[Music] The history of the plains is not just a story of humanity, but of the creatures large and small with whom we share this open landscape.

[Music] To discuss plains wildlife past and present, Don Rowlison spoke with Lucas Kramer and Jeff Prendergast with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.

Historically you think of these vast herds of bison and elk and pronghorn going through here that were grazers.

The wildlife was much more prominent than it is now.

As I said the buffalo, the pronghorn, and we do have herds of those, but the elk too.

Most people think that the elk were always in the mountains, but there's vast herds of elk in here.

I know there's one source that James R. Mead who is a trapper and trader and stuff, I think in Lincoln County one time he saw a herd of elk that he thought was 3,000 in it.

And so we've kind of pushed those off and the buffalo are coming back because of the state and other private people doing it and the pronghorn.

Even beyond just the herbivores, we had large carnivores that now we think of as mountain species like grizzly bears and wolves that would have historically been in that were actually plains animals that were out here in these plains.

The reason we think of them as mountains is that's where they got pushed to to where we couldn't get in and during the market hunting days we couldn't get in and really persecute those animals in some of that rougher terrain and so that's where they were sustained at.

But yeah in historic times the grizzly bears out here we talked about the plains grizzly because they thought it was bigger and it primarily preyed on big game animals such as the buffalo or the bison and the elk.

But they talked about it being a light color, that they talked about how big and rugged they were and allegedly with one swipe they could kill the buffalo, they could break its neck.

So that's a pretty big bear.

Or a wimpy buffalo one of the other.

And of course then they had the wolves following the elk and buffalo herds around them all the time and they were saying they called them a buffalo wolf or a white wolf but they were kind of lighter colored so I don't know if that in the same way with the grizzly if that's a breeding population for the plains or if they are a different species.

If I was to guess if anything I'd say subspecies and they're probably not a different species but you know some of the grizzly bear behavior is is an artifact of them being a plains animal you know black bears whenever the momma of black bear gets in trouble she sends the cubs up a tree and she runs off and comes back and gets them later and part of the aggressive nature of a of a grizzly bear mom is because they were in the plains where no one nowhere to hide the cubs and so they were attacked they were attacking to protect the cubs because they didn't have anywhere to put them so you know there's a lot of things that like whenever that makes sense when you really think about it.

Mule deer is another one like we see a lot of deer out here still but it's it's predominantly whitetail where historically this would have been more mule deer country and and whitetail deer were more of an eastern eastern deciduous forest species that kind of was in kansas but not nearly at the densities of what we had it now and was primarily an eastern kansas species and this would have been more mule deer habitat out here so and then like beyond just the megafaun of species we think of so we historically had sharp tail grouse in kansas in in the north central part of our state where there was a drought in the early 1900s that kind of pushed that species collapsed northward into the core of its range into the sand hills prairie chickens collapsed east into the flint hills prairie chickens were able to use the fingers of grasslands through the smoky hill area and re-establish out here and where we've got good prairie chickens now or if you think about prairie dogs like prairie dogs we've probably lost about 90 percent of the prairie dogs that used to be out here and prairie dogs are what we call an ecosystem engineer they create a habitat by being there and there's over 200 species of that either rely on or or benefit from prairie dog towns like swift fox, badgers, burrowing owls, kangaroo rats, black-footed ferrets were an obligate so they can only be where there's prairie dogs so so the loss of the of that across much of this has really changed what sort of species at least in the densities i think there's some of those still exist but not at the densities they would have historically.

Yeah I ran across one reference, Prairie Dog Creek in the north they said that it got its name because there's a prairie dog town it was 60 miles long and recently I read something uh by an author there's an naturalist and stuff and and he said that along the Smoky Hill hthere was one 120 miles long that's a lot of prairie dogs.

That's a lot of prairie dogs.

But I know the farmers want to get rid of them or the the ranchers and stuff because they eat up so much of the grass around it and the mounds that things get crippled.

And there is a competition factor there between the livestock and the prairie dogs, but at the same time just like after a fresh burn you know cattle concentrate on that new growth there is some evidence that those cattle are constant are sometimes concentrating on those prairie dog towns because there's always that fresh new growth so so while there is some some direct removal of forage there's also this this flush of of highly highly nutritious forage around those areas as well so it's kind of like it is competition but at the same time can be somewhat beneficial in some ways too so.

