area.

[00:41:35] To the spiders, and yeah, I guess my favorite one is the Trashline Orbweaver, which is this amazing tiny little spider that decorates its web with the carcasses of its prey so that it can hide among the carcasses from its own predators. So I can only imagine what you would see and discover in the expanse of a prairie.

[00:41:56] Yeah, they

[00:41:56] Chris Helzer: happen every day. They really do. Every, every single day. So you put

[00:42:00] Michael Hawk: some bounds around this practice and decided to create a book around it. Can you tell me about that

[00:42:06] Chris Helzer: book? I was really looking for, to be honest, I was really looking for a crutch. I was looking for a way to give me something to write about on my blog.

[00:42:16] I have a blog. I try to write. Twice a week, try to post something twice a week. It’s usually not hard, but there are times where I’m struggling to come up with a new way of saying the same thing. And one of the stories that I tell all the time is, you know, how diverse prairies are and how important it is to recognize that diversity.

[00:42:33] And if you take the time to really look closely, you can find all these things. I tell that story all the time and I needed a new way to do it. And I also wanted to challenge myself because it’s just fun to do that. And I don’t even know where I was or how I came up with the idea, but it just popped into my head.

[00:42:48] Wouldn’t it be fun to mark out a tiny little place in the prairie and then just watch that single tiny place for a full year and see what you can find? So I went across town. to a small prairie that’s right on the edge of town where I live here in Aurora, Nebraska. And I put four yellow flags in the ground and marked out a square meter.

[00:43:10] And I said, okay, I’m just going to come back to this little square meter of prairie as many times as I have time for over the next year. And I’m going to try to see how many things I can find. And it partly was an inventory project from a scientific species identification standpoint. That was part of it.

[00:43:26] But a lot of it really was more about Again, showing people what is there if you look. And I did it as a way to show other people what prairies can be. And the surprise for me was that it also changed the way I look at prairies. Which, you know, I’ve been doing this for a long time. I’ve been, you know, 25 years or more studying prairies and photographing prairies and doing all these things.

[00:43:51] And so while I still do find new things, I was really shocked by how inspired I became just by sitting still and staring at one small area for a long period of time. Because every time I did that, I would, I would start out and I didn’t really see anything new. And then the longer I looked, the more I found, I discovered new species I’d never seen.

[00:44:13] But I also just learned a new way of looking at the world, which I’m not the first one to do that. You know, uh, plenty of people have talked about how valuable it is to sit still and just do a study of a small area. I guess for me, it was something that I knew in my head, but I didn’t know in reality. So, it’s been, it was a really extraordinary year, and it’s been a lot of fun to see how much that has resonated with other people.

[00:44:40] I’ve just been shocked by how many people have been interested in what I found. The response that I give when I give a presentation to a, you know, a civic group of a bunch of, you know, middle aged white bankers, and they are just astonished in the first place by how much I was able to see. And then they’re inspired to do something like that themselves, you know, sort of like you were talking about doing something in your yard.

[00:45:04] I can’t tell you how many people have gotten back to me and said, you know, I love the book. I love the project. I’ve started to do something my own way, you know, something really similar. I’ve got my kids involved with it. That’s just amazing to see that kind of response. I lucked into that part of it. You know, I got what I wanted out of the project and that was pretty easy.

[00:45:23] And then I’ve just been really astonished by how much more has happened since then. That

[00:45:27] Michael Hawk: must be so gratifying with my little project. I can get maybe just a tiny flavor of what you’re talking about. I, uh, had started a Facebook group called Backyard Wildlife when I kicked this whole thing off. And it’s slowly grown over time to a couple hundred people that submit what they’re seeing.

[00:45:44] And it’s just a lot of fun to see the community growing and the interest growing. So back to your square meter, what was your practice like? Did you visit it daily at the same time of the day? Did you have a minimum time that you would spend there?

[00:45:56] Chris Helzer: You know, the only rules that I set were that I could only take pictures of something that inside the square and I let that square move vertically.

