Protecting our prairie

As someone involved in the restoration and management of native prairie, I certainly appreciate The Star’s recent editorial on the plight of our prairies (8/23, Opinion, “Our endangered tallgrass prairie”).

However, the editorial states that 2,200 acres of prairie surround Smithville Lake. There is, in fact, none. Clay County Parks has planted many areas around the lake with prairie grasses and wildflowers. It’s great work, but it’s not prairie. A major distinction should be made between a place planted to prairie species vs. the real thing. Once a true prairie is plowed or destroyed, it is gone for good.

There are several places locally where people can see the real thing: Kansas City’s Jerry Smith Park, Powell Gardens, the Prairie Center in Olathe and Johnson County Park’s Kill Creek Park. Another small remnant exists at Shawnee Mission Park but is being severely over-browsed by deer.

I recommend that those interested in visiting true prairie contact the Conservation Department and request the publication “Public Prairies of Missouri” and get out and see a prairie firsthand. For more information, visit the Missouri Prairie Foundation (www.moprairie.org) and in Kansas, the Grassland Heritage Foundation (www.grasslandheritage.org).

Larry Rizzo
Natural history biologist, Missouri Department of Conservation
Blue Springs

The Star’s recent editorial celebrating the prairie was a treat. But it overlooked the biggest threat to our prairies now: commercial wind farms.
Few people realize that the state of Kansas has utterly opted out of regulating wind farms. Instead, it has punted the whole question of where to put them to its 105 counties and their part-time commissioners. Many counties have no rural zoning. They’re desperate for development. They’re wide open.

Meanwhile, corporate wind farm developers are zeroing in on never-plowed prairie hilltops. That’s where the wind is strongest.

The Kansas Sierra Club, far from attempting to preserve the prairie, has aligned itself with the corporations. Its official position paper artfully redefines “prairie” as “cow pasture,” then says that “cow pastures” should generally be open to wind farms.

This unprecedented combination of state laxity, corporate profit-making and Sierra Club complicity is very bad news. Our clean, beautiful prairies, including much of the Flint Hills, are in danger.

Dennis Farney
Kansas City

Comments

[Stifled Freedom]

Larry and Dennis, I appreciate your dedication, but a larger scale issue needs to be addressed.

The US military plans to expand the existing Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site (PCMS) in SE Colorado. The current site was acquired forcibly by the military on 1983 with the promise, at that time, of no future expansion.

Now they want 5 million acres. The final expansion would be a tract of land larger than the state of Connecticut. Entire counties would be taken. The proposal is beyond reasonable and is outrageous.

Once this land is taken and used by the US military, it will never be usable or returnable again to private ownership because of the danger of unexploded ordinance. I foresee the destruction of this land to be only for oil/gas exploitation in an area out of sight by the EPA. Once the land is ruined, the area would then be a likely candidate for spend nuclear fuel disposal.

This land contains vast prairie land as well as deep canyons with scrub trees and rock outcrops. The area, unlike vast stretches in Nevada, is agriculturally productive. The area contains archeological ruins, Native American camp sites, and the oldest known dinosaur tracks preserved in surface rock. Some of the area is already public land as the Comanche National Grassland, but that also would be lost.

The land is rich in oil/gas reserves. Efforts to expand this PCMS began in 2002 to provide training for military involvement in Afghanistan. The effort is near its end, but the Army still wants the land.

Go to www.pinoncanyon.com for more details.

[Kee]

I love it when the moonbats fight over the same turf. Wind farms, nimby!