Thanks for posting the editorial.   It was interesting and  
thought-provoking.   
 
One small point -- I wish that we could encourage the REGISTER  and other 
media to use another term for what the wind now sweeps  across in Iowa besides 
"prairies."   (Plains?  Rolling fields?  Landscape?) 
 
Those of us in the conservation community know that Iowa only has about  
30,000 acres of surviving prairie left on our 36,000,000  acres, which is about 
three tenths of one percent of the original  amount.  And even if one added in 
public and private  prairie reconstructions and (very generously) CRP native  
grass plantings, we're still not talking about much land for  the winds to 
sweep across.   
 
It wouldn't be as picturesque to talk about the  "abundant winds sweeping 
across Iowa's rowcrops and pastures."   But it wouldn't be misleading and it 
wouldn't add to any conscious or  subconscious public misperception that there are 
plenty of prairies left.
 
ch
 

Cindy  Hildebrand
[log in to unmask]
Ames, IA  50010

"The heaviest  timber land can be purchased for from $5.00 to $12.00 per 
acre. There are black  and white walnut, basswood, different kinds of oaks, elms, 
etc....Of the  fertility of the soil -- it can't be excelled. The prairie is 
rolling, a most  magnificent sight." (Arden B. Holcomb describing Boone County, 
Iowa, in  1855.)

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