Winter 2004

The Fermilab Grounds Crew
Force for Nature

Bob Lootens was skeptical when he first heard about the professor who wanted to plant a prairie at the particle physics research facility known as Fermilab.

At that time, the early 1970s, a young Lootens had only recently begun working with the Roads & Grounds department at Batavia's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, where Dr. Bob Betz, a retired professor of biochemistry and biology at Northeastern Illinois University, was attempting what was at the time the largest prairie reconstruction in the world. "The crew I worked with had farming backgrounds," Lootens reflects, "and we heard about this professor coming from Chicago, who was going to tell us how to plant a bunch of weeds on some perfectly good agricultural soil." Lootens' connection to that soil reaches back; his family once lived on a dairy farm bordering the site, moving away in the early 1960s, just a few years before the government bought out the remaining farmers to establish Fermilab.

"It took a few visits meeting and listening to [Betz] to understand the concept of prairie," recalls Lootens. Now, 30 years later, Lootens, fellow lead groundskeeper Dave Shemanske, grounds manager Mike Becker, and the rest of their 16-person crew have rebuilt native prairie on this land, where Lootens bailed hay as a boy. The property's vast 1,100-acre prairie, sprawling across Fermilab's 6,800 acres, sprouted both from Betz's knowledge and vision and the crew's effort and practical know-how. While Betz taught them about prairie plants and animals, the crew drew on their farming and mechanical backgrounds and taught Betz — whom they now consider family — how to use plows, combines, and other farm implements to prepare, plant, and harvest large areas of prairie. These innovative applications of traditional techniques enabled restorationists to think on a scale closer to that of the vast original prairies.

Lootens was 19 when he took his first job with Fermilab in 1971. A few years later, Becker and then Shemanske joined him. Together, the trio has logged 86 years of service at the lab. "We shared a lot of time in the field working together," says Becker, who worked for a tree service before Fermilab. "We learned to get along a long time ago," he smiles. All three are married, have children, and are in their early 50s.

In 1975, the crew took to the fields in tractors to plow the ground and seed the first prairie plot. It looked like a bunch of weeds, recalls Lootens — but Betz pointed out tiny prairie plants amidst the mess. Within two years, the crew did their first controlled burn to encourage growth of native species.

Today, managing regular prairie fires is probably Shemanske's favorite part of the work. "It involves a lot of planning and coordination; you need cooperation from weather and the winds." Adds Lootens, "What excites us most is in the spring when we walk out after a burn and see plants coming back with renewed vigor — and you see plants you haven't seen before."

"It takes teamwork to do this type of restoration," says Shemanske, describing the crew's regular burn, plant, and harvest cycle. In addition to the crew, who actually spend most of their time on non-prairie tasks at Fermilab, a corps of volunteers twice yearly handpicks seeds that are sorted and cold-stored over the winter for spring planting.

"We try to stay with what the experts say are the native plant species in order to resemble original prairie as much as possible," says Becker, explaining the trio's stewardship philosophy. "We've been entrusted with this public land, and the approach is to be a good steward and keep it healthy."

The crew is proud of the young prairie, which they've grown gradually, plot by plot. "In some cases we've gone from a three-year-old prairie, with 25 plant species, to our oldest prairies, with 80 to 100 species," says Becker, noting that new insects, birds, and butterflies have flocked to the native vegetation as well.

Though the crew hasn't yet met the goal of reaching the prairie's original species diversity, their progress encourages them to work with Betz to further hone the art of rebuilding this lost corner of the natural world. "The physicists here are trying to find the smallest particle of matter, and we're trying to build the prairie without a textbook," Lootens notes. "We're both on a journey of discovery."

— Anne E. Steinfermi