About
...the Manitoba Tall Grass Prairie Preserve?
The Manitoba Tall Grass Prairie Preserve is located in the south-eastern corner of Manitoba, Canada, around the rural communities of Gardenton, Tolstoi, Stuartburn, and Vita. They are dedicated to the conservation and management of what remains of the once vast tall grass prairie. The Preserve is actually located on the very eastern edge of the historical tall grass prairie ecosystem. Almost all of what was once tall grass prairie is now used for agricultural purposes. The reason that the prairie within the Preserve survived can be contributed to the large number of boulders that were deposited in the area at the end of the last ice age. As a result, the locals that settled there found it very difficult to till up the land and decided to use it as cattle rangeland instead. Without the tilling, the microorganisms in the soil that are essential to the prairie were preserved and continued to live. Also, the hardy grasses and other plants, which had developed alongside bison for millennia, withstood the grazing of the cattle.
Because of the Preserve location, the prairie ecosystems are intertwined with marsh and aspen parkland ecosystems. This provides a greater amount of biodiversity and enables visitors to not only experience the rare tall grass prairie, but also the uniqueness that only that location, with all the different ecosystems, can provide. However, it is not always an asset for trying to preserve the prairie. Learn more about managment...
In addition to all the amazing fauna and flora at the Preserve, it is also home to a number of endangered or threatened species. This includes small white lady's slippers, whorled loosestrife, Riddell's goldenrod, culver's root, and wild geraniums. The Preserve is also the only location in Canada where western prairie fringed orchids still grow. Learn more about endangered species...
...the Prairie Nut?
The Prairie Nut was first created in 2004. Then, it was an online community powered by PostNuke. It was a very small community, with about 15 members including myself. It was fairly quiet and unfortunately I could only update it infrequently due to other more important duties taking up my time. Sometime around the beginning of October 2005, the Prairie Nut's web host, Brownhost, deleted the entire website and my account with informing me. Without a suitable back-up and no response from Brownhost, the Prairie Nut was near-impossible to rebuild to what it was without an enormous effort. Until mid-January 2006, I was uncertain as to what to do. It was then that I decided to restart the Prairie Nut, this time as a more static site that won't require frequent updates. As so the Prairie Nut was reborn as you see it before you.
...the webmaster (Erin Lubiansky)?
I worked at the Preserve for the summers of 2003-2005. Despite having been a local to the area, I had no idea that the Preserve existed or that we even had prairie ecosystems in the region. I had believed it was all bush and swamp. Working at the Preserve opened my eyes to the amazing variety of plants and animals that I never knew had inhabited my home. I don't think I will ever forget how the leaves of purple prairie clover smell like oranges or that we have tree frogs in the area (I thought they were only found in rain forests!). I'm sure everyone around me gets annoyed when I find a particular plant that I have to identify, recall its casual and scientific names, and then proceed to give them every detail about the plant's interesting characteristics.
My personal website is Lair of the Wolf Dragon.
...the web design?
The design for the Prairie Nut was created by me under my web design company, Enspirit Design. The picture at the top was taken by me and is of a fritillary butterfly sitting on what I believe is a dandelion. The font I used is called Gigi and the menu is purely CSS (the exception being a little javascript workaround that is required to display the flyouts in Internet Explorer). The background is made with the Dirty Autumn PSP brushes from 1ge.
