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Fire and Grazing in the Flint Hills

Spring burning in the Flint Hills. © Kevin Sink

The biodiversity of the Great Plains is the result of dynamic interactions between climate, topography, grazing and fire. Today, most fire-dependent ecosystems in the United States are severely fire-starved, but this is not the case in much of the 4.9-million-acre Flint Hills of Kansas and Oklahoma—the largest piece of remaining tallgrass prairie—where spring pasture burning is a routine ranching activity.

In fact, some parts of the Flint Hills burn so frequently that large areas of this tallgrass prairie landscape are left with minimal residual cover or habitat diversity. As a result, nesting habitat for a number of grassland bird species, including the Greater Prairie-Chicken, has suffered. To counteract this, Conservancy staff at the 39,000-acre Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma (part of the Flint Hills landscape) are demonstrating that a fire-induced, rotational grazing scheme called “Patch Management” increases structural heterogeneity of native grasslands while providing similar economic returns.

As part of the U.S. Fire Learning Network, Conservancy staff working in the Flint Hills are developing a more ecologically-driven fire management vision for their landscape. The network, in turn, is using the Flint Hills to demonstrate how private landowners can safely and effectively use fire at a landscape scale. 

Read more about the Conservancy’s work in Kansas and Oklahoma.