When I was younger people always talked about the civet cat.

A spotted a skunk and they always said that it smelled worse than a striped skunk.

Taxonomists said that those were different species because the civet cat could climb a tree and they had different musculature and they had claws on the their front paws which the striped skunk is not.

i've never seen one, eastern spotted skunk and so they are two separate species.

My understanding is like whenever that we there was a lot of individual farmsteads out here there was a lot more edge habitat for them and allowed them to expand out here and were fairly common there were i think there's some of our trapping records there was a few years where they were like the number one species harvested way back when.

Our environmental services section has been doing a bunch of surveying looking for the civet cat because they are a state threatened species.

Well the other thing is that the jackrabbits I mean when I was younger jackrabbits were everywhere they were a varmint and you could kill them and you could sell them for like 30 cents a piece and those went to mink and fox farms uh to feed them they had a big jackrabbit drives and killed thousands and thousands and they were giving money for yeah they had a bounty on the on the jackrabbits also the coyotes.

We don't see many jackrabbits anymore but there used to be a whitetail jackrabbit too yep and the whitetail according to my grandfather who was out here early on said that the the blacktails ran the whitetails out because it used to be predominantly whitetail and i have some pictures from the Cottonwood Ranch of some hunting scenes and they have blacktail jackrabbits on a slab of rock and some big whitetail jackrabbits and so I'd always heard that the the whitetail jackrabbit is about a third larger than the blacktail.

That would make sense based on the biology you know blacktails are more of a desert southwest kind of hot environment and typically you get smaller bodies on those individuals than you would on a northern species so like the the whitetail being is more of a northern jackrabbit you still get them in like in northern Iowa and into the Dakotas so they most likely were a little bit larger body size when you're talking about jackrabbits and and how many you used to see there was probably an artificial explosion of jackrabbits when you think about the timing of it was a big effort to remove a lot of predator species you know we had bounties on coyotes and we talked about wolves and bears getting removed.

You think about ddt that was used the hawks the raptor predators were way down and so you kind of had this kind of explosion around the same time as we had those dry conditions where they could persist it's not that the drought's necessarily good for them but they don't it doesn't hit them as hard as it does a lot of other species so they were able to maintain those large numbers we have a summer brood survey where we're mostly tracking up and game birds but we've we also do keep track of our rabbits and we see some little bit of fluctuations with those as well where we've had we'll have a good year i think last year we actually had a pretty good year for jackrabbits so we still do get a little bit of that fluctuation but yeah not and we don't get the explosions like what what we had historically.

They talk about in the early days there beaver in every stream out here and I don't see many beaver anymore I don't see muskrats much.

Beavers are very very beneficial to O h i think so, too.

It's just like, you know if you look at our streams and our rivers they're getting incised more and more.

And so those beavers slow water down.

They keep water on your land on the landscape longer.

They create those wet meadows they create habitat for all sorts of things that need more water.

The USDA actually has a new conservation practice called BDAs or or their low-tech structure analogs the idea is to to mimic what a beaver does I would much rather it be done by a beaver They build them a lot better than we can and they would stand a lot longer.

Out of littler material.

I see muskrats periodically and beavers periodically but yeah not not like what it would have been historically i other stories of people talk it that talk about paying their their tuition trapping over christmas break at Cheyanne Bottoms.

I mean we definitely don't have those sort of numbers anymore.

One of the old deals with the beaver too they say once the beaver came in they dammed up the stream they cut down the trees that were absorbing water and once the beaver left you had a new meadow they were really making bottomlands.

Yeah and and we talked about prairie dogs being an ecosystem engineer, beavers are the other really well you know for this area would be the nut the other ecosystem engineer because they create a new habitat by their presence being there that a lot of species that utilize.

So okay, if we had to do over should we get the ringneck pheasant out here.

They're an exotic species but we would call them almost naturalized you know they've been a part of this landscape for over a hundred years now and so across American culture the you know South Dakota it's their state bird even though it's an exotic species the thing about pheasants is that it's not like they're out competing a lot of our natives for the same T hey're filling an upland game bird niche that wasn't really otherwise utilized.

