Today I rode off into the Flint Hills to reach a destination I have been meaning to visit for many years: the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Chase County. Over twenty-five years ago I helped to organize a panel discussion at the University of Kansas on the proposal for a National Tallgrass Prairie Park in Kansas.
The idea that the nation should preserve prairie lands is an old one. Arguably, the painter George Caitlin introduced it in the 1840s. Since that time, prairie land has greatly diminished. Less than 4% of what used to be remains, much of it in Kansas.
As a young person studying ecology, and as a member of my university environmental group, I found it hard to fathom why anyone would oppose preserving prairie.
These days, I have a better idea (although I am still learning). First, there is the problem that the musical Oklahoma made famous: the longstanding tension between farmers and ranchers. Farmers plough up the prairie.
Soybean field in the rich creek bottom lands of Morris County
Ranchers work to keep the soil from being turned upside down so that cattle may graze.
Cattle outside Marion, KS
Others, of course, also have worked to keep the soil intact. For example, many in the wealthy county of Johnson County in the far east of the state organized in the early 1970s—during the early years of the environmental movement—to create a 100,000 acre national prairie park. They wanted a space big enough to support the return of elk and buffalo, and the flourishing of prairie chickens. Many who lived in these Flint Hills that I have been riding up and down all day deemed this the flaky idea of New Agers out of touch with reality.
Today’s Reality: Bison on the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve
But what the ranchers really did not want to see was not elk and buffalo, but federal officials. Many feared that a national park would mean that the feds would use eminent domain to take their land. The threat was real. During the 1940s and 1950s, the government did take land. First they created Fall River reservoir. As an ecologist and conservation manager at the Preserve explained to me today, Fall River was the first lake in Kansas, and at the time it was a big deal. Indeed, his parents got married there. But what marked a new life for some represented the end of a life for others. You’ve got to understand, he told me, the taking of land is serious. Two suicides were attributed to the creation of the Fall River Reservoir.
Taking of land in order to advance an idea of how best to manage land often has meant the loss of life. Countless Native people lost their lives in Kansas and elsewhere partly for this very reason. These are old, deep and painful struggles. There is much more to a prairie than keeping the green on top and the brown below.
Eventually, after decades of bitter debate and struggle a national preserve—not a national park—was created.
Of the 11,000 acres, the National Park Service only owns—and can only ever own—180 acres. The rest is private property of The Nature Conservancy (TNC). It is a unique ownership arrangement brokered to manage the worries about federal ownership
There is much more to say about this, but today was a day to experience the fruits of these bitter struggles. After a brief stop in TNC headquarters to delve a bit deeper into the preserve’s history, I left my bike bags in the back of my ecologist interlocuter’s truck, and headed off on foot into the prairie. There is no way to convey in either words or photos the power of this land, but I will end here with what I can offer, a few images.
