Restoring meadows in Sayville to save a tiny plant

A 30-foot pine crashed down in the woods behind a Sayville soccer field. Branches shuddered as a big machine - part tank, part mower - advanced on it again, snapping the trunk like a matchstick.

"You're going to start hearing the grinder right now, and it's kind of loud," said Azucena Ponce, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which owns the land.

Knocking down trees might seem like a strange thing to do at a nature preserve. But this rapidly growing clearing at the Sayville unit of the Long Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex is actually part of a habitat restoration project. The goal: to protect a tiny federally endangered plant, and preserve a snapshot of a Long Island ecosystem near extinction.

Sandplain gerardia is an annual plant 4 to 8 inches tall whose delicate pink flowers bloom in late spring in the region's few surviving patches of grassland. Known scientifically as Agalinis acuta, it is the sole plant in New York State on the federal endangered species list. It grows at a handful of sites on Long Island, where coastal grasslands have largely given way to development.

Last year more than 2,000 sandplain gerardia plants bloomed at the 102-acre Sayville preserve, which hosts the biggest local population. To expand the plant's range, the wildlife service is turning back the clock by converting woodland back into meadow; 29 acres have been cleared since 2007.

About 8 acres of trees have been felled this year, Ponce said on a recent spring day. She walked across a newly mowed section. It was springy underfoot, strewn with pine needles and shredded bark.

"The point of the project is to protect the gerardia plant," Ponce said, "but there are also a lot of state-threatened plants here - and butterflies." She said the project will also open up more hunting for foxes and hawks and expand breeding areas for grassland birds like the Eastern meadowlark.

Picky plants like sandplain gerardia serve as indicator species to show that ecosystems are healthy. To thrive, sandplain gerardia needs exposed soil and the company of other native grasses like broom sedge and indiangrass.

But grasslands don't stay grasslands for long - and suburban development isn't the only reason they're in decline. Natural fires once swept Long Island's prairies, burning out saplings and exposing the bare soil. More recently, cattle grazing in coastal pastures in Montauk performed a similar function, said Marilyn Jordan, a plant scientist with the Nature Conservancy on Long Island.

Left unchecked, scrub pines and oaks take hold of meadows and over time transform them into forests, a process ecologists call succession.

Aerial photos of the Sayville property show there were about 54 acres of maritime grassland back in 1984. But by 2007 - when the Federal Aviation Administration turned the land over to the wildlife service - only 12 acres were left.

That kind of change is bad news for rare grassland plants like sandplain gerardia, whose tiny seeds can't take hold without plenty of light.

"If brush and trees grow up, bye Agalinis," Jordan said.

That's where the grinder comes in.

Attached to the front of a 12-ton vehicle, it's a rotating drum equipped with carbide teeth that chew up trees and spit out mulch.

"When I come into a tree, I'll raise the mower up about eight feet high," said operator Jamie Smith, the contractor who is clearing the land. "You get it up top, so the tree is still in the ground, and you can chew up the meat of the trees right to the ground."

The machine guzzles about seven gallons of diesel an hour. It moves on tanklike tracks that distribute its weight to avoid compacting the soil.

Trees that have grown too stout and sturdy for the mower to handle will be felled with chain saws; then Smith will grind them up.

It's a lot of work for the sake of a little plant.

But Jordan says the effort is crucial to protect sandplain gerardia - and the grasslands themselves - from extinction. "They're kind of like Noah's Ark floating in a sea of development," she said, "preserving our ecological heritage."