[00:46:05] So as long as it was. Within the same, if it was a plant that was rooted in the square and happened to be leaning outside, that was okay, that was still legal for me to photograph.

[00:46:14] Michael Hawk: So if a Canada goose happened to fly directly overhead, you could count that.

[00:46:18] Chris Helzer: I could have, I guess. I never, I never, uh, never extended it quite that high.

[00:46:23] And then the other rule was that I had, if I was going to count something on my species list, I had to have a publishable photo of it, right? Not just a blurry image. It had to be something that was actually a publishable photo. Beyond that, I kind of left it open. And so the project evolved over time. You know, like I said, when I started, it was just sort of a crutch.

[00:46:39] It was just kind of a crazy idea to give me something else to write about. And so for the first several months, I started it in January, end of January. And so February, March, April, I went a couple of times. I went because there was a frost that happened and it was fun. I, you know, I actually go over to the plot and see if there’s anything that looks nice with frost cover in it.

[00:46:58] And I did that a few times. And then when it got into May and things started to green up, there wasn’t a lot blooming yet. I didn’t go as often as I probably should have, you know, maybe a handful of times. But what I was finding is that even Walking through the prairie on the way in, I didn’t see much, but once I sat down and started looking, I did see things, whether that was an insect or just like the way that the light shined through a leaf and illuminated all the veins from the other side.

[00:47:21] I mean, just things that were beautiful, not necessarily scientifically interesting. Although maybe those are always the same thing. But as things started to bloom and I really got into the flow of the project, I got into a zone of how much fun it was to sit, quietly look. I started to go often. I increased the visitation frequency, but I also increased the amount of time I spent.

[00:47:42] So there were days where I would spend an hour and a half staring at this square meter of prairie and never run out of something to photograph and something to notice. And then there were other times I’d go over for 10 minutes and it’s like, I am not feeling it today. It doesn’t seem to be much new.

[00:47:57] You know, there always are days like that, but I would say the longer periods were more the average once I got into the project. And a lot of how I would decide to go over was based on light and, you know, sort of photography conditions. If I was working at home and or at the office and I’d look outside and the light was really nice and it wasn’t windy, if that was at all possible, I would drop everything I would do and I’d grab my camera and I’d go over and I’d spend an hour, which is a great way.

[00:48:24] to run a project because it was very opportunistic. And I wasn’t going there and then trying to make photos out of bad light. I just waited until the light was great. Then I went to see what I could find. Ooh,

[00:48:34] Michael Hawk: I didn’t think about the wind. I know where you’re at. It’s very windy. And where I’m at, I’m kind of lucky.

[00:48:39] I’m sheltered in the valley. So windy is sort of a disappointing day. And I suppose it’s the opposite for you where a low wind day is a unexpected surprise. Yeah,

[00:48:50] Chris Helzer: it’s as a photographer and wind can be fun also in a nice breeze in the summertime is very pleasant. But yes, as a photographer, when you’re trying to photograph a beetle that’s on a flower and both the beetle and the flower are moving at the same time, it’s, it’s really challenging.

[00:49:06] So. It’s a, you know, a huge blessing when you wake up in the morning and there’s just a little bit of fog out. The sun is just coming up and it’s just beautiful golden color and there’s no breeze at all. That’s an amazing time to do photography. And then also sometimes, and this is unusual but boy is it gratifying, when you look out and it’s a bright overcast day.

[00:49:26] Where you have this diffused light, just like what a portrait photographer tries to create with all the fancy equipment, where you can just barely see your shadow, but it’s not heavy contrast. And there’s no wind or very little wind when you have a bright overcast day with no wind. It’s really hard for me to do anything else besides grab a camera and go out and take pictures.

[00:49:44] Michael Hawk: Yeah, that sounds great. And I realized that when I let off the series of questions, I mentioned your book as if it was the only book, but you actually have multiple books. So I’ll make sure to link to all of those in the show notes. And realizing we’ve been talking for almost an hour already, I’ll try to avoid the gravitational pull of talking about your other books for the moment.

