Why Iowa's Remnant Prairies Matter More Than You Think
Iowa once had 28 million acres of tallgrass prairie—roughly 85% of the state's landscape. Today, less than 0.1% of that original prairie remains. That's not one percent. That's one-tenth of one percent. Think about it: if Iowa's original prairie was the size of a football field, what's left today would fit on a dinner plate.
Those numbers hit different when you really sit with them. But here's the thing most people miss: those tiny scattered remnants aren't just nice to look at or important for nostalgia. They're absolutely critical for the future of prairie restoration in Iowa, and losing them means losing something we can never get back.
Remnants Are Time Capsules of Genetic Diversity
Laura Walter from the Tallgrass Prairie Center talked about this on a recent Prairie Farm Podcast episode, and it's worth understanding why remnant prairies are so much more than just "old plants." These remnants contain genetic diversity that's been tested and refined over thousands of years. The seeds from remnant prairies carry codes for resistance to disease, drought, extreme temperatures, and a host of other local adaptations that commercial seed simply can't replicate.
When habitat is lost, the plants, their seeds, and all those adaptations disappear with them. According to research from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, there are several prairie-dependent species, like the eared false foxglove, that rely on the unique underground ecosystem of remnant prairie soils and specific prairie plant relationships to complete their life cycles. These species can't easily be restored through plantings—they need those remnant sites to survive.
A 2025 study published in Restoration Ecology found that even when restored prairies are seeded with diverse inputs, they consistently fall short of matching the plant diversity found in remnants. Species missing from reconstructed prairies but associated with remnant communities tend to be short-statured, have early-season phenology, or aren't commercially available. In other words, remnants harbor the species that are hardest to bring back once they're gone.
The Threats Are Real and Growing
Iowa's remnants face threats from multiple directions. Road maintenance operations can destroy the edges of roadside prairie remnants—ironically, some of the best remnants survive precisely because they're in road ditches and cemeteries where they escaped the plow. Drainage improvements alter water tables that prairie plants have adapted to over millennia. Invasive species like smooth brome and reed canary grass muscle in when remnants don't get the fire they need. And without regular prescribed burns, trees and shrubs shade out prairie plants that evolved with fire as part of their lifecycle.
The Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation reports that many remnants continue to be degraded or lost to agriculture and urban sprawl, even with increased preservation efforts. Each acre lost represents not just the plants themselves, but the entire underground ecosystem—the mycorrhizal networks, the soil seed bank built up over centuries, and the complex web of relationships between plants, insects, and microorganisms that we're only beginning to understand.
Counties Are Stepping Up
There's good news in all this, though. Iowa's county conservation boards are recognizing that remnant prairies need active protection and management. Through habitat partnerships, counties are collaborating with state and federal agencies, nonprofits, and each other to tackle big problems in a coordinated way. These partnerships are building a community of practice around remnant prairie management, sharing ideas about controlled burns, invasive species control, and protection strategies.
The Iowa Roadside Management program has been working since 1988 to protect remnant prairies in road rights-of-way. As of mid-2025, 65 counties had an Integrated Roadside Vegetation Management plan, collectively managing 420,000 acres of roadside vegetation. These programs use strategic spot-spraying instead of blanket herbicide application, prescribed burns to maintain prairie health, and careful mowing schedules that protect nesting birds and pollinators.
Why This Matters for Restoration
If you're planting prairie—whether it's a backyard pollinator garden, a CRP field, or a large-scale restoration project—the genetic diversity from remnant prairies matters to your success. Research from peer-reviewed studies shows that seed collected from multiple remnant prairie sources leads to increased species richness and better establishment compared to seed from single sources or cultivated varieties.
The Nature Conservancy has been implementing seed sourcing strategies that harvest from multiple remnant sites specifically to capture greater genetic diversity. Their approach recognizes that with prairie existing only in small, fragmented pieces, natural dispersal pathways are gone. When we do restoration work, we have the opportunity to intentionally bring together genetic diversity that would have naturally mixed in the pre-settlement landscape.
This is why Hoksey Native Seeds focuses on Iowa ecotype seed—seed that originates from prairie remnants in our region. When you're building a native planting, using locally-adapted genetics gives your prairie the best shot at establishing, adapting to change, resisting invasion, and persisting over time. Browse our native seed mixes designed specifically for Iowa conditions.
Conservation Starts in Your Mind
Here's what I keep coming back to: if we think we're just helping some plants survive in Iowa, we're fooling ourselves. The heart and soul of what Iowa was built upon was that prairie landscape, and it feels like we're hollowing out our core. You'd be surprised at how many of Iowa's social and environmental challenges would improve if we just had more native landscape on the ground.
Those 30,000 or so acres of remnant prairie left in Iowa? They're not museum pieces. They're living libraries of genetic information, seed sources for restoration, reference points for how prairie ecosystems actually work, and proof that these communities can persist when given half a chance. Every remnant lost is a permanent deletion from that library—there's no getting it back.
The work happening through groups like the Iowa Prairie Network, county conservation boards, and organizations focused on remnant protection isn't just about preserving the past. It's about ensuring we have the building blocks to restore prairie at scale in the future. Those remnants are the foundation everything else is built on. Without them, we're trying to reconstruct a house without the original blueprints.
Sources:
Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation. "Remnant Prairie: A closer look at Iowa's rarest landscape." 2017.
Iowa Prairie Network. "Find a Prairie." 2025.
The Gazette. "Prairies are endangered ecosystems in Iowa. Their remnants map their futures." 2023.
USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. "Revitalized Remnant Prairie Helps Conserve Biodiversity." 2025.
Wynne, C. et al. "Seed rain and seed banks cannot supply missing diversity to the aboveground flora in reconstructed prairies." Restoration Ecology, 2025.
Tallgrass Prairie Center. "Iowa Roadside Management Program." 2025.
The Nature Conservancy. "Seeds of Change: Ensuring the Future for Healthy Prairies." 2023.
