Landscape Spotlight: Comanche Pool Grazing Lands In Kansas And Oklahoma

A Very Cool, Very Special Place

A vast swath of intact prairie known as the Comanche Pool grazing lands stretches along the border of Kansas and Oklahoma. These rolling, undeveloped grasslands cover 7 million contiguous acres and span 15 counties.

Today, the ranchers who raise cattle in the Comanche Pool area comprise the largest grazing coalition in the southern Great Plains. The cattle that roam these prairies provide beef for America, and the region’s livestock production and outdoor recreation amenities are important economic drivers for both Kansas and Oklahoma.

“The Comanche Pool is a very cool, very special place,” says Tanner Swank, Great Plains Grasslands Biome Manager for Working Lands for Wildlife and Pheasants Forever. “The geography is both ecologically and economically significant to the region.”

These mixed-grass and sand-sage prairies are also home to one of the last strongholds of lesser prairie-chickens and the region’s bobwhite quail, along with a multitude of other grassland birds and prairie critters.

But the people, livestock, and wildlife that depend on the Comanche Pool prairies are facing a growing threat: encroaching woody species that are gobbling up productive grasslands.

Rangelands At Risk From Encroaching Trees

The green glacier of brush and eastern redcedar trees moving westward across the Great Plains is the biggest threat to the Comanche Pool grazing lands,” says Kay Decker, coordinator of the Comanche Pool Prairie Resource Foundation. Founded by ranchers in 1999, it educates people about rangeland management practices that regenerate the region’s natural resources and promote rural economies. It also provides conservation funding support and scholarships to students and producers.

In America’s Great Plains, woody plants have proliferated in the absence of regular fire. As trees and woody shrubs like eastern redcedar take over grasslands, they reduce the amount of water and forage available for both livestock and wildlife.

Encroaching trees also fuel more catastrophic wildfires.

“We had a large wildfire season in 2025, and it raised awareness across the state about the need to manage woody species,” Decker says. “Prescribed fire is the best and most economical tool for containing this threat.”

In places where landowners were using prescribed fire—planned burns to reduce excessive vegetation and kill woody species—the impacts from the wildfires were minimal. But in places with no prescribed burning, communities suffered.

“We lost over 400 homes in Oklahoma over the course of two days last March,” Decker says. “We had 70 to 80 mile-per-hour winds, and when a mature cedar catches on fire, those embers can travel three football fields.”

Previous to these catastrophic wildfires, the Oklahoma Legislature had allocated $4 million to the Oklahoma Conservation Commission to mitigate the spread of eastern redcedar in the North Canadian River watershed. The allocation helped fund a technician program in conservation districts located within the watershed with the goal of reducing cedar proliferation in the rural-urban interface to protect homes, businesses, and agricultural lands. This program has benefited several counties within the watershed.

Pooling Resources To Keep Grasslands Productive 

Swank started working in the Comanche Pool area in 2018, on the heels of multiple devastating wildfires. He’s seen a drastic increase in the use of prescribed fire as a tool to manage rangelands—and to stop wildfires from getting out of control.

“It’s never a case of ‘if’ a wildfire comes, it’s always ‘when’. We still have them every spring in the southern Great Plains,” Swank says. “But with prescribed fire, we can control when and how land burns—and keep it on our terms.”

Swank assists with coordinating prescribed burns on private land by bringing together resources from landowners, conservation partners, and government agencies.

The best way to do that? Fight fire with fire, he says. Annual prescribed burns that mimic historic fire cycles can help reduce the amount of woody species proliferation and fine fuels on the ground. That way, wildfires cannot rage out of control.

The Working Lands for Wildlife partnership is one of these, Swank says. “Many of these proactive burns happen with support from Farm Bill conservation programs.”

With coordination from Working Lands for Wildlife, the NRCS helps landowners by providing both financial and technical support on how to burn safely. Since ranchers in the remote Comanche Pool area are often far from firefighting departments, they have formed burn associations and manage their own firefighting setups.

As for timing, the landowners burn their ranches in the early spring to promote grass growth for livestock. This timing also helps with wildfire mitigation planning.

Prescribed fires create burned “anchor points” that firefighters can use to stop wildfires from spreading, Swank explains. Plus, regular prescribed burns prevent saplings from taking hold and maturing, keeping the Great Plains grasslands open and nutritious for cattle and wildlife.

“It’s refreshing and motivating to see the mindset shift to ‘oh, we have to keep these trees from coming back,’” Swank says.

Comanche Pool Is A Model For Great Plains Landowners

The Comanche Pool Prairie Resource Foundation recently released a video about their grasslands. The video delves into the history of the region, including how it got its name: from the historic Comanche Pool Cattle Syndicate. The syndicate ran livestock in the late 1800s across Kansas and Oklahoma, from the Salt Fork of the Arkansas River and the Medicine River in the north all the way to the Cimarron and North Canadian rivers in the south.

This video also explains the main objectives of the landowners and partners working to conserve the Comanche Pool prairies today: improving soil health and habitat for wildlife and pollinators, improving water resources, and mitigating woody encroachment.

“People here now understand that encroaching redcedar trees are not only a wildfire risk; they are also a threat to soil health, water quality and quantity, and forage production. It turns out that when producers remove woody species like eastern redcedar, you get the other three—more water, better soil, and improved habitat for wildlife and pollinators,” notes Decker.

Another piece of the foundation’s outreach in 2026 is helping to host the first Southern Plains Grasslands Summit in Alva, Oklahoma from May 27-29. The summit will highlight the successful collaborative conservation modeled by partners in the Comanche Pool area.

Additionally, the Comanche Pool will be holding Producer Education workshops known as “Coffee Shop Talks” in the early part of 2026 throughout its service area of northwest Oklahoma and southern Kansas.

The foundation also advises other landowners and conservation groups in the southern Great Plains about how to form and manage local burn associations. “We need more prescribed fire planners and knowledgeable experts located across this region,” Decker says.

Swank says that the successful conservation initiatives that are conserving the Comanche Pool prairies are due in large part to like-minded partners. “I’m proud of the progress and scale at which the region’s residents have been able to accomplish these projects. Neighbors are working together on large-scale, proactive prescribed burns and doing everything they can to maintain their large grassland cores, ensure the landscape remains as functioning, working lands, and push back against woody threats.”