Resetting The Gypsum Hills With Fire To Keep Grasslands Tree-Free

Kansas Ranchers Team Up On Prescribed Burns

When Russell Blew stands on the Nichols Ranch in the Gypsum Hills, he notices how much the rugged landscape of south-central Kansas has changed over 10 years. 

A decade ago, 35 percent of this ranch was covered in trees because woody encroachment had taken over his pastures. This was bad news for livestock, water availability and wildlife in these Great Plains grasslands.

Today, the Nichols Ranch looks drastically different, thanks to Blew’s efforts to remove trees and to the Anderson Creek wildfire of 2016.  

Get Those Trees Down

Woody encroachment is a time-consuming challenge for ranchers. Removing trees that invade prairies is imperative for maintaining healthy grasslands and livestock herds. As woody plants take over, science shows there is less grass and water available for cattle and wildlife. 

Blew is a proponent of combining science with “any means necessary” to restore grazing lands and rid the ranch of trees. 

“In terms of mechanical means, we’ve used anything from a skid steer with attachments, hydraulic saws, excavators and a pair of D-7 dozers with a chain between them. Our strategy has been ‘whatever it takes’ to get those trees down,” Blew says.

Like many ranchers in the Great Plains, Blew also relies on prescribed fire to manage woody encroachment. Strategically burning his pastures every three years repairs grasslands that have suffered due to crop production, overgrazing and fire suppression. 

Regular prescribed burns increase the amount of native grass, Blew says. This land management strategy allows him to move cattle to areas that were previously under-used or under-stocked. 

Fire Cleanses And Resets The Prairie

Blew is both appreciative and respectfully wary of fire – especially when it’s a wildfire. The Anderson Creek Fire of 2016, while devastating for many landowners, has helped tremendously in fighting woody encroachment. 

“It hit the fast-forward button 30 years for us,” Blew says. Encroaching redcedar trees suck up to 35 gallons per day per tree, which can dry up streams. Just three days after the Anderson Creek fire, Blew says “we started to see springs open up in areas where we hadn’t seen water previously”.

Dusty Tacha is a rangeland management specialist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. He says that the Anderson Creek fire, while bringing heartache along with it, reset the region ecologically.

“The Anderson Creek fire accomplished what we couldn’t have done in probably a generation of ranchers working on the land. The fire gave us a leg up in moving forward toward large areas of intact grassland,” Tacha says.

Teamwork Makes The Grassland Dream Work

Blew is also a member of the Kansas Great Plains Grassland Initiative advisory committee. This rancher-driven, science-based effort – led by the Natural Resources Conservation Services’ Working Lands for Wildlife – helps landowners reduce vulnerability to woody plant encroachment in core grasslands. The Great Plains Grassland Initiative is also working to manage woody encroachment in Oklahoma, Nebraska and other prairie states.

One of the most important tenets of the Initiative is collaboration, says Tacha. It’s important for ranchers and agencies to work together, as well as counties and states. 

“Woody encroachment doesn’t care where the state line is. It doesn’t care where the fenceline is between one property owner to the next. Those things are abstract. It’s important that we have consistency and work together, from one political boundary to the next,” Tacha explains. 

Blew attests that teamwork has been key to restoring the Gypsum Hills’ grasslands. No single person is responsible for the impressive transformation that has taken place over the last decade.

He notes that the technical support from experts at the NRCS like Dusty Tacha are a huge help to landowners. “I can’t be a water expert, but I know one. I can’t necessarily be a grass expert, but I call on one when I have questions.”
“The most important person is obviously the landowner,” Blew says. “He has a passion for putting things back the way they need to be.”