Top Stories Wichita

BY BECCY TANNER

The Wichita Eagle

A conservation initiative seeks to preserve up to 1 million acres of tallgrass prairie in the Flint Hills — some of the last stands of tallgrass in the nation.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is considering buying voluntary conservation easements in 14 Kansas counties. Participating landowners would have control over day-to-day operations on their land, and be able to pass it on or sell it.

The easements would prevent landowners from developing the land for residential or commercial use. The plan, still being developed, also might govern how much or where wind-energy operations could be placed, said Amy Thornburg with
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Denver.

“We want to end up with an intact tallgrass prairie. And although intact is a hard thing to describe, you know it when you see it,” Thornburg said. “The tallgrass region includes ranching, fire, grazing and prairie chickens. They are all
dependent on each other. If it wasn’t for the ranching heritage of the area, we wouldn’t have a prairie.”

The sea of grass and wildflowers, which once stretched from Northern Texas through Manitoba, largely has been plowed up, paved over or built upon. Between 2 and 4 percent of the nation’s prairie remains, and much of it is in the Flint
Hills.

“The prairie is shrinking every day through invasion of trees, homes and roads,” said Flint Hills rancher Bill Sproul. “I like to think of the easements as preservation of the horizon. The horizon is important to me because it is one of the few
things that you can only view from afar.”

The idea for the program came about six years ago when the Tallgrass Legacy Alliance was formed by landowners, nongovernment organizations and governmental agencies.

“They were looking for ideas on how to protect the Tallgrass prairie and the Flint Hills,” said Vic Elam, legacy project coordinator for the Flint Hills National Wildlife Refuge near Hartford.

The government is seeking comments from Kansans. A series of meetings this week — including one in Wichita on Tuesday — drew modest crowds. Most were landowners supportive of the Flint Hills Legacy Conservation Area
Initiative.

The purchase, which would have to be approved by the secretary of the Interior, would be funded with proceeds collected by the federal government from offshore oil and gas leases.

If the program is approved, Elam said, it would most likely begin in 2011.

“It’s a major step in promoting the Flint Hills as a treasured landscape,” he said. “It is probably as much about creating awareness as putting the actual program in place. We want to make people aware of this land — that it is the last
great remaining tallgrass prairie.”

The easements would also help develop a partnership with Fish and Wildlife that would encourage habitat for prairie chickens, the region’s signature bird. Prairie chickens require open prairie and tall grass to nest.

Once billed as the “Prairie Chicken Capital of the World,” the Flint Hills hold dwindling numbers of the birds. In three decades, the population has dropped almost 90 percent on the area’s eastern edge and 50 percent in the rest of the Flint
Hills, Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks studies show.

If the prairie chickens are in trouble, other prairie birds also are in trouble, wildlife biologists say.

Invasive trees and the encroachment of civilization are factors in their decline in the Flint Hills, biologists say.

The project encompasses Butler, Chase, Chautauqua, Cowley, Geary, Greenwood, Elk, Lyon, Marion, Marshall, Morris, Pottawatomie, Riley and Wabaunsee counties.

Reach Beccy Tanner at 316-268-6336 or btanner@wichitaeagle.com.

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