Greater prairie chicken. (Credit: USFWS/ Tony Ifland)
As we plan for the National Wildlife Refuge System future, we should consider the Flint Hills Legacy Conservation Area model. North America’s tallgrass prairie, the continent’s most diminished ecosystem type, is all but gone. The only remaining expression of tallgrass that is sufficiently large and intact to host the full spectrum of its historic ecological functions and species lies in a 180-mile-long, north-south band across eastern Kansas and northeastern Oklahoma. These are the Flint Hills, where grazing and fire still rule, and native wildlife and plants persist as a result. The total amount of tallgrass prairie that remains untilled and undeveloped comprises only about four percent of this ecosystem’s original Texas-to-Canada expanse; and the Flint Hills make up more than two-thirds of the total remnant…in one breathtaking, wild, contiguous-four-million-acre landscape.
The Nature Conservancy has identified the Flint Hills as a top priority conservation site; and the World Wildlife Fund recognizes the area as “one of only six grasslands in the contiguous U.S. that is globally outstanding for biological distinctiveness”. The Flint Hills are particularly important for grassland birds, including greater prairie-chicken, Henslow’s sparrow, grasshopper sparrow, and upland sandpiper. Several state- and federal-listed rare aquatic species, including Neosho madtom and Topeka shiner, also inhabit the region’s clear streams.
So it’s not a surprise that U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recently announced that the Flint Hills would be the site of a new easement-based national wildlife refuge, with a vision of one day including more than one million acres. Dubbed the “Flint Hills Legacy Conservation Area (FHLCA)”, the new refuge will rely on private landowners’ willingness to enter into perpetual conservation easements with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, in order to prevent future fragmentation and degradation of this precious ecosystem.
The FHLCA was born out of the need to conserve the tallgrass prairie in the face of aggressive renewable energy development, ranchette subdivision, invasive plant species, and other fragmenting factors. It has been championed by a strong and diverse partnership that includes The Nature Conservancy (TNC), U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the State’s wildlife agency, The Tallgrass Legacy Alliance (TLA) (a group of ranchers and conservationists), Ranchland Trust of Kansas, Kansas Biological Survey, and other groups and individual landowners. Conservation easements on Flint Hills private ranches have been held by TNC and the U.S. Department of Agriculture for several years prior to establishing the FHLCA. The success of these agreements and resulting landowner demand for conservation easements figured prominently into the establishment of the new refuge.
