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THE GOLDEN VALLEY
VOLUME 121 ISSUE 51
Derek Glasgow, Winfield graduate student, and Chelsea Paxson, Newton junior, collect seeds at the Rockefeller Natural Prairie in north Lawrence Saturday afternoon. They were a part of an effort to restore and preserve native prairie, which was led by Kelly Kindsher, senior scientist at the Kansas Biological Survey, and included members of KU Environs.
Saving Douglas County's prairies
Students and scientists venture into the prairie to collect seeds from endangered species of plants
BY ALY VAN DYKE avandyke@kansan.com
From a distance, the 10 acres of the Rockefeller Natural Prairie in north Lawrence look like a sea of sand. Get a little closer, and see the sand become millions of wheat-colored stalks, stretching their fingers toward the sky and blocking the vision of even the tallest person. Get closer still, and notice the traces of purples, whites, blues, blacks, grays and
Follow Aly Van
Dyke at twitter.
com/alayvandyke.
reds that sprinkle the landscape.
Standing in the middle of this plot of land, which has never been plowed, never been grazed to stubble by domesticated animals, never been corrupted by human hands, you are taken to a
time before settlements and agriculture, to a time when buffalo roamed freely and prairie grasses covered most of Douglas County.
Today the prairie remains confined to scattered plots of land and students and University members are working to preserve it.
PRESERVING HISTORY
The prairie, in all of its simple beauty, does not distract Kim Hernandez, Hutchinson senior, from her task.
She searches, scouring the plants in front of her for a natural bouquet of white, star-shaped petals known as tall boneset. Almost 100 years ago, this tiny plant, which is an immune system stimulant, helped some of our ancestors beat the 1918 flu epidemic.
"I found some," Hernandez calls to her scavenging partner, Ryan Callihan. "Over here."
Callihan, Lenexa senior, joins her and together they collect the
small petals, crush them in their palms and extract the centimeter-long brown seeds.
The two were joined Saturday by about 20 other members of KU Environs and others to collect seeds of native prairie wildflowers and grasses as part of an on-going effort to restore the native prairie that once blanketed Lawrence in rolling fields of grasses and wildflowers.
SEE PRAIRIE ON PAGE 3A
ACTIVISM
Protestors seek KU protection of wetlands
BY JUSTIN LEVERETT jleverett@kansan.com
Student and local groups will demonstrate on the Strong Hall lawn this afternoon to pressure the University administration to protect the Baker Wetlands nature area south of Lawrence.
The demonstrators oppose the South Lawrence Trafficway project, a plan to pave over the wetlands and build a highway circling the city.
The project, which first emerged in 2002, is still unfunded. It has met with heated opposition from environmental groups and Native American organizations, among others.
The University owns 20 acres of the 640-acre wetlands area, but does not use or actively protect the portion it controls.
Jason Hering, president of student environmental group EcoJustice, said the demonstrators' goal was to get the University to either use the 20 acres of wetland or to return them to the Native-American groups concerned about their fate.
"The goal is to get attention from the KU administration," Hering said. "We're for having them claim and take responsibility for the wetlands."
Eco-justice and KU Environs collaborated with the First Nations Student Association and the Wetlands Preservation Organization from Haskell Indian Nations University to organize the demonstration.
Hering said he expected about 200 people to attend.
Stephanie Farve, Lawrence
SEE ECO ON PAGE 3A
COMMUNITY
Follow Justin
Leverett at twitter
com/schmendric.
Border Showdown rivalry encourages food donations
BY ANNA ARCHIBALD aarchibald@kansan.com
The legendary Jayhawk-Tiger rivalry is going virtual.
For the third year in a row, the Student Alumni Leadership Board is holding the Border Hunger Showdown, a virtual food drive that will take place from Nov. 1 to the kickoff of the Kansas-Missouri football game.
Harvesters, a community food network in Kansas City, Mo., will be holding the event with the Kansas and Missouri alumni associations to donate food throughout the Kansas City area. Harvesters serves 26 counties in northeast Kansas and northwest Missouri and provides meals for more than 60,000 people every week.
Unlike most food drives, the Border Hunger Showdown takes place mostly online. Online, dona-
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"It been a very successful campaign for us every year," said Ellen Feldhausen, director of communications for Harvesters. "We are encouraging alumni from both schools to support their schools and help us feed the hungry."
The first Border Hunger Showdown took place in 2007 when the two alumni associations approached Harvesters about
tors can choose between different sized grocery bags and cases of soup, cereal or peanut butter.
There will also be donation sites available in grocery stores where people can physically donate cans of food.
BORDER HUNGER
SHOWDOWN
**When:** Nov. 1 to kickoff of Border Showdown football game
**Where:** Online:
www.harvesters.org
**Who:** KU, MU and Harvesters
doing a food drive.
In the beginning, however, the food drive was not primarily online. The two alumni associations placed collection bins around the stadium for people to bring in cans.
"People kept mistaking them for trash cans," said Stefani Gerson, coordinator of student programs for the University of Kansas Alumni Association. "We ended up with all kinds of trash in the bins and no
one really knew where to donate their cans."
Last year, the food drive went completely virtual to make the donation process more efficient. In all, the two schools collected 141,705 meals. Missouri collected 76,487 meals and Kansas ended with 65,218 meals. Each dollar donated is the equivalent of five meals.
As of Sunday night, the University had collected 375 meals while Missouri had yet to collect any.
Feldhausen said soup kitchens, food pantries, homeless shelters and other agencies that helped people in need reported up to a 40 percent increase in the number of people needing assistance this year. She attributed the additional need to the recession.
"While we're having fun with the competition and all that leads up to it, we hope they will also think of
those in need" she said. "The need for emergency food assistance has grown greatly."
People can go to wwwborder-
hungershowdown2009.harvesters.
org to contribute, Gerson said.
Then they can choose the school of
their choice and donate the desired
amount. They can also see how
much each school has raised so far.
"You don't have to be a stu dent to donate," said Brent Blazek, Lenexa senior and president of the Student Alumni Leadership Board. Blazek has been helping to promote the event. "We're just using everyone's dislike of Missouri for a good cause."
Blazek said online option of the food drive was a good way for people who didn't live near campus to help support their respective teams.
"Last year we started out really strong, but then lost it in the end to Missouri," Blazek said. "This year we hope to get a fast start and keep it going up to the end."
Edited by Abbey Strusz
index
Classifieds...6B
Horoscopes. 6A
Opinion...7A
Sports...1B
Sudoku...6A
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