This article first appeared in July 2008.
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Stacie Bendixen/INHF
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Roland Bernau, a 2008 Hagie Heritage Award nominee, preserved a large native prairie outside Algona, Iowa.
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Roland Bernau has been a farmer all his life. He also loves Iowa’s natural landscape, and his preservation of a large native prairie outside Algona has earned him a nomination for a prestigious statewide conservation award.
The Hagie Heritage Award is given annually by the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit conservation group, to a person who has demonstrated extraordinary service and commitment to improving the quality of Iowa’s natural environment while encouraging others to do the same. The recipient will be awarded $1,000 and a hand-carved acorn sculpture.
Bernau owns 185 acres in Kossuth County, including 125 acres of virgin prairie that has never been plowed or seeded. Bernau has four children and nine grandchildren; his wife of 65 years passed away in 2004.
He was nominated for the award by Andrew Swanson, a farmer and prairie seed grower of Nevada, Iowa, and Kossuth County Conservation Board Director Kendall Stumme.
“Mr. Bernau has preserved a beautiful prairie despite the pressures of farmland values in Kossuth County,” Stumme wrote in his nomination letter. Those land values have climbed even higher with the push to grow more corn for ethanol production.
Bernau, 94, was born in Dallas County. He was nine when his family moved to Kossuth County in 1924. Most of the area was still prairie back then. His father worked as the overseer of a swath of prairie owned by a railroad company. Prairie hay was harvested and sent to Chicago stockyards as feed for horses and cattle. In the 1930s, Bernau helped survey Kossuth County by carrying the measuring chains.
When the Great Depression struck, returns on the hay harvest dwindled, and the land was foreclosed. With the prairie now owned by a loan company, Bernau’s father rented the land and subleased pieces of it to farmers for hay harvesting. Bernau’s family helped cut and bale prairie hay that the government sent to southern Iowa, where the Depression was severe. They broke 40 acres of their land to grow corn and beans, first tiling the wet lowland soil for drainage.
Bernau’s father retired in 1943 and Bernau took over, renting the prairie and farming the plowed portion. When the loan officer who owned the land died, the tenants had the chance to buy their pieces at the appraised value. Bernau took advantage of the opportunity.
Bernau bought one tract in 1955 and tiled and plowed 20 acres for crops. He bought the tract across the road in 1958. About two-thirds of the land he now owned was virgin native prairie, and he kept it that way. He was getting sufficient returns from selling prairie hay for livestock feed, and the tiling necessary for farming the wet lowland soil would be so expensive that there was no financial incentive to do it.
What started out as a financial decision turned into a commitment to conserve one of Iowa’s few remaining natural areas. As neighboring prairies were plowed and sown with crops, Bernau maintained his native prairie. The Kossuth County Conservation Board assisted with prescribed burns. Bernau continued to sell prairie hay until he contracted with Ion Exchange, a seed company, for prairie seed harvesting.
Bernau and his wife moved into Algona in 1992. His son Gary now manages the farm. Ion Exchange manages the prairie and harvests seeds to sell for prairie restoration elsewhere.
A Department of Natural Resources inventory identified 97 vascular plant species on Bernau’s unspoiled prairie. The rare gumweed plant flourishes there. According to Bernau, American Indians used it as chewing gum and buffalo ate it as a delicacy, spreading its seeds as they roamed the plains. The presence of gumweed indicates the high quality of Bernau’s prairie.
“We have thousands of them, and they seldom grow any place that’s been harvested,” Bernau said.
Bernau’s prairie has been home to another rare species: the prairie fringed orchid. One specimen of this federally threatened plant was found on Bernau’s land.
As he relayed the history of the area, Bernau also expressed concern for its future. He worries about the effects of hog confinements and the increasing number of abandoned farms in the area.
“We’re losing the good part of America, the rural life,” he said.
For his part, Bernau has preserved a piece of natural heritage that otherwise might have been lost.
Swanson, one of Bernau’s nominators, wrote, “It is my belief that his stewardship in maintaining virgin prairie of such size and quality for so many years puts him in a category few of us privately or collectively would ever be able to duplicate.”
The four other nominees for the 2008 Hagie Heritage Award are Susan Heathcote of Des Moines, Roslea Johnson of Des Moines, Erwin Klaas of Ames and Jimmie D. Thompson of Ames. The recipient will be announced later this summer.
INHF works with private landowners and other partners to protect Iowa’s land, water and wildlife. Since its founding in 1979, INHF has helped protect more than 100,000 acres of Iowa’s wild places. INHF projects in Kossuth County include the Geigel Conservation Area, Patterson Recreation and Wildlife Area, Smith Forest and Wildin Heritage Prairie. For more information, visit www.inhf.org or call 800-475-1846.
For more information, e-mail Cathy Engstrom, Director of Communications, or call (515) 288-1846.