In 1996, Tony Singh began rewilding the LeClair lands, hoping to restore oak savannah, natural grassland, woodland, and wetlands.
Less than five years later, he noticed that the oak tree’s leaves were falling apart.
“When the leaves come out, if it’s natural, it’s beautiful,” Singh said. “But then they started spraying with this pre-emergent herbicide and the leaves were completely shattered.”
For the past 20 years, Singh has been documenting this phenomenon and trying to raise awareness about it. But his 50-acre preserve is surrounded by an industrial farming system that is economically tied to the land he is trying to restore.
“Acetochlor has a strong correlation with oak fraying,” said Tivon Feely, Iowa Department of Natural Resources Forest Health Program Leader.
Tony Shinn demonstrates pre-emergent herbicide damage to oak trees on the LeClaire, Iowa, reservation in 2026. (Photo provided by Tony Singh)
Acetochlor and dicamba are two widely used herbicides. Acetochlor is typically applied to target early grasses and weeds in row crop plots. Dicamba is used to target broadleaf weeds.
Singh has noticed both effects in the oak trees on his property. The oak is the state tree of Iowa, but 12 species of oak grow naturally in Iowa forests. These oaks fall into the broader family of white oaks and red oaks, but according to Feely, “all oak species are sensitive to herbicide damage.”
Most oaks are particularly susceptible to herbicides during the spray season due to their correlation to spring emergence. Coming out of dormancy and pushing out the first leaves requires the most energy in a tree’s life cycle.
Feeley said one year of herbicide exposure is unlikely to cause long-term damage. “The bigger concern is that injuries keep coming back year after year,” he said.
Singh said affected trees respond by pushing out a second leaf to combat herbicide damage, but they are not designed to repeatedly push out a second leaf each time they try to regrow in the spring. Rather, they become weak and die.
What dies are often many of the old trees in his preserves. Singh has lost more than 50 bur oaks, many of which are over 200 years old.
The oak savanna that Singh is working to restore was once common throughout North America. The land had prairie grasses and native flowers, and open oak trees dotting the horizon. These subsurface and open canopy areas have been maintained by low-intensity wildfires that occur every 1 to 10 years.
In the Midwest, only 30,000 acres of these lands remain today, or 0.02 to 0.06 percent of the original land area.
Singh said weather will play a role.
“It doesn’t have to be next to it. (Herbicides) evaporate, so if it’s a warm day, you spray it and it warms up and evaporates. It can also get into rainwater,” Singh said. “You could potentially spray it a mile, a mile and a half away.”
Dicamba is particularly volatile, a process in which the chemical is dried and converted into a gas. The gas can then be kicked up by the atmosphere and drift for miles, potentially impacting vegetation across the state.
As Messrs. Feeley and Singh pointed out, volatilization can also make enforcement difficult in herbicide drift cases.
Repeated complaints leave problems unresolved
Singh has repeatedly filed complaints through the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Management. The research process involves IDALS agents taking plant samples for analysis. In his experience, responses can take up to three to four months.
He says the results are often the same. The samples contain a different mix of chemicals from year to year, but often include acetochlor, and in recent years more samples have shown traces of dicamba.
In 2025, IDALS conducted 257 abuse investigations, of which only 25 were non-agriculture-related complaints. According to the ministry’s website, investigation reports typically take more than five months to complete. The department cannot require criminals to pay for losses caused by misuse of pesticides.
If clear documentation of the violation is not available, authorities can dismiss the case without taking regulatory action. The Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Management declined a request for comment.
“You’ll get a response next year, but usually nothing. You know, just warnings or notices to farmers. But nothing, nothing punitive,” Singh said. “Forget the punitive stuff. There’s nothing to tell him of the harm he’s done.”
Rather, Singh treats the process as a paper trail of “chemical intrusion.”
Mr. Singh tried to address this problem in several ways. He rents or buys adjacent land from neighboring farms to create a buffer zone between his settlement and farmland. He also manages the reserve without using herbicides and “surgically” removes invasive weeds.
In 2026, oak timbers are falling apart due to acetochlor pollution at the Prairie Oaks Reservation in LeClaire, Iowa. (Photo provided by Tony Singh)
He also set up cameras around his property to record when neighboring fields were sprayed. He records wind speeds and temperatures at the time of spraying to enhance annual IDALS testing, but he still “doesn’t feel safe.”
He also doesn’t have much luck interacting with elected officials, even describing Iowa as a “captive entity.”
“No one wants to come here. Even though it’s a beautiful place, no one wants to see it,” Singh said. “Politicians have no sympathy for this at all because they are beholden to the Farm Bureau and they make money off of it.”
Feeley doesn’t fear extinction for Iowa’s state tree in general, but he does have “some concerns” about the white oak. He believes the white oak’s decline is partly due to climate factors such as drought, but a larger cause is “a lack of land management.”
Feeley said oak trees need plenty of sunlight. Because trees are long-lived creatures, you may need to remove them at some point to free up space in the crown for direct light. This type of land management is “really lacking in Iowa,” he said.
Despite the many frustrations, Singh said he continues with the rewilding project simply because it is part of his identity.
“Most of us are driven by an innate sense of what we think is right. And it’s in my nature to plant trees. I get an innate joy from trees,” Singh said. “It feels the best when the leaves emerge after dormancy.”