[00:50:05] So we’ve talked about your outreach through the blog and through your book and some of your speaking engagements. But sometimes it seems like it’s really necessary to get people to see the environment, to have it really make a difference. So I’m curious, in at least non COVID times, What do you do to get people out there to maybe visit a prairie and see exactly what you’re talking about?

[00:50:29] Chris Helzer: Yeah, getting people to prairies is so important because I think most people, if they drive by or even walk by a prairie and they just look out, they don’t see much that seems interesting, right? It’s just a bunch of vegetation that they don’t recognize. And if they don’t recognize it, they don’t notice that there are differences between all the different species, so it all looks like one big blob of the same thing, and nobody wants to look at that.

[00:50:53] So, one of the tricks, I think, to getting someone to a prairie the first time, I mean, ideally, you just grab them by the hand and say, hey, come with me, I want to show you something. And that’s awesome. You can do that one person at a time, and very slowly, if there are enough of us, we can make a, make a difference that way.

[00:51:08] So, we should absolutely do that. There are way too many people, I think, right now for us to take by the hand individually and lead them to a prairie. So, how do you get somebody to the point where they think visiting a prairie would be a good idea? And I think there are a couple things that help with that.

[00:51:23] I think, one, I hope that my photography and writing and that other people doing similar things like that help, because you’re introducing the public to the inhabitants of a prairie, and you’re making them seem like neighbors. You’re making them feel like something that people would want to see in person and get to know themselves.

[00:51:40] So that can help, I think. You know, showing that, look, if you go out to a prairie, look at all the things you can find. Look at all the things that are there waiting for you. And then a second thing that I think really helps is this push to get people to use native plants in their own yards, in their gardens, or in community parks, anywhere that’s close to where people live.

[00:51:57] There are a lot of good reasons to do that, you know, I mean, you can have a demonstrable impact on pollinator populations by doing that sort of thing in town. That’s great. But maybe the biggest benefit of it is that it gets people more familiar with prairie species in particular, so that when they do go out to a prairie, they’re likely to see something they recognize, right?

[00:52:17] If you, if you start growing black eyed Susan flowers in your yard, and you go to a prairie and you see black eyed Susan flowers, it’s like, hey! I know you and then that can lead to sort of this cascade of getting to know the other plants out there and then eventually hopefully invertebrates other things.

[00:52:33] So I think, look, I don’t know. I think, though, that the key really is building a familiarity, helping people see that there’s a relevance to what’s there. There’s a story I tell about, I met somebody sort of online through a work based Facebook kind of group. There was a Nature Conservancy employee in Indonesia who I’ve never met, but he takes some really good photos, and he was posting them on this site, and I saw them, and we interacted a little bit about photography, and I can’t even pronounce his name.

[00:53:05] But I know kind of what he looks like, and I know he lives in Indonesia, and then there was a major weather event. There was a tsunami that hit Indonesia a few years ago, and normally I would have seen that in the news and I’ve said, oh, you know, man, man, that’s a shame. And then I would have moved on. But knowing that I knew somebody who lived there.

[00:53:23] That event became much more relevant to me, even just for a moment, right? And I think the same thing can help us with prairies, that if, if we can show people something that lives in a prairie and they start to identify with that, a prairie doesn’t just become this weird place that I’ve never been to, it becomes a place where this thing lives, right?

[00:53:40] Whether that’s a monarch butterfly, or a bumblebee, or whatever it is, a prairie starts to have a different kind of meaning to us, because we know that there’s somebody out there that we, that we identify with. And I think we can get to that point. That’ll help too, because people will care more about the plight of prairies, but the real key, like you said, is to try to get people to have that first experience.

[00:54:02] And then when they do have that first experience, it, gosh almighty, better be a good one, right? If they get there and they don’t see anything interesting, they leave, they’re never coming back. So the next trick, and I’ve not solved this completely either, but the next trick is when they do have their first visit, how do you make sure that they enjoy it?

