Bison, the Prairie, Conservation at Kankakee Sands

Please join the Rotary Club of North Manchester on Thursday, Jan. 28, for a presentation on “Bison, the Prairie, and Conservation at Kankakee Sands” by Olivia Schouten, land steward at Kankakee Sands. The meeting begins at 6:30 p.m. on Zoom, and her presentation will start about 7 p.m.

A little background: In 2016, 23 bison were brought from South Dakota to their new home in Newton County, Indiana, at the Efroymson Restoration at Kankakee Sands, an 8,000-acre prairie and wetland restoration owned and managed by The Nature Conservancy.

Like the bison, tallgrass prairie is all but gone in this part of Indiana, as the fertile soil was converted to agricultural use more than a century ago.

However, remnants of this unique, endangered native ecosystem have persisted, allowing seeds to be collected and brought to the restoration at Kankakee Sands, where they work to ensure that the plants, mammals, insects, birds and other native species will always have a home here in Indiana.

Its bison herd is another piece of that puzzle, and their role as a large, landscape-changing grazer is working to make the prairie and wetland habitats even more diverse and suitable for everything else that calls them home.

In this presentation, Schouten will talk about the bison’s journey to Kankakee Sands, the positive impacts they are having on our prairies, and how The Nature Conservancy works towards bison conservation across North America.

If you want to want to learn more beforehand, check out this link: https://www.nature.org/en-us/get-involved/how-to-help/places-we-protect/kankakee-sands/