Flint Hills rancher works to restore biodiversity of imperiled Kansas tallgrass prairie ecosystems

Bill Sproul ranches 2,200 acres in the Flint Hills according to a philosophy he calls "community-based conservation," which he developed after reading Aldo Leopold's seminal collection of essays about environmental conservation, "A Sand County Almanac." (Photo by Erin Socha for Kansas Reflector)

CHAUTAUQUA COUNTY — About 15 years ago, Flint Hills rancher Bill Sproul was given an oak sapling, sprouted from an acorn dropped beneath the tree where conservationist Aldo Leopold sat and wrote his seminal 1949 collection of essays, “A Sand County Almanac.”

Sproul brought the sapling home to his ranch near Sedan and planted it, looking forward to the shade his Leopold oak would one day provide.

It grew slowly. After two years, the sapling had four leaves. By the fourth year, it had six. But in the fifth year, one day the oak was gone. Next to its tiny stump sat a pile of rabbit pellets. And Sproul thinks Leopold would be thrilled by that.

“Because that rabbit belongs there too,” he said. “That tree belongs there, the rabbit belongs there, they all belong there. Somebody eat somebody, somebody eat them. So, I don’t have my Leopold oak no more. I got a Leopold rabbit. And maybe the coyote ate the rabbit. And now maybe I got a Leopold coyote. And that’s how I view everything out there.”

Cattle ranchers like Sproul have translated this conservationist philosophy into land management by adopting practices collectively known as “regenerative grazing.” This approach aims to preserve native grasslands and keep healthy ecosystems intact.

Sproul was the first recipient of the Sand County Foundation’s Kansas Leopold Conservation Award, in 2015, for the work he has done on his 2,200-acre ranch in the southern Flint Hills.  There, he has removed thousands of woody invasive trees and incorporated holistic practices such as patch-burn grazing, which selectively burns pasture each year and rotates cattle at rates that allow native plants to flourish. The annual award is given to farmers and ranchers who, like Sproul, embrace their roles as environmental stewards.

Sproul knew he was doing something right when, after eight years of this type of management, rattlesnake master reappeared in his pastures. Rattlesnake master is a native flowering plant that can indicate healthy, high-quality prairie, but cattle will overgraze it if they’re allowed.

Native grasslands across the Great Plains evolved in large part because of the ecological disturbances of grazing animals and wildfire. On Bill Sproul’s ranch in the Flint Hills, he uses regenerative grazing, which was developed around those disturbances, to maintain healthy prairie. (Photo by Erin Socha for Kansas Reflector)

Rob Manes, co-director of regenerative grazing lands strategy for the Nature Conservancy, said managing cattle to allow plants time to recover is one of the foundational pillars of regenerative grazing.

“Once a pasture is grazed, most systems need a full growing season for those plants to be untouched and recover in order to reach their optimum ecological help,” Manes said. “That means they’re driving carbon into the soil. It means they’re replenishing their root stocks. It also means that those plants that get really hammered by cattle” have time to rest.

Some native species like rattlesnake master and compass plant, he said, are a “snickers bar” to cows.

But practices like overgrazing, Sproul said, are ingrained in a system that pushes for a maximum dollar return on every inch of land. Letting a pasture rest, or reducing the number of cattle during drought years, often means less profit.

“We push stuff too hard. We overgraze,” Sproul said. “If you can grow 200 bushels of corn, let’s shoot for 300. More fertilizer, more chemicals, better genetics, more and more and more. And if we don’t use it all up, it goes into the water system, and we have pollution, and we have all these problems with nitrates in the water and all kinds of stuff. But we’re going after 300 bushels of corn, because that’s what we’re taught. If there’s any grass left standing out there, get it.”

Bill Sproul examines bluestem grass on his ranch in the Flint Hills. “When you view land as a community,” he says, “then you start understanding all these different things that’s part of the community, and you’re part of it too.” (Photo by Erin Socha for Kansas Reflector)

Reading about Leopold’s concept of land ethics in “A Sand County Almanac,” he said, changed his worldview.

