Sibylla Brown

Timberhill: Chronicle of a Restoration Sibylla Brown

This book chronicles a 20-year Midwest oak savanna restoration: how the landowner practitioners worked with their district forester, researched land history, restored prescribed fire, and how restoration increased the diversity of plants, animals, and fungi. Before early European settlement thirty million acres of oak savanna stretched from Minnesota and Wisconsin south to the Texas hill country. Now temperate-zone oak savannas are one of the world's most endangered ecosystems. Classified G-1, globally endangered only .02% remain. However, many Midwest oak savannas are merely degraded and can be restored. Unlike native prairies that have been completely lost to agriculture or development, woodlands that have not been plowed or seeded with non-native pasture grasses will sustain portions of their native plant diversity.