Tall Grass Prairie Preserve, Oklahoma, USA
Created | Updated Sep 2, 2002
Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam,
Where the deer and the antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.
Chorus
Home, home on the range,
Where the deer and the antelope play;
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.
The red man was pressed from this part of the West,
He's likely no more to return
To the banks of Red River where seldom if ever
Their flickering campfires burn.
Past
Before arrival of European settlers the range, or rather prairie, was North America's largest ecosystem comprised of more than 140 million acres
1
that extended from Texas in the south to Canada in the north up through the central part of the United States of America on the east side of the Rocky Mountain divide.
It was very lightly populated by various tribes of Native Americans, more popularly known as Red Indians, and inhabited by a diverse wildlife consisting in large herbivores such as bison; medium herbivores such as deer, elk, and antilope; numerous small animals; small carnivores such as coyote, bobcat, and fox; medium carnivores such as wolves; large carnivores such as bear; song birds such as wrens and meadowlarks; and birds of prey such as the hawks and eagles. To the first Europeans it was Edenic. A hint of this can be found in the traditional cowboy song Home on the Range, two verses and chorus of which introduce this article.
Present
Lured by the rich, black, prairie soils the Europeans ploughed it up to plant their imported crops. Now the finely balanced prairie ecosytem is near gone; what took ages to create was almost completely destroyed within 170 years of settlement. Minute sections of the original prairie remain scattered about the country, the largest of which is the 39,000 acres of the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve.
Future
The Tall Grass Prairie Preserve headquarters is located in the middle of the preserve at the end of an unpaved road, 15 miles north of Pawhuska in Osage County of northeastern Oklahoma. Pawhuska is 70 miles north-northwest of Tulsa and 25 miles west of Bartlesville
2
in Oklahoma.
Inception
In 1989 the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve was created when The Nature Conservancy bought the Chapman-Barnard ranch. Availability of land such as this is infrequent; this particular property had not been on the market for more than 70 years.
The Nature Conservancy is a non-governmental organisation that relies on volunteer services, membership dues, and private financial support of its operations. Formed in the early 1950s, Conservancy membership has grown to about 1 million members today compared with the World Wildlife Fund that has about 1.2 millions.
Choice Location
Chapman-Barnard ranch is an ideal location for preservation of an example of a tall grass prairie ecosystem for many reasons, some of the most important being:
- It has never been ploughed.
- Its size, about 60 square miles.
- Variety of natural communities.
- It is bisected by Sand Creek, so that it encompasses an entire wateshed.
- Chapman and Barnard were wise stewards who left the land in excellent condition.
Never ploughed is the key reason. Ploughing destroys the root systems of the all-important grasses upon which the bison and other creatures depend.
In this region some of America's most productive grasslands exist on land that enjoys diverse soils across a varied landscape. Conservancy scientists have documented more than 750 different species of plant on the preserve. Combination of weather, topography and soil conditions combine to create a landscape of extraordinary productivity. An average year on the preserve produces from 1,300 to 9,000 pounds of above-ground biomass per acre, depending on depth of soil, slope, and moisture.
Design
Design criteria for the preservation of the prairie ecosystem are:
Maintain an area large enough to create a dynamic, process-driven landscape at an appropriate scale.
Include as much biodiversity as possible.
Attempt to preserve a complete watershed
3
. Unpolluted water is vital to the health of plant, insect, and animal communities.
Management
Management of the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve is based on science, using the tools of fire and grazing.
The prairie ecosystem depends on disturbance. Scientists report that during a period extending into the past about 10,000 years, life on the prairie evolved to withstand and thrive under fire and the intermittent grazing of bison, which were the main sources of disturbance
4.
Research
Scientific research is a continuous activity at the Tall Grass Prairie. Here are a few examples of the kind of research performed there:
Investigations into the effectiveness of soil remediation clean-up
after polluting spills from the oil wells.
- Community Ecology, research into how various species interact with each other.
Investigation of the decline in the population of Greater Prairie Chickens.
Effect of grazing pressure and fire on vegetation.
Diversity of butterfly species.
Diversity of avian species.
Much of this research is performed by scientists from Oklahoma State University (OSU), University of Oklahoma (OU), and the University of Tulsa (TU). Field researchers stay in premises at the preserve headquarters. The Tall Grass Prairie Preserve in Osage County is host to research projects from organisations elsewhere too.
Acknowledgements
Facts and figures presented in this article are drawn from source material provided to docents of the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve by The Nature Conservancy for dissemination to the public
5.
While making sure that the verses of Home on the Range quoted here are beyond copyright restriction, the personnel of h2g2 & BBC Rights Department found three versions of the song, which we provide for your amusement in a separate article.
Approximately equal to 219 thousand square miles, 567 thousand square kilometers, or 57 million hectares.
2
Bartlesville is host to the OK Mozart Festival and home of the Price Tower.
3Watershed: an area of land from which water drains to a given point.
4
Ploughing is a form of disturbance too, but it is like remodelling
one's house with dynamite or seeking a cure by drinking cyanide.
5
Like most persons, Fu-Manchu only knows what he is told or happens to experience. Any resemblance of this text to 'diced carrots'
6
is due to weakness in the regurgitating power of your humble servant.
6
Refer to Dr Billy Connolly's thesis that no matter what one eats, a 'comfortable vomit' inevitably resembles diced carrots, though the patient can be certified as never having eaten the vegetable. Dr Connolly defended this thesis in public before an audience of paying guests — a video recording is available somewhere.