Kansas 2024 Year In Review

This summer, we made headway toward our protection goals in two priority landscapes: the Southern High Plains and Great Bend Sand Prairie. 

The Nature Conservancy acquired 375 acres adjacent to Little Jerusalem Badlands State Park in Logan County. A mix of Niobrara chalk bluffs, native prairie, and cropland, this property was ripe for energy development and conversion. Now, it’s permanently protected. In total, Smoky Valley Ranch has grown to nearly 19,000 acres. 

Thanks to our partners at Ducks Unlimited, we also welcomed over 600 acres to our Cheyenne Bottoms preserve, bringing our total protection to 8,650 acres. 

Grasslands evolved with fire, both natural wildfires and intentional use by Native caretakers before colonization. Today, prescribed fire remains a crucial tool for maintaining and enhancing prairie health. The Nature Conservancy has been a leader in using prescribed fire for more than 60 years to keep aggressive invasive plants at bay, enrich soil health and support thriving ranching economies.

Throughout the year, our highly trained burn crews can be seen preparing for and setting prescribed fires on TNC preserves. They also help private landowners and our conservation partners, like the National Park Service and Konza Prairie Biological Research Station, burn at the right place, right time of the year and right frequency through the co-creation of burn plans, equipment sharing and technical support.

“Woody plant encroachment and herbaceous invasive species pose critical threats to the resilience of Kansas prairies. It has never been more important to work with our conservation partners to ensure frequent fire to maintain open grassland,” says Flint Hills Initiative Manager Tony Capizzo. We’re working to do just that. The Kansas chapter has one of the most impactful fire programs at the Conservancy, burning approximately 37,800 acres last year—more than any other state. 

The Sustainable Rivers Program, a partnership between the Nature Conservancy and the US Army Corps of Engineers, seized an opportunity to implement environmental flow releases on the Kansas River and the Osage River in 2024. Water was discharged from the Tuttle Creek Lake reservoir north of Manhattan into the Kansas River to cue native fish spawning, and the release was tapered off more slowly than usual to avoid leaving freshwater mussels stranded on the banks of the river. Similar releases were completed from Pomme de Terre reservoir on the Osage/Marais des Cygnes system. TNC and partners will continue to implement environmental flows in 2025 and beyond, and monitor responses in fish, mussels, and river habitat.

The Sustainable Rivers Program began in 2002 with eight rivers and has grown to 44 river systems across the nation, influencing 12,079 miles of U.S. waterways and 90 associated reservoirs and dams. With just two percent of our nation’s three million miles of rivers and streams still free-flowing and undeveloped, the survival of our freshwater systems hinges on our ability to reduce the negative impacts of river infrastructure. 

TNC’s buffalo herds (also known as the American bison) produce approximately 1,500 buffalo in need of new homes every year. By returning some of these buffalo to tribal lands, we are healing and restoring a web of natural relationships that has been broken for hundreds of years. Eighteen buffalo from TNC preserves in Kansas were transfered in late 2023, and we will transfer additional buffalo after our roundup in November 2024.

Each buffalo herd plays a vital role within the community to which it’s transferred. In some cases, preliminary herds are returning to lands for the first time in more than 100 years. Other times they expand existing herds, diversify genetics and uplift community food sovereignty initiatives, all essential in rebuilding buffalo lifeways.

In September, nine extinct-in-the wild sihek (also known as Guam kingfishers) were released at their new home at TNC’s preserve and research station on Palmyra Atoll, 1,000 miles south of Hawai‘i. The released sihek have a special Kansas connection: they were hatched and hand-reared at a quarantine rearing facility at Wichita’s Sedgwick County Zoo. There, specialized bird keepers worked around the clock to feed, weigh and monitor the chicks as they grew from hatchlings to young adults.

To ensure success, a skilled TNC avian team will closely monitor the population for the months to come. It is an inspiring demonstration of the power of partnership in turning the tide of extinction – and an exciting stepping stone to the eventual return of this iconic species back to Guam.

Interested in learning more? Watch Flight of the Sihek to follow the birds from Wichita to their release on the remote Pacific island of Palmyra Atoll.

“All I was growing back then was dirt.”

That’s how Treg Hatcher felt about his family-owned cattle ranch in western Kansas before he enrolled in a Farm Bill conservation program that provides financial support and training for farmers, ranchers and forest landowners who want to be better stewards of the land. For Hatcher, that meant help buying water tanks to ensure his cattle have enough to drink and installing fences to do more rotational grazing. 

The Farm Bill is America’s largest federal investment in the voluntary conservation, restoration and management of America’s private lands. It usually is funded to the tune of $6 billion annually. From incentivizing climate-smart agricultural practices to opening doors for permanent conservation through agricultural conservation easements, this critical, typically bipartisan legislation benefits every single state in the country. Learn why it’s one of our best opportunities to advance conservation in the United States and the policies we’d like to see in the next Farm Bill at nature.org/farmbill.