[00:54:18] And again, if you’re there to hold their hand and show them around, that’s easy. But if you’re not, that gets really tricky. And so I think one idea is to provide them with a simple resource that gives them a few things to look for. So it doesn’t identify things necessarily. That’s a, that’s a future step, right?

[00:54:33] Field guides and all those things I think have to come later. But a first step can be, hey, if you go to a prairie. Look at things that look like butterflies and see if you can tell the difference between a butterfly and a moth, right? All you have to do is look at the antenna. If you can get close enough to see the antenna, if the antenna are fuzzy, that’s a moth.

[00:54:49] And if they’re a little stalk with a, with a little ball at the end, that’s a butterfly. You know, just see if you can find those or see if you can tell the difference between a grasshopper and a katydid because the antenna length. is what matters there. You know, if you can give them something to look for, something that’s enjoyable, I think that gets them into the flow of seeing a prairie as a place to find something.

[00:55:08] I don’t know for sure that that works. That’s a theory that I have that I think might make sense. But all of that has to come after the first step, which is, you know, get them interested enough to go out and see a prairie in the first place. So I’ve helped

[00:55:21] Michael Hawk: co lead some bio blitzes here in the Bay Area.

[00:55:24] And to your point, one of the biggest challenges I have is I have to remember to change my mindset and specifically remember that I’m there to show things, not to find things for myself. You know, it’s so easy to get caught up in the moment looking for interesting things, but it’s really all about showing people the interesting things.

[00:55:41] And doing that with enthusiasm too. And, you

[00:55:44] Chris Helzer: know, BioBlitzes are fantastic, except that, and this is not even a negative, but what they can’t do most of the time is they don’t draw people in who aren’t already interested in nature, right? So that’s the, that’s the logjam. It’s like, okay. We’re working with a particular audience and we can grow that audience and grow their sophistication and their interest in prairies, maybe.

[00:56:04] But how do we get the audience to be bigger? That’s the real challenge that I don’t think I’ve solved yet. So as

[00:56:10] Michael Hawk: we start to wrap up, there’s a question that I’d like to ask a lot of my guests, and that’s about resources. You know, what resources were important to you in your progression over your career?

[00:56:20] For example, any particular books or documentaries, or maybe even a mentor that you find yourself recommending or recollecting about. I

[00:56:29] Chris Helzer: think the resource that has helped me the most has been people. It’s been, you know, individual people who have a lot of knowledge and enthusiasm about prairies, who I was able to just hang around and absorb.

[00:56:43] information from and absorb energy from. And so it’s hard for me to recommend them because they’re, you know, they’re people that are local here, people that I could ride around in a truck with and listen to or walk out in a prairie and just hang on every word that they said. My, my aspiration in life is to be that person, right?

[00:56:59] To be somebody that can fill the role of all those, all those mentors that I had that got me excited about prairies. So I, you know, my recommendation there is to find Whoever that is locally, right? Find that naturalist, find the person that works at the Nature Center or the biologist that does, that leads field trips or, you know, leads volunteer days and talks about what they’re seeing as the volunteer day happens.

[00:57:20] There are plenty of those people around, and that’s so much, it’s so much easier to learn when you’re not trying to do it on your own and trying to guess whether you’ve identified something right or guess why something might be happening. And if you can see it, and at the same time you see it, you ask somebody, Hey.

[00:57:36] What is that? Or why is that happening? And get the result, then you know, and you just move on. So yeah, finding local mentors. And then, you know, there’s so many social media and online resources now that if you have a particular interest in an aspect of prairies or just in anything with nature, that’s so much easier now to just find somebody with common ideas that you can follow along.

[00:57:57] There are some terrific photographers out there, terrific storytellers out there. I will plug one person in particular just because I really admire him and I’ve learned a lot from him. His name is Michael Forsberg. Michael Forsberg is a photographer in Nebraska who does a lot of work across the Great Plains on prairies, but also things like sand hill cranes and whooping cranes.

[00:58:18] He had a fantastic video and photo. series on the, the, the dipper, little bird that feeds in streams, things like that. He just, he does this fantastic job of finding a story and telling it in a way that makes you want to be there, uh, with him as he sees it happen. And so he’s, yeah, he’s, he’s been a huge influence on, on my work too.

