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...because there was so little prairie left and this was a piece right in the city. Not only was it a piece of prairie, but it had great potentials for educating people you know, about the prairie and what we were losing and had lost. Because of course the Red River Valley and most of the other areas where the tall grass prairie grew, they grew on the best soils, so of course then that became agricultural crop land and only the little tiny bits and pieces that just where the limestone was close to the surface or where it was parkland and a little too wet to make a good field for anything other than haying. And actually some of the aspen parkland areas meadows, bits of prairie up south and east of Winnipeg, they are still hayed. A lot of the native species in them, up there, because they haven't broken the ground, it's just that they hay them once a year, so that a few species that are late bloomers might get hit but the ones that bloom early and then die back would be fine. They are perfectly able to complete their life cycle before the haying takes place. Yep, up there, but yeah, no, I thought it was a great opportunity for both preserving the prairie and also serving as the kind of education centre that it's become. And I'm really pleased to see that they've got the interpretive centre out there and that they run these programs. It's a chance for, just for one thing, for Manitobans to go and see their native floral emblem, the prairie crocus, you know, in the spring. Right in the city kinda thing. So it's ah, you don't have to go far to find prairie crocus outside of the city, but you have to go a ways. And it's right there in the city and you can take a car, or you can take a bus to it. So it's really great and I was very pleased to have been a part of that and to see that it's been preserved and that they are managing it. Managing with the control burns, much to the nervousness of the neighbours.

15

Western Prairie Fringed Orchid mowed down
2000
Tolstoi, Manitoba, Canada

16

I've been working on a little display with our diorama artist, Betsy Thorestenson, because I don't know whether you read about some of the Western Prairie Fringed Orchid some of them being mowed down in the ditches, down near Vita. They're primarily in the fields, but they like to colonize disturbed ground so there're in the roadside ditches. Conservation thought they had an arrangement with the municipalities that they wouldn't mow until late in July, at which time the orchids basically dead and dried up and it doesn't matter. Well, they were in the peak of blooming and they went along and mowed a few hundred of them down. So anyways, Betsy had, she had created a magnificent model of the plant for the Parklands Gallery, and last summer they used it for an exhibit called "life on the edge" on endangered species in the province, that was here with Jane Goodall's.
Well it was in a case and they got the pollinator, which is a hawk moth also. And it wasn't going, it's going to go into the diversity case in the parklands gallery, which has a whole bunch of stuff in it. But it wasn't in there yet, so Betsy said well why don't we put, you know, do some public education, we'll put a little case in the foyer in the museum with some copy about it and some information about what this plant is, where it grows and why it's important to leave it alone. And I've been talking to Conservation, and they're working out protocols with the province to not mow, or with the municipalities down there, to not mow until after the middle of July kinda thing. So that these orchids are protected, yeah right. And if they are going to mow the ditch then let people know, so we could try and move them into appropriate habitat.

17

Dr. Johnson's current work
21 July 2006
Manitoba, Canada

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I hope to be able to continue working toward preservation, I am not actively involved at this point, in much of anything. Except I still sit on the Nature Conservancy of Canada Scientific Advisory board, and they are one of the groups that is being quite active as far as both acquiring private land and conservation easements, which is when they basically pay a landowner not to use the land for an inappropriate purpose. Or to preserve it in the way it is. They're doing quite a lot, the Prairie Preserve, down in southern Manitoba, is one of the big success stories, I think, in the province. And it has preserved not only the prairie, and the Western Prairie Fringed Orchid and the Small White Lady-slipper orchid, and many other rare plant species, but is serving as an increasingly good educational tool, as well as a preserve, for all these native species down there. So I'm quite happy to be involved with them on that.

19

Between the earth and sky
2001
Living Prairie Museum, St. James, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

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I can see why the old sea captains retired out here because it does give you the large view and the skyscape and that sort of general feeling. And so I know that some people just don't like to…don't like it, they find it's just too open and everything, but I've always really enjoyed the prairie landscape and I think it's a very…a very spiritual landscape, because it does sorta keep you in contact between the earth and the sky. If you're in the mountains, you got the rocks and things, but you don't get to see the sky a lot if you're in a deep valley you can't sorta see the weather coming at you and the weather forming up like you can out here. I mean even here it's not prairie but its open enough so that you can see that big thunderstorm coming at you from a long way away kind of a thing, and just sorta feel the landscape. I really tend to think of prairie as one of the primary landscapes in Manitoba, the other being the boreal forest, of course. And it's just, I've always really enjoyed it and felt quite connected to it.