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The Bunkers at Lost Mound

Winter 2007 Newsletter

The vivid colors and sounds of the summer are now muted. What remains are the grays and browns and the wind. What catches your eye is the vast sweep of the prairie punctuated by hundreds of bunkers that represent the remnants of the army’s presence. The bunkers stand as silent sentinels as they continue to dominate the scene. Wherever you travel in Lost Mound they are there standing guard.

Now that the army has left, the other structures that remain are slowly losing the inevitable battle to decay, and you sense that these buildings will eventually crumble to dust as the prairie revives. After all, the life of the prairie renews itself every year, and the buildings do not. There is little or no interest is these buildings, so they will remain unoccupied and uncared for.

The bunkers are different, however. They have the appearance of Quonset huts. But rather than corrugated steel, they are constructed of reinforced concrete, several feet thick at the base and decreasing in thickness to two feet thick at the top of the curved roof. The concrete was necessary for their primary role as munitions storage facilities. The entire structure, except for the front entrance, is covered with earth.

The resulting appearance is that of small hills that are unnaturally arranged in straight rows with a uniform separation between each. The reinforced concrete construction is made to last, and even though they are likewise uncared for, they will remain standing for an extended period, perhaps hundreds of years.

What does their presence mean for the restoration of the prairie? As a purest, I want to see the prairie returned to the original pristine environment that existed before the army and the farmers arrived.

As a realist, I understand there are very few areas around the globe that are still free of human influence and intrusion. Here at Lost Mound, the bunkers will remain long after we are gone, so we must make the best of it. There is a great reluctance to accept the obvious, but there is no choice in the matter.

The presence of the bunkers in Lost Mound does raise questions about the best approach to conservation, however. There are two schools of thought. The one that has been used for some time is to identify threatened areas with high plant diversity – and by assumption, animal diversity – and to then protect them by establishing national parks or reserves.

People are then discouraged from living on or using that land, and these areas are patrolled to enforce the boundaries. Using this method, “Hot Spots” of biodiversity have been identified around the world, making it possible to guide conservation investment.

Certainly, these key areas are being protected, but there is also a downside. First, people who once lived in these areas have been displaced, and they lose access to important resources. Next, high plant diversity does not automatically equate to high animal diversity. Sometimes endangered animals live in areas of low plant diversity.

In addition, the world’s least diverse regions often provide seasonal stops like migratory layovers or nesting sites for endangered animals. Finally, the idea of biodiversity “Hot Spots” has not really met an enthusiastic response with the general public. For example, a recent survey showed that only 30% of Americans have ever heard of the term “biodiversity.”

A recent alternative is to consider the benefits and sustainable products provided by a natural environment and incorporate them into the overall conservation plan. The term “ecosystem services” is being used to identify these benefits. They include economic items such as medicines or timber, along with processes whose economic value is usually not considered, such as water filtration, pollination, climate regulation, flood and disease control, and soil formation.

This approach emphasizes the interconnectedness of the environment and the local human population with the idea that once people understand the true value of the environment, they will embrace the protection of that environment. This idea can be employed not only for nature preserves, but also in regions that include urban centers, intensive agriculture, and managed forests and rivers.

One example of how the economic value or the environment has impacted people’s actions is the lower coast of Alaska. The annual salmon run is vitally important to the local economy and culture, and the waterways are therefore protected from damage and pollution to help insure the salmon successfully reproduce. The protection of the waterways is not just a law, but is part of the ethic of the population. Official enforcement becomes secondary because the value of clean water is understood by everyone, and protection of the waterways is largely self-enforced.

So perhaps the bunkers are telling us something. Rather than bemoan their presence, they can help us develop Lost Mound into an area that is integrated into the local economy, culture, and population while still protecting a rare ecology. It is far from clear how this will be accomplished, and there are still numerous difficulties to overcome. Unfortunately, the pace of progress has been glacially slow. More resources, both in terms of funding and people, are sorely needed.

The potential for this area is vast. The future is yet to be written.

See “Conservation for the People,” in the October 2007 issue of Scientific American.

— Rich Mattas