(This is the third post in my series following along in The Driftless Reader. I’m enjoying the excerpts in the book immensely and learning a lot about the area I’ve come to consider home.)

I finished Chapter 3 in The Driftless Reader this week, learning a bit about how the ecology of this region has changed over time. This includes both flora and fauna. I’ll talk about flora first.

The Driftless area didn’t experience ice during ice ages, but it was never fully surrounded at any one time. Some parts of the region were at least 100 miles from any ice front at any given time. Though there is no definitive fossil record, to quote the book:

A variety of geological, climatological, and ecological evidence… strongly supports the hypothesis that the Driftless Area was at least partially covered with vegetation at all times and that it formed the source for the bulk of the plant cover which later spread out over the remaining parts of the state [Wisconsin] as these were deglaciated.

— excerpt from “The Vegetation of Wisconsin (1959)” by John T. Curtis, inside The Driftless Reader (link above)

For perspective, the last glacial period spanned from 115,000 to 11,700 years ago. The Driftless Area was an island of uninterrupted vegetation that reseeded the state.

Of course, the vegetation landscape has changed since then. Prior to European settlers in America, the Driftless area was dominated by savannahs and had far more oak trees than it has today. Very little savannah remains. Sure, swatches were replaced over time by pastures, crop fields, and planted forests, but there’s another reason the savannahs receded that hadn’t occurred to me. According to another excerpt in this chapter, savannahs were likely maintained by low intensity fires that returned frequently, say every five to fifteen years. Settlers managed their environment away from being burned out every few years. Go figure.

This changed the mix of vegetation in the region over time, and it is still changing today as development continues and climate shifts.

As for the fauna-related excerpts in the chapter, I learned a lot but honestly they were kind of a downer. The subject matter highlighted species extinctions and extirpation (when species disappear from a region but not from the planet). Places change, and people change them for better and for worse. I came away with a sense of loss.

As a prime example, two hundred years ago, it’s estimated that three to five BILLION passenger pigeons roamed this half of North America, enough to darken the skies as huge flocks passed. They used to be abundant but now they are extinct. The last one died in a zoo in 1914. Her name was Martha.

The excerpt in the book about how settlers would anticipate their migration event and hunt them with bulk methods without realizing they were causing their extinction was troubling.

There is a monument to the passenger pigeon in Wyalusing State Park, erected by the Wisconsin Society of Ornithology in 1947. Here’s a historical drawing, but you can follow the link to the park’s website page to learn more.

The dedication was commemorated by conservationist Aldo Leopold in his essay “On a Monument to the Pigeon.” It’s not in The Driftless Reader but I sought it out. It is of course not a happy read, but a sobering one.

There will always be pigeons in books and in museums, but these are effigies and images, dead to all hardships and to all delights. Book-pigeons cannot dive out of a cloud to make the deer run for cover, nor clap their wings in thunderous applause of mast-laden woods. They know no urge of seasons; they feel no kiss of sun, no lash of wind and weather; they live forever by not living at all.