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| NPS Photo | | A Painted Lady butterfly taking nectar from flowers. |
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Herbert Hoover National Historic Site provides an island of habitat, surrounded by a rural city and agricultural land. Most animal species associated with mid-western suburban-rural interface live in the park. Inventories revealed no amphibians and few fish on site, but reptiles, mammals, and birds abound.
Settlers moving west encountered tallgrass prairie as they reached the plains. In eastern Iowa, there is a mixture of both prairie and Eastern deciduous forest providing a rich, diverse habitat with animal species from both ecosystems. Local folklore says that the land around the National Historic Site served as a preferred hunting camp for the Mesquaki people, because game lived here in great numbers and the weather was favorable.
Specially adapted animals lived on the prairie, including some large mammals, such as bison, pronghorn, wapiti (elk), and wolves. Whitetail deer and coyote remain today. Smaller mammals, such as fox, pocket gophers, ground squirrels, mice, and badgers still abound. Colorful meadowlarks, bluebirds, dickcissels, and grasshopper sparrows spend their breeding season in the prairie. Some of the smallest animals that depend on the prairie include butterflies, moths, bees, and other uniquely adapted insects.
The oak-hickory forest adds habitat diversity for animals in the region. These trees produce mast (acorns and nuts), which feeds squirrels, deer, turkey, and many other species. The woody canopy provides shelter for animals unique to forests. Edge areas between forest and prairie make rich ecotones, where species of both ecosystems overlap. Some savanna and woodland species have adapted to eastern Iowa’s changed landscape, and the National Historic Site provides habitat for them as well. Woodland species that can survive near people and in habitat fragments persist. Exotic and invasive species have replaced native species in some locations. Habitat fragments such as Herbert Hoover National Historic Site provide safe havens for many natives.
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