Prairie Renewal

Homestead Range Renewal Initiative (HRRI)

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PRESERVING THE TALLGRASS PRAIRIE FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

Overview. The Homestead Range Renewal Initiative (HRRI) is a landowner-sponsored initiative on 2,900 privately-owned acres in the Flint Hills of Chase County, Kansas. HRRI’s purpose is to explore and document new rangeland management techniques in an effort to create a sustainable grazing management plan that renews the prairie while continuing to provide economic return to family ranchers.

The tallgrass prairie, according to numerous sources, is one of the most severely affected ecosystems in North America, with as little as 1% of the original prairie still intact. The Flint Hills of Kansas, in which the Homestead Ranch is located, is one of the last great preserves of tallgrass prairie in the country. According to a study published in Conservation Biology (August 2003), the remaining fragments have the potential to be “long-term refuges for prairie species, sources of genetic variability, and material for restoration.”

Recent research has shown that traditional rangeland management techniques are not geared toward maintaining biological diversity, but rather, favor the most productive forage species for domestic cattle. Although the long-term impact of this approach is not fully known, indicators such as the decline in grassland bird populations and the increase in invasive trees point toward a decline in the overall health of our nation’s remaining grasslands.

Context. Prior to European settlement, the patterns of burning and grazing—and the interaction between the two—was very random and even chaotic on the prairie, naturally supporting bio-diversity. The model HRRI is testing attempts to mimic that natural pattern by creating an ever-changing combination of burned and unburned, grazed and ungrazed areas, with as few fences and trees as possible. This “grazing-fire” interaction model, which is based on the research of Dr. Sam Fuehlendorf, a noted researcher at Oklahoma State University, is expected to enhance heterogeneity, which contributes to “species diversity, variety of wildlife habitats, and ecosystem function” on rangelands grazed by livestock. This increased heterogeneity, according to Dr. Fuehlendorf, “also has the potential to improve livestock production by increasing the diversity of forage species that contribute to enhanced diet quality throughout the year.”

Program. HRRI’s multi-faceted program—alternative grazing strategies, fence removal, a prescribed patch burning system, reseeding of native plants on previously cultivated land, and management of invasive trees—is an ecosystem approach to rangeland management that simultaneously considers biological diversity and grazing productivity. This integrated program is expected to provide a viable, economically-feasible alternative for preservation of the tallgrass prairie by ranchers. The first phase of this seven-year experimental program began in 2003. Click here to see HRRI's Critical Success Factors and Key Performance Indicators.

Documentation. Documentation for the project includes research and monitoring activities such as an annual breeding bird survey, fixed-point photography at eighteen locations (three times a year), cattle production rate data collection, and mapping. This information will be organized and analyzed in order to document the model for replication by other ranchers.

Support. Financial and technical support for the project have been provided in part by U.S. Fish & Wildlife, The Nature Conservancy, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Legacy Resource Management Program (DoD), and a producer grant from the USDA Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (SARE) program. Click here to read our SARE final report.

Advisory Team. An advisory team meets regularly to assist in planning, monitoring and implementation of the project. The team was expanded in 2005 to include a youth partner who will help carry the legacy into the future.

Jane Koger & Marva Weigelt, Homestead Ranch

Jim Minnerath, U.S. Fish & Wildlife

Brian Obermeyer, The Nature Conservancy

Gay Spencer, Natural Resources Conservation Service

Leigh Ann Crofoot, Chase County Rancher

Jim Lauer, Chase County Youth Partner

Special Advisor: Dr. Sam Fuhlendorf, Oklahoma State University

Permission is required to use any text, photography or image from this website.

Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how.

Aldo Leopold

Click OK if you'd like to have your thoughts provoked.

Click on the compass to see fixed photo point & burn maps

Listen to prairie chickens

Click the magazine cover to read Managing for Grassland Diversity: A Study on Grazing-Fire Interactions in the Flint Hills

Kansas Cattle Rancher Becomes

Steward of the Grass

Environmental Defense

Center for Conservation Incentives

Read article

After 25 Years in the Business, Jane Koger Says Ranching is for the Birds

Read article from Matfield Green Newsletter

Photo by Mike Blair, KDWP

Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of the soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it. In this field the soul has room enough to expand herself, to display all her boundless faculties, and all her beautiful and interesting extravagancies and absurdities.