The Emporia Gazette

May 28, 2012

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Why did the Monarch butterfly cross the road?

To feast on the growing number of wildflowers springing up all along Kansas roadways, thanks to a recently implemented new roadside management program.

Since 2008, the Kansas Department of Transportation has been mowing less along the roads and seeding some areas with native flowers and grasses. As a result, the brilliant blues and yellows of Pitcher Sage, Blazing Star, sunflowers and other late-summer flowers are now gracing sections of Interstate 35 between Emporia and Olathe, among many other roads across the state.

The groups that spearheaded the efforts to change the state’s roadside management practices hope to convince the Kansas Turnpike Authority to adopt the same policy. The privately funded KTA is not a state agency.

The Turnpike winds through 263 miles of the state, and creating the same smart, cost-saving roadside management that the state employs will bring benefits that stretch far beyond the enhanced beauty of the ride. Thoughtful roadside management is a win-win for the environment, the state budget, and tourists, residents and other drivers.

Under the new KDOT rules, the medians and terrain beside the roads are mowed only 15 feet from the shoulder, which opens up thousands of acres for native wildflowers and grasses to develop. Those protected areas are only mowed every four years and never between April 15 and Oct. 1, which protects nesting wildlife in the spring and allows flowers and grasses to be pollinated by birds, butterflies and other insects and go to seed.

As a KDOT report explains, previous cutting schedules had a devastating impact: “Many of the most showy native prairie wildflowers bloom in late summer. Cutting the plants just prior to or at blooming time eliminates one of the two most spectacular seasonal displays of wildflowers.”

Clay Adams, KDOT’s District I engineer, told me about upcoming seeding projects that will create 100 acres of new wildflower growth to four major interchanges in Topeka, Kansas City and Wichita. Beautification, he added, is also a priority in construction projects like the new stretch of Highway 59 south of Lawrence.

“Our new seed mix is primarily native grasses and contains more wildflower seed than we’ve ever put in our mix before,” Adams said.

As the wildflowers and native grasses develop over the next few years, their presence will reduce soil erosion, control invasive plant species, enrich the landscape with drought-resistant prairie plants, reduce snow drift onto the roads, increase bird and small wildlife habitats, grow low-maintenance perennials that will produce valuable wildflower seed and reduce the state’s carbon emissions through reduced mowing. Less mowing also costs less in fuel and labor — Texas’s program currently saves its transportation department $8 million a year.

Members of the Grassland Heritage Foundation, Kansas Native Plant Society, Kansas Wildlife Federation, Audubon of Kansas and other groups who were part of Secretary of Transportation Deb Miller’s Roadside Aesthetics Task Force hope to meet soon with Kansas Turnpike Authority officials to discuss a new roadside management program for the KTA.

As the Wildflowers of Texas group once wrote, growing natural combinations of flowers and grasses along our highways results in a healthier, hardier landscape and “beauty by the mile.” If you would like KDOT to put more beauty in the miles around Emporia, especially our I-35 and I-335 interchange, Clay Adams will take your requests via email at clay@ksdot.org or in writing at KDOT, 121 W. 21st St., Topeka, KS 66612. To express your support for the KTA adopting the state’s practices, contact its officials through the website at ksturnpike.com.

I’m proud to know that the environmental groups and state personnel who cherish our prairie heritage are committed to allowing more wildflowers and native grasses to flourish, and in areas where we can all enjoy them the most.