[00:58:41] Michael Hawk: Right, and Michael Forsberg’s great. I’ll make sure to link to him as well in the show notes. And how about upcoming projects? Is there anything that you’re in the midst of working on that you want to highlight?

[00:58:50] Chris Helzer: Oh man, there are so many things. One thing that’s really fun right now is we’re working with the state museum, Nebraska State Museum, on a exhibit based around my square meter photo book.

[00:59:02] So I’m really excited about the idea that we’re going to be able to bring a bunch of people to a museum and have them, you know, see what I found in my square meter project, but also have them explore and think about exploring nature in a new way. And it’s just something I’ve never done before. I’ve never been involved in making a museum exhibit.

[00:59:19] I don’t know what I’m doing, but there are plenty of people that are helping. So I’m excited about that. You know, there’s a couple different research projects that I think are really fascinating. One of them is that we’re trying to figure out how livestock grazing and milkweed populations interact and trying to figure out what the implications might be for monarch butterfly conservation.

[00:59:39] And it’s interesting scientifically, but I think it’s also interesting because I don’t know that people necessarily equate pastures with monarch conservation and don’t recognize that in Nebraska there are millions of acres of, you know, cattle grazed prairie that are making really important contributions to monarch conservation.

[00:59:58] And I think just A, pointing out that link is important, and then B, learning how we might be able to have an influence on some of those areas and how they’re grazed, and that that might really matter for monarchs. That’s an exciting project to work on. And then the constant project is every year we have a, we have a fellowship program where we bring two recent college graduates in to the Nature Conservancy of Nebraska, and we keep them here for a year, and we teach them everything we can about Prairies and conservation organizations and they, we give ’em the broadest base of we that we can, and it’s just so much fun to bring two really bright young people into our organization and into the work we do, and then they start questioning everything, you know, in a very positive and very helpful way.

[01:00:43] They ask these very insightful questions that make us reexamine our work all the time. And so it’s just a constant source of energy for me. And we just started our, our newest fellows here at the beginning of February. So they’re still relatively new in their careers with us and just full of questions.

[01:01:00] So it’s, it’s, yeah, it’s a lot of fun.

[01:01:02] Michael Hawk: Backing up to the museum exhibit, when does the museum plan to have that available to

[01:01:06] Chris Helzer: the public? Sometime in the fall of 2021. So October, maybe November 2021.

[01:01:13] Michael Hawk: And that’s the State Museum, which I assume is in Lincoln. It’s

[01:01:16] Chris Helzer: in Lincoln. It’s Morrill Hall is the way most people know it.

[01:01:19] Yeah. It’s a, it’s a really cool place. I think

[01:01:21] Michael Hawk: I knew it growing up as Elephant Hall.

[01:01:23] Chris Helzer: Yeah, same thing.

[01:01:25] Michael Hawk: Well, thank you so much for spending so much time today. It’s really been enjoyable for me and I hope it has been for you as well. And for anyone who wants to find your work, where are you out there on the internet and social

[01:01:36] Chris Helzer: media?

[01:01:36] Yeah. Well, thanks. It was a pleasure. It was a lot of fun. You can find my blog. At Prairie ecologist.com. That’s probably the best place to, you know, learn about what I’m doing or see photos and things like that. Obviously there’s books that you’re gonna, you’re gonna link to really. The two are the, the Hidden Prairie, the Square Meter book, and then I wrote a book on Prairie Ecology and Management that I think applies.

[01:02:03] It was designed for the central part of the US but it really applies, I think, pretty well to any kind of grassland. I’m on Instagram at Prairie Ecologist there as well. So between Instagram and the blog, you can probably catch up with me pretty well. Sounds

[01:02:17] Michael Hawk: great, and I’ll have links to all of that. So, Chris, thank you again.

[01:02:20] I really appreciate it.

[01:02:21] Chris Helzer: Oh, this was great. Thank you.