A small sea of tall-grass prairie glows in the early morning light. Amidst the golden meadow are a few plants with pure white petals — prairie white-fringed orchids. Nearly two feet tall, with slender green stalks and tassle-like tendrils, the white-fringed orchids embody the concept of biodiversity — nature’s necessary chain of interdependency — particularly here in the prairie region of Illinois and Wisconsin. Sever just one of the orchid’s essential lifelines and it will certainly die out. The orchid needs three different partners simply to survive. 
First, it must seek and find necessary support under the soil. Its own roots, unable to independently secure nutrients, attach to a prairie mushroom root and the two grow together.
For pollination, the orchid relies on the hawk moth, a nocturnal prairie insect which feeds from flower to flower. When there aren’t enough plants to support the moths, the orchid dies out, too.
Finally, the orchid is so well-adapted to the old prairie fires that the surface land it lives on must burn for the species to survive. Like the mythical Phoenix, fire brings its rebirth.
Like the orchid itself, biodiversity is at once delicate and demanding. It governs the fragile existence of individual species, and entire ecosystems, with an unforgiving hand. If its complex requirements are not met, lives are lost for a lack of balance.
Such balance is what biodiversity is all about. By intertwining various life forms and firmly tying them together into an ecosystem, nature issues a universal law: "Life is like a house of cards. Remove one element and risk collapse; introduce something new and get the same result." In fact, it is biodiversity that forms the natural thread that keeps our local prairie ecosystems intact, along with oak savannas, wetlands, lake fronts, aquatic lands, and forestland. These are the very places our native plants and animals — and we — call home.
"Most people are surprised to learn that we have a center of biodiversity right in our backyard," says Steve Packard, Science Director of the Illinois Nature Conservancy, whose organization is internationally known for land acquisition and restoration to preserve biodiversity. "In general, biodiversity includes all the components of nature in any given area, from genes to species to communities."
Rare biodiversity, which includes life forms that need conservation, is in our remnant prairies, woodlands and wetlands. Prairie biodiversity is especially significant to our region because it created some of the richest agricultural soils in the world. It includes the genes that we need to make our crops thrive, generation by generation. The farmbelt still feeds much of the country, as it has for years.
Prairies and savannas — prairie-like grasslands with trees — were once the dominant ecosystems in this region. Today, they have the opposite distinction though these ecosystems contain vestiges of some of the country’s most valuable biodiversity, they are the rarest, and they inhabit the least acreage of all ecosystems. "In Illinois we have less than one-hundredth of one percent of our original prairie landscape left," says Packard. "And the number is even lower for savannas."
In fact, of the United States, Illinois ranks 49th in terms of amount of natural area remaining. But Packard looks at the bright side. "We have a unique situation and an extraordinary opportunity here in the Chicago region. We have a chance to see an ancient ecosystem and its rare biodiversity restored," he says. "The natural areas movement started in the midwestern United States because this was the first place on the planet a modern culture actually settled down [directly] upon ancient nature — most of the original prairie was still here in the 1840s.
"By comparison, on the east coast, the land was heavily logged and heavily grazed, even when Henry David Thoreau started to develop an appreciation of ecosystems through his writing during the same era. The key thing is that we have something here that Thoreau did not see, that few modern people ever see: an extremely rich, ancient natural ecosystem surviving."
How do you bring rare prairie biodiversity back? "Preserving biodiversity means restoring functional ecosystems with their natural processes intact," explains Packard. "Natural processes in prairie ecosystems include fire; change over time — hot and cold temperatures, dry and wet seasons, early and late spring; evolution with enough individuals to support vital genetic survival; and predation, which keeps populations in check. Once we restore natural processes and get [the ecosystem] on more solid ground, both species and biodiversity can prosper on their own.
"We have an entire prairie ecosystem with thousands of species dependent upon us because we’ve made them dependent on us — we’ve taken away the natural elements they need to survive. We’ve removed predators, fragmented habitats, obliterated the bulk of original territories, stopped fires, and brought in alien animal and plant species which compete with native species for survival," he continues. "If we walk away now, our native species will die. But, by giving nature what it needs through controlled burning, protection of native species and careful restoration, our prairies will prosper again and biodiversity will be preserved."
