t's "the black hole" to certain airline pilots on redeye flights. They would be far above northeastern Oklahoma, over rural landscapes where night was pierced by the lights of towns, farms, and traffic. Then suddenly, nothing. An unlit mysterious void. Hundreds of square miles of almost unrelieved darkness. The Black Hole.
To pilots on daytime runs, the reason is as clear as prairie air. There aren't any town lights because there aren't any towns. Or much in the way of traffic or rural dwellings, either. The settled Oklahoma farmlands to the east and west are suddenly diluted by broad sweeps of grassy space-the great unbroken roll of Oklahoma's Osage Hills, whose fertile soils are too thinly spread over flinty beds of limestone to take a plow.
This is the southerly end of a north-south landform that extends northward almost to the Nebraska line. In Kansas it is the "Flint Hills" or "Bluestem Hills"; in Oklahoma it's called "the Osage Hills" or simply "The Osage." In both states it is largely unplowed uplands that may not make corn or wheat, but are wonderfully adapted to grass and cattle—an enclave of boots and saddles in a realm of cornpickers and wheat combines. And because the native sods have never been broken for crops, these hills constitute the greatest, reach of native tallgrass prairieland remaining in the New World.
It is not, however, genuine tallgrass prairie. Some of it may be again, but for now it's prairie pasture, grazed or mown short for the most part. And one of the fondest dreams of many people has been the restoration of a large block of The Osage to its original condition. Now, at last, it is hope susceptible of attainment.
In the grassy heart of The Osage, about twenty miles north of the town of Pawhuska, lies the 30,000 acre Barnard Ranch. It's an old outfit, and for the first time in about eighty years it is in new ownership: bought by The Nature Conservancy as the cornerstone of a major tallgrass prairie restoration. It is only the beginning. More will be added to the initial 30,000 acres, all of it restored and managed.
Why is the Conservancy undertaking a prairie restoration on such a large scale? Aren't there prairie preserves enough as it is? And why the Barnard Ranch?
Native tallgrass prairie is the rarest of all North America's major biomes. It's been said that of the original 142 million acres of "true prairie" only about ten percent remains, implying that there are still 14 million acres surviving. If there really is that much left (and it's doubtful), most of it is in scraps and odd fragments. Even if such bits and pieces have never been disturbed, that's not good enough. A real tallgrass prairie is more than just a plot of native grasses and forbs. It is a system defined by climate, weather, size, and the interaction of fire and grazing bison. And because those factors no longer combine as a balanced whole anywhere in North America, true tallgrass prairie can be considered to be extinct as a natural functioning ecosystem.
Late in 1988, The Nature Conservancy consulted national prairie authorities to consider the question of major prairie preserve. Among other things, it agreed that:
- a functioning tallgrass prairie system does now exist,
- such a community must include reestablish of the fire/bison interaction,
- the best chances to do that are in the Flint Hills of Kansas or Oklahoma's Osage Hills,
- a prairie preserve should be in the most diverse landscape possible, including a complete watershed and a core of at least 16,500 acres in order to maintain a minimum viable bison population (500 breeding adults) in a fire/bison interaction.
All of these factors could be obtained at only one site—in the Osage Hills of northeastern Oklahoma, where the Barnard Ranch was for sale at a reasonable price. And so the Conservancy bought it.
It was a good buy. The big ranch has been well managed through the decades, and its prairie base is in generally good shape. It may lack the shaggy, varied richness of the old original, perhaps, but it's not tame land. It is wild land needing only a chance to break free and reassert its old ways, and the Conservancy will be giving it that chance. That block of 30,000 acres is an ideal foundation for restoring a landscape that would not only be big enough to look like a prairie, but big enough to act like a prairie, supporting, the kinds of prairie life it should.
It's a wonderfully diverse place, a varied prairiescape lying just beyond the western outriders of the Ozark forestlands. Along the easterly flanks of the Osage Hills are stunted forests of post oak and blackjack oak. Farther out, in the prairie creek valleys, there are likely to be groves of boxelder, ash, cottonwood, and hackberry, The creeks are unlike any I knew as a boy in Iowa, where our creeks cut into deep prairie soils. Those in The Osage cut no deeper than the limestone underpinnings, dancing over little waterfalls and bright riffles, through rock-walled pools and down runs that may be floored with bedrock.
Visiting The Osage
Tallgrass Prairie Preserve
P.O. Box 458
Pawhuska, OK 74056
(918) 287-4803
Hours: The Preserve is open everyday from dawn until dusk.
Directions: The Preserve is approximately 60 miles northwest of Tulsa. To access the preserve from Pawhuska, drive north on Kihekan from where it intersects Highway 60 in downtown Pawhuska (at the corner with the triangle-shaped building). Tallgrass Prairie Preserve signs will direct you from this point to the Headquarters.
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A restoration that approaches the original prairie condition won't be simple, quick, or cheap. The composition of plant species in The Osage has been altered by more than a century of ranching, and the resumption of old rhythms and balances will depend on judicious replacements—the vital bison/fire interaction—and time.
Those prairies are missing many of their original fauna, and some of their old-time flora. The cast of characters has been drastically altered. Yet the main stage is still there. Now it's a matter of casting, of organizing the dramatis personae, of lining up the permanent stage crew that will oversee the production. This critic predicts standing ovations from audiences who know high drama when they see it.
Once again, as so often in the past, The Nature Conservancy is the backer of a long-running hit.
