PLEASANT DALE — The crisp autumn air was kind to the acres of prairie blazing stars that grew on Ernie Rousek’s land.

Where bright purple blossoms once clung to delicate stems, feathery seeds remained.

Then, in a day, Rousek and about 20 others with the Wachiska Audubon Society stripped away four acres of prairie seeds on his property, south of Interstate 80 at 168th Street.

Where the almost surreal thickspike gayfeather once waved, they left behind empty, brown stems. But the native plants will be back next year, and the seeds — which Rousek guessed weigh close to 150 pounds  — will raise about $1,000 to protect tallgrass prairie in Southeast Nebraska.

Farming and development has left intact less than 2 percent of the state’s tallgrass prairie, found mainly in wetter Eastern Nebraska. In Iowa, only .01 percent of the prairie remains.

But over the past few decades, efforts to reclaim some of the lost acres of this native ecosystem have begun to blossom.

“There’s a lot of farmers that have become aware of the need to conserve their soils,” Rousek said.

Since it was founded 34 years ago, the Wachiska Audubon has been granted easements on 19 properties totaling 400 acres in 17 area counties, preserving prairie while allowing owners to use their land in more environmentally-conscious ways.

“For one thing, they can be used as grasslands,” said Mardell Jasnowski, office manager for The Nature Conservancy. “They can be used for grazing. It’s not like they’re going to be just sitting there to look at.

“For me, it’s just that they’re beautiful.”

Jasnowski is one of the leaders of the Conservancy’s Prairie Nebraska effort, which works with state property owners interested in preserving and restoring prairie environments.

Instead of focusing on easements and official rights to prairie land,  Prairie Nebraska assists owners with buying and selling native plant seeds grown on smaller plots.

That includes the thickspike gayfeather, which Rousek began offering up about a decade ago to raise cash for Wachiska Audubon.

“It was just a matter of putting the seed to some use,” he said.

The current drive to preserve prairie land took hold in the late 1970s, when Rousek led the Audubon to lease Nine-Mile Prairie from the Lincoln Airport Authority. That area, northwest of the Lincoln Airport, has since been preserved by the University of Nebraska Foundation.

At the same time, University of Nebraska-Lincoln graduate Bill Whitney established the Prairie Plains Resource Institute in Aurora.

“People that like (prairie land) are fascinated by it: the beauty and the complexity and the historical connection,” Whitney said, “just wondering what the state would have looked like 200 years ago.”

Now executive director of the organization, Whitney works to provide perspective for land owners. His fascination with the prairie system is what drives him, but he tries to take economics and the global environment into account as well.

He tries to stay out of the politics of land development.

“Prairie is a great resource,” he said. “It’s very people friendly. It’s good for wildlife. It’s good for water drainage and cleansing…. We can bring prairies back if we want grasslands.

“Not everybody values prairie the way the prairie lovers value it.”

And situations vary based on where prairies are located.

In the west, much of the land has remained unchanged for hundreds of years, largely because the ranching that is common there puts less stress on the soil than does farming.

“The western grasslands are very reclaimable,” Whitney said. “The situation in Eastern Nebraska is simply different.”

Much of the tallgrass prairie here is hay meadows. Whitney guesses what small portions remain in the coming years will become relics of history.

“It’d be nice to protect some of these small remnants,” he said. “The key in the future is how we develop the social context for this type of a resource. It involves not just prairie but water and everything on the landscape.

“It’s not a clear-cut preservation issue.”

Reach Zach Pluhacek at 473-7395 or zpluhacek@journalstar.com.