The Prairie’s Plight
Antonia Felix
Friday, September 4, 2009
We live in a rare place. Less than 4 percent of North America’s original tallgrass prairie survives, and most of it is here in the Flint Hills.
Surrounded by endless miles of grasses as you drive along the back roads of Greenwood County or rush down the Kansas Turnpike between Emporia and Wichita, you sense the timelessness and singular beauty of the region. Glowing and shifting under the wide sweep of the sky, the tallgrass prairie is unique in the world.
And its days may be numbered.
Biologists, environmentalists and ranchers recognize that a crisis is spreading through the Flint Hills. In truth, the prairie is a battlefield.
The invader, a shrubby plant called sericea lespedeza (suh-REE-see-uh les-puh-DEE-zuh), has been seizing ground for years. It blends in with the territory and fends off attack with ingenious defenses.
The plant produces masses of seeds that remain in seed banks for decades. It is virtually drought proof and grows up to 5 feet tall, stealing sunlight from the native flora. The sheer number of seeds produced, combined with the high tannin content that protects it from cattle — they hate the stuff — allows sericea to spread like wildfire.
Kansas recognized sericea lespedeza as such a formidable threat that nine years ago it named it prairie public enemy #1: a state-wide noxious weed.
Concerned ranchers are working with public and private groups to try to curb the tide of the infestation, but it’s a tough fight.
Herbicides are effective on mature plants, but it doesn’t appear to have much of an effect on the seedlings. Neither does burning, although some researchers are trying to determine if a specific time of year is more effective than another.
William Browning, a physician and rancher in Madison, invited me out to his acreage this week to discuss the sericea problem with him, another rancher and two experts from local government agencies. The five of us crammed ourselves into Browning’s jeep for a tour of the prairie.
Browning has worked hard over the past ten years to control sericea on his property. Although the weed is scarce on his land, it is still spreading every year. That fact, along with the data being collected throughout the region, makes him fear the worst. “There’s some thought that sericea might eliminate the tallgrass prairie entirely,” he said.
Jim Minnerath of the Fish and Wildlife Service is no less concerned. “From the look of the status quo, we’re losing the Flint Hills,” he said. If the grazing land is overcome, he contends, the ranching business will be gone and the prairie will give way to timber. “It’s a huge threat to the economics of the region and the ecological health of the tallgrass prairie,” he said.
Each of the men agreed that killing the plants before they have a chance to mature and produce more seeds is the only way to stop the sericea threat.
“The trouble is,” explained Minnerath, “we’ve got a three-million-acre landscape and there are plants in every nook and cranny. The big plants are easy to spot this time of year, but you can’t see them when they’re seedlings. If you can’t see them, you can’t find and spread herbicide on them. So the only effective way to deal with sericea is to figure out a fire system that kills the immature seedlings.”
Bill Sproul, a rancher from Sedan who chairs a preservation group called the Tallgrass Legacy Alliance, canvases his acres regularly and kills as many sericea plants as he can find in order to curb seed production. He has seen neighboring ranches inundated with the noxious weed and is considering an experimental burning technique that Minnerath and Browning have been testing.
Sericea research at Kansas State has included looking for ways to make the plant more palatable to cattle. Unfortunately, according to Jeff Davidson, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s extension agent for Greenwood County, the slight increase in consumption was not enough to make a dent in the problem.
Davidson was well aware of Browning’s vigilant work to keep sericea out of his land. He does not, however, foresee good news overall. “We’ve been working on this for a number of years and I’m afraid it’s an example of winning some battles and losing the war,” he said.
No one envisioned the devastating consequences when sericea was imported from Asia in 1896. In the 1930s the plant was brought to southeast Kansas to serve as a cover for strip-mined land, and it is widely believed that sericea contaminated the native grass seed that began to be planted in Kansas as part of the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in the 1980s.
Winning the war with sericea goes hand-in-hand in preserving the tallgrass prairie, says Minnerath. The key to that is making sure ranchers, who maintain the prairie ecology, stay in business. Without burning and grazing, others species would swiftly take over.
“This is the last stand of the tallgrass prairie,” Minnerath said as Browning put the jeep in four-wheel-drive and crossed a rocky stream. “The only way to save the Flint Hills is to save the ranching culture.”
Comments
Post a comment
We allow registered users to post comments on this Web site. Our goal with this feature is to encourage thoughtful discussions about the news stories. Using the comment feature to make random attacks on people is not acceptable. Emporiagazette.com neither endorses nor guarantees the accuracy of any user contribution. Responsibility for what is posted or contributed to this site is the sole responsibility of each user. To learn more about our posting policies please read our User Poster Agreement Policy.
(Requires free registration.)