Big Hollow Prairie

There's a little opening in the woods of central Pennsylvania that used to be a prairie. It isn't much to look at, just a few clearings in a rather stunted woodland along the sides of Big Hollow, just north of State College, Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania isn't known for its prairies. This state has always been, and still is, mostly covered by hardwood forests, except where farms, towns, and suburbs have taken the place of the forest. But within the forests are many other types of habitats. There are wetlands, streamside glades, meadows, and in a few places, prairies. Years ago prairies covered hundreds of acres in the limestone valleys of central PA. These prairies aren't like midwestern prairies. Instead of tall grasses growing on rich soils, Pennsylvania's prairies consist of short, drought-tolerant grasses that survive on thin, stony, dry soils. Trees and shrubs are slow to grow in these soils, and in the past occasional fires would clear the woody vegetation, allowing a prairie of grasses and wildlfowers to survive. There once was enough prairie to support herds of bison, and early settlers wrote of large expanses of prairie not far from State College.

These days, wildfires don't burn wild, and as a result Pennsylvania's prairies have become overgrown with trees and shrubs. Only a few patches of prairie remain along powerlines and on the driest soils where trees and shrubs have been slow to fill in. The prairie in Big Hollow is one of ony 10 small patches of prairie remaining in Pennsylvania. It is one of the largest, with a total of perhaps 1/3 acre of prairie plants remaining. But the small patches of prairie at Big Hollow are being overtaken by shrubs and trees, which shade out the prairie plants and eventually will eliminate the prairie, the unique plants that survive there, and any tracce of what was once a widespread habitat that invited early settlers to the region.

This blog will describe my efforts to restore the prairie in Big Hollow, also called Box Hollow. For starters I'll be clearing brush to try and stop the ongoing loss of prairie. Where the project will eventually lead remains to be seen, but if something isn't done now, in a few years there will no longer be a Box Hollow prairie, so there is no time to waste.