CliffNotes
SAFETY FIRST! Notes For Safe Eclipse Viewing.
Clifftop NFP hopes people will take time to marvel at the Total Solar Eclipse on Monday August 21st. No matter where you view, please do so SAFELY and protect your vision. The following safe-viewing tips are provided by Clifftop NFP and Mike Krawczynski, PhD, Assistant Professor, Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University. Notes for safely […]
Overshadowed: A Total Eclipse In The Heartland
by Rev. Sheldon W. Culver for Clifftop NFP On August 21, 2017, two weeks before Labor Day, life in the Heartland of America will pause. Office workers may step outside to look up at the sky. Children, already back in school, will stop chasing balls or running around the track to see what happened to the […]
Don’t Get Ticked Off When Trekking Along A Trail.
The birds are singing and flying about catching insects. Summer wildflowers are blooming along the trail. You, your family and dog are taking a walk in the woods enjoying nature away from cell phones, texts, Facebook, etc. Then you feel something crawling quickly up your leg or you find a tick in your child’s hair. […]
Amazing Amphibians
Article and photos by Bob Weck, Southwestern Illinois College and Clifftop Illinois is home to 41 species of native amphibians, 21 species of frogs and toads and 20 salamander species. You might be surprised to learn that more than 60% of these amphibian types can be found locally, in a few mile wide swath of […]
Rare Plants in Xeric Limestone Prairies of the Illinois Ozarks
Article by Bill McClain; edited by Joann Fricke. It was April 4, 2016, and Bill McClain, a former field biologist and Natural Areas Program Manager for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and current commissioner with the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission, was on his way in his trusty old pickup to Fults Hill Prairie Nature […]
SWAT for Improved Habitat at Fults Hill Prairie Nature Preserve
Many hands make light work… So do many pairs of legs, strong arms and backs, chainsaws, brush cutters, herbicide applicators and, most assuredly, a cooperative effort to get a lot of work done. In late January a team of people assembled from across the state for three days of heavy work to clear brush and […]
Controlled Burns Are Beneficial to Area’s Natural Lands
Fire was once a common event and natural occurrence in the prairies and forests of the Midwest. Lightning was the source of naturally occurring fires, but Native Americans also used fire to clear undergrowth from forests and stimulate the growth of prairie grasses by removing thatch. Not surprisingly, native Midwestern plants depend on periodic fire […]
SEMO Students Look at Aquatic Life at Wightman Nature Preserve
Glop, gloop, goo. Muck, mire, mud. Ooze, sludge, slime. And glorious, gorgeous, grand life-teaming samples scooped up into dip nets ably wielded by students seeking to learn “what’s here.” Southeast Missouri State University (SEMO) students eagerly walked around and waded into ponds catching and caching numerous samples to begin analysis and basic research. In early […]
Our Winter Woodlands Should Be Brown NOT Green!
We’re seeing green: unhappy green, unhealthy green, unfriendly green. We should be seeing brown and we should be seeing brown across vast distances and long viewpoints. IF we were seeing brown now, we could look forward to seeing pinks, blues, yellows, purples in a few months as woodlands blossom with springtime warmth. But our woodlands […]
Vital Lands: 200 Years of Farms, Forests, Talus and Prairies
They really didn’t know what to make of it and had to stretch to find comparisons to describe the vast grasslands encountered as they reached the western edge of the great forests of Eastern North America. Early explorers, with no frame of reference for lands covered in grass but largely devoid woodlands, only could compare […]