Tall Grass Prairie

Having worked it out so that I didn't have far to drive today, I was able to go back to the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve and take one of the tours given by the Rangers.  Listening to Rangers is always fun.  Each one has his or her own stories to tell about the Park he works in.  And every time you listen, you come away with more knowledge about some thing or some area of study that wasn't on your horizon at all before that.

I'd walked one of the trails the day before, but this time we used an old blue school bus covered by a painting of the hills and wildflowers in the prairie area, so we covered a lot more ground.  I learned again that Rangers not only know their area, they also have sharp eyes.  So I added a meadowlark and a western bluebird to my life list.  (Forgot to mention that I added a roadrunner while I was in Arizona and yes it was running across the road.)  Also I now know what a wild indigo flower looks like.  What flint looks like and how to spot the scooped out evidence that someone or some weather force chipped away at the flint either to make a tool or as a means of chipping away and shaping another piece.  Most interesting was learning how the various flowers and grasses space themselves seasonally, how they use different means, e.g., different types of root systems, to get what each species needs without competing with the other types of plants.  How fire beneficially regulates the growth patterns of plants and the grazing patterns of animals.  How important grasses are to the overall ecology of the planet.  And how sometimes nature gives us a chance to undo our mistakes.  The work that is going on to preserve the ecology of the prairie is one of those chances.  Once the prairie in the US and Canada covered literally millions of acres.  Today less that 4% of that is still grassland.  But a combination of groups from the Park Service to the Nature Conservancy to rich Texans who send their cattle to graze there are holding the line.

The best story had to do with the buffalo herd that is living and growing on this prairie.  At the beginning of the 1800s, buffalo herds were everywhere and the numbers were so great that it seemed unthinkable that they could ever be threatened by extinction.  But by the days of Theodore Roosevelt the buffalo were down to no more than 1,000.  They were functionally extinct.  It was only a matter of time.  Then TR and one of his NY friends decided to get involved.  They collected a small herd of buffalo and took them back to NY where they could be protected.  The descendants of that herd are still around and some of them are now living at the preserve here at Strong City, Kansas.  In fact, they are thriving and the numbers are multiplying.  They are no longer facing extinction.  It will take a long time but we have been given a second chance to give these animals a second chance.  Sometimes we learn, don't we?