He no longer views land as a commodity, he said, but as a community that includes the prairie, the oak, the rabbit and the coyote.

“When you view land as a commodity, you can do anything you want because it’s yours. You can plow it. You can overgraze it. You can over farm it, “ he said. “When you view land as a community, that’s when you can really start to love and cherish land. Instead of abusing it, you start taking care of it.”

Sproul’s Flint Hills ranch protects one of the last remaining tracts of what was once the second-most diverse ecosystem on the planet, behind only the Amazon rainforests.

“Tallgrass prairie was once the continent-defining ecosystem,” said Tony Capizzo, director of the Flint Hills Initiative for the Nature Conservancy.

“It stretched from Texas to Canada and from Kansas east through Iowa, Illinois and into northwest Indiana,” Capizzo added. “At the time of colonization, there was about 170 million acres of tallgrass prairie, and today we have less than 4% of that remaining. Two-thirds of what we have left is in the Flint Hills.”

Flint Hills rancher Bill Sproul manages cattle on his property according to principles of regenerative grazing, and has seen an increase in plant species rarely found outside of healthy, high-quality prairie. (Photo by Erin Socha for Kansas Reflector)

A history of cattle ranching in Kansas is one of the reasons the Flint Hills were spared the plow, Capizzo said, while states like Iowa were almost completely converted to row crop agriculture.  Before colonization, native American tribes managed the grasslands with prescribed fire to influence bison migration.

Human intervention and disturbance have played a key role in the prairie’s evolution, said Manes, the Nature Conservancy’s regenerative grazing director. Grasslands not only benefit from grazing but need it in order to be healthy, he said.

“Regenerative grazing pivots on a couple of really fundamental principles,” Manes said. “One is appropriate disturbance. Without that, it turns into forest. The disturbance in the case of most prairie is grazing, the clipping of the plants, the hoof action in the soil, and most often fire at some interval. It might be a long time, but fire is almost always an important component.”

For a decade, Sproul practiced patch-burn grazing, a system which burned a third of the pasture each year. Cattle would graze new growth on burnt acres and leave the rest to rejuvenate. His system is simpler now, he said, and more similar to how fire lit by native Americans or lightning would burn: he just lights the fire once. Spots that are less dry or contain less fuel naturally extinguish themselves.

Flint Hills rancher Bill Sproul examines sericea lespedeza plants on his property. He has developed a burn schedule with the goal of preventing the virulently invasive species from setting seed. (Photo by Erin Socha for Kansas Reflector)

Sproul’s new method takes some of the fun out of it, he said.

“The most fun part of all of burning is relighting because it’s safe,” he said. “You can do it in 30 mph wind because it’s black all around you. You’re riding around on your four-wheeler, and you’re looking for horns, and you’re lighting fire. Fire takes off because the wind’s blowing like crazy. And none of your neighbors care, because they’ve all burned. We don’t do that no more.”

Allowing the fire to burn unevenly creates a landscape mosaic that is essential for what Manes describes as another one of the fundamental principles of regenerative grazing.

“What we’re looking for is heterogeneity across the landscape,” Manes said.

A mix of growth provides different habitats for different species, especially grassland birds.

“You have one place that’s been grazed recently,” he said, “one place that hasn’t been grazed for a long time, and that’s where the prairie chickens and the Henslow’s sparrows nest, and over here is where the American golden plovers eat when they’re migrating through in the the fall, because they like the bare ground. And so, you create that diversity. It also creates resilience in the pastures and helps a rancher ensure that she or he will have grass even in drought conditions.”

After decades of ranching, Sproul isn’t terribly concerned with passing his ranch on to his children. His ranch, he said, is just a postage stamp compared to the whole world.

“I would rather instill in my children and grandchildren land ethics,” he said. “That’s where you can pass your legacy on.”

“Nothing is really ours, it’s the next, the next, and the next and the next,” he added. “We’re just stewards here for a little while.”