Campus grasslands grow environmental solutions

Santi Tabares Erices '25 peered through binoculars on a sunny morning in late May, hoping for an increasingly rare sight: a grassland bird nesting in a dew-covered hayfield.

As grassland bird populations decline, he and other Cornell researchers are testing whether birds such as Eastern meadowlarks and bobolinks that nest in grasslands produce more fledglings when hayfields are mowed later than usual.

He spotted a savannah sparrow flying above the field.

"She has a worm; she has a worm," said Tabares Erices; the wriggling meal might mean she had a nest of hungry babies in the field, part of Cornell's Mount Pleasant Farm in Dryden, New York, about six miles east of campus.

The project is one of several exploring how Cornell's grasslands - from hayfields to campus lawns - can protect birds, encourage biodiversity and sequester carbon to fight climate change. Ultimately, researchers hope these efforts can be scaled up statewide to effect real environmental benefits.

"If it's good for the state, it's good for the region. If it's good for the region, it's good for the United States," said Mark Schrader, MLA '22, assistant director of the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Stationin the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS). "That's part and parcel of why experimentation plays such a critical and important role - because it's a catalyst for scalability."