With grasses reaching six feet and above, the Elwood Prairie bike trail offers an escape from the busy streets of Lincoln Way and Elwood Drive.

Elwood Prairie, which was developed by ISU professors, is located north of Lincoln Way and east of Elwood Drive and stretches all the way to Sixth Street.

Work on the prairie began in the summer of 2000 as a service project for the 4-H State Conference and blossomed from there.

Jim Pease, assistant professor of natural resource ecology and management, and Jim Colbert, associate professor of ecology, evolution and organismal biology, continued the project.

The two started talking about a project that would meet both the needs of Pease, who was looking for an environmental project, and Colbert, who was looking for a volunteer project involving the environment. The two projects seemed to fit perfectly together.

“It was a match made in heaven, or rather, in a prairie,” Colbert said.

Over the years, Story County Conservation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Squaw Creek Watershed Coalition, Central Iowa Prairie Network, the Ames community, ISU students and others have helped develop the prairie. The prairie work involved cooperation and collaboration between all these groups, Colbert said.

“It has really been a community effort,” Pease said. “It is a nice resource for the community.”

An estimated 400 to 500 students have helped with the restoration project over time, Colbert said, along with community volunteers.

The prairie now functions as an outdoor classroom for ISU students. Biology and agriculture professors, among others, use the site for hands-on learning.

The process of restoring the land to a prairie state was a learning experience for those who helped out, Pease said. Now research is being done on the progression of the prairie plants.

The city of Ames maintains a bike trail that runs through the prairie. The prairie offers a glimpse of what the landscape of Iowa looked like over 150 years ago, Pease said. About 85 percent of Iowa, Colbert said, used to be prairies and wetlands.

“Ideally, all the plants will be native to Iowa,” Colbert said.

But, he said, invasive species still occupy parts of the prairie.

Controlled burns will be used about once every one or two years to rid the site of non-native plants, Colbert said. Native prairie grasses are mostly underground and have adapted over the years to be fire-tolerant, Pease said, but most of the non-native plants are mostly above ground and cannot withstand fire as well as the native plants.

The ash from the controlled burns offers valuable nutrients which will help the prairie grasses come back better and stronger than before the burn, Colbert said.

A possible wetland habitat is being considered for addition to the prairie site, Colbert said. Also, an increase in the diversity of prairie plants is still being pursued.

With a possible wetlands project going into the prairie, the constant maintenance of keeping the prairie native to Iowa, and the ongoing push to diversify the plants, the prairie will be an outdoor classroom research facility for years to come, Pease said.

“[The prairie] is never finished,” he said.