There are hundreds of plants and animal species that are part of the prairie, and part of its biodiversity. Endangered ones include the prairie white-fringed orchid, eared false foxglove, Hines emerald dragonfly (which exists only in Chicago and two other places on earth), Karner blue butterfly, Franklin’s ground squirrel, least weasel, upland sandpiper and loggerhead shrike. (Pictured at right is the endangered Upland Sandpiper, at Braidwood Dunes and Savanna in Will County, Illinois.)
And, like these endangered species, prairie biodiversity itself cannot make a comeback on its own. Both are threatened by the same common, formidable foe: habitat loss.
"The reduction, alteration and degradation of places where species live is the single biggest threat to biodiversity," says Packard. "But habitat reduction and alteration due to development of subdivisions and strip malls is not, as people might think, the biggest detrimental impact on the prairie. Rather, it is habitat degradation caused by lack of fire."
Prairies are dependent on fire. No fire means no prairies. On original prairie landscapes, lightning initiated fires. Over millions of years, prairies adapted to and thrived upon these heaven-sent fires. For the past 10,000 years, people have burned the prairies. American Indians burned the prairie to attract game, to simplify hunting, to make travel easier (by clearing obstructions like bushes), and to encourage the growth of certain kinds of plants, like berries. They also protected certain areas from burning, thus loosely managing the landscape.
Today, Nature Conservancy volunteers and Forest Preserve District prairie restoration teams continue this age-old element with controlled, prescribed burns.
Another factor in preserving biodiversity is genetic survival. As native plant and animal species become rarer, they start to lose genetic components of valuable traits, such as resistance to certain diseases. Survival becomes a numbers game — you may think that the last few individuals died from disease, or drought, or heat, or cold, or the attack of a certain caterpillar, but it’s really that the few individuals left lacked the gene pool necessary for survival.
Consider the following. Every hundred years or so a severe drought occurs and many individual plants or animals die. Yet some have a special gene that enables them to endure the drought. If there are too few of a species, chances are that individuals with the special gene are extremely rare — or that they have died out. Ninety-nine years later, when the drought comes again, the species is wiped out, not because of the drought, but because of the missing gene. The species no longer had the ability to adapt.
On the other hand, some opportunistic species are actually damaging existing ecosystems through overpopulation (not the least of which is the dramatic human population explosion). Non-native plant species such as purple loosestrife, glossy buckthorn, and garlic mustard aren’t poisonous, but to native plants and animals, they can be deadly. To further complicate things, some native-born species have become "natural born killers."
Packard explains. "As populations of certain species expand unnaturally, the result is the same. Impact one part of the ecosystem and you’ll get a chain reaction: lose a plant and you’ll lose dependent animals, and vice-versa. Whether it is non-native plants choking out an entire prairie, or native species like box elder spreading in the absence of fire, or deer overpopulating in the absence of predators, the health of the entire eco-system is at stake."
Under natural conditions in Illinois and Wisconsin deer were hunted by three main predators — wolf, cougar, and human hunters. In the absence of predators, deer numbers have recently increased from ten per square mile to 50 or 100 or more per square mile. In fact, some Forest Preserves now look like feed lots, with entire populations of orchids and lilies and many other groups of plants and animals wiped out.
"Some people think that we need to give the deer vasectomies or birth control pills, as if deer were people, as opposed to wild animals in a natural ecosystem," says Packard. "What we have to do is develop the wisdom to respect and revere these creatures as precious, even sacred, yet also be predators when necessary by controlling the numbers of deer by some form of hunting, much as the Native Americans once did. People tend to go to extremes: they think that you have to either love deer as pets or hate them. I love deer, I love to see them as a part of nature. But the deer issue is challenging our culture to come to terms with our place in the natural world."
This challenge is not to be taken lightly. It has an importance that we, as humans, cannot ignore because ultimately, it affects us. "We’re not preserving biodiversity just for our health, but for the health of our entire planet," says Packard. "We’re trying to encourage a culture of conservation. The deer deserve to thrive as part of a healthy system, alongside the Franklin’s ground squirrel, the hickory hairstreak, and the prairie white-fringed orchid. Long-term survival of rare biodiversity is an important heritage to pass on to the next generation."
Should We Manage Biodiversity?