So prairie chickens tend to do best in areas with 60 percent or greater grassland in the area really they really peak at about 80 percent grassland in an area where pheasants they they want at least 50 percent crop land so they kind of max out at that 50 percent crop/50 percent grassland and so you see those pheasants in those areas like that.

Quail they do well on the edges of crop lands as well but they do well out in the the shorter grazed pastures that the pheasants aren't aren't taking advantage of so they're not they're not really causing a problem for any of our native species and they've been like I said they've just been an icon for this for this country really I mean even more so than from where that from where they came from.

So this is a shot of some of the rangeland that we have what's the advantage of having this sort of environment for the upland game birds?

Grasslands are real key to them and their habitat throughout their year and throughout their lifespan and particularly when you get in these areas like this where you've got the diversity is uh with the different forbs and wildflowers um it provides a host of different resources that they're going to need to complete their life cycle.

You know typically we don't like monoculture stands of just one species we want a diverse mix with both grasses and wildflowers for them to be able to you know complete their full nesting brood rearing um over winter survival in those sort of element conditions so.

A lot of species need the forbs for the seeds.

Yeah, particularly and and beyond even just the seeds they attract a host of arthropods insects that those a lot of the times those little chicks that rely on those.

This was a grassland state right and so like there was very few trees in this part of the world and one just the loss of that grassland to agriculture but then also from the invasion of these trees that as we transition more into a woody state you're removing that you know the quality of that habitat for what's remaining.

Even behind us here where you get some of these these spotted cedars that sort of a habitat isn't as good for like even just a quail like you're providing a roost for for hawks to to prey on those species there's some avoidance like prairie chickens are really adapted to be in treeless environments and so we there's some research that we did with lesser prairie chickens that showed that even like one or two three-foot trees within within a section is enough to make them try to avoid those those areas for nesting because you know that hen she's there for a full month once she sets that chooses that site.

So cedars are native species, Eastern Red Cedar but they're really susceptible to fire and so historically they would have been restricted because you had these big sweeping wildfires that would come off these plains pre you know before we got out here and were suppressing fire.

As we've pulled that fire out it's allowed these these cedars to expand and we've added a lot.

You know even though it's a native species we're a grassland state and they're an invader and they cause problems for for our grassland wildlife as well as our producers You know that that's removing grass that's available for their cattle at the same time.

Well and they do absorb a lot of the groundwater that water yep I won't say ground water but the water in there.

There are many ranchers that have done a complete removal of cedars in their pasture and and all of them will attest that more water is in their their intermittent creeks and in their and their ponds well.

And turkeys archaeologically in western Kansas western third of the state, you don't find turkey bones in prehistoric sites the thing is with me I'm thinking they're they roost in trees.

Do turkeys ever roost on the ground?

Not that i'm aware of No trees, no turkeys yeah so they would have been their distribution out here would have been very limited you know and and they would have been easy targets even in as you went to the east of Kansas turkeys were extirpated from Kansas because early early settlers they were an easy target based on they could go to roost trees you know there it wasn't that which roost tree they're going to be in there's the the tree and that we're going to go to the tree and get dinner you know so But the turkey putting the Rio Grand turkeys in here were a Wildlife and Parks deal to transplant Those have been very successful.

The restoration of the wild turkey is one of the best success stories of conservation.

I mean and you know while right now we're we're not enjoying the peaks that we had you know 10, 15 years ago but compared to what they were um I mean we've done a they've done a great job about restoring them across several areas.

And they're almost too late on the buffalo.

Yeah yeah and and we don't like while we do have several buffalo herds in Kansas we do not have a free-ranging buffalo herd in Kansas like the only free-ranging one really that I'm aware of is in Yellowstone I think there might be a few tribal herds but the the the really free-ranging herd is in in in Yellowstone.

Most of these are all uh private herds or or owned animals so And then elk like as we've you know we reintroduced elk in the the you know Fort Riley but that was a very intentional reintroduction yeah and then it's a wild herd but um that can move on and off the fort, but what we've had recently is we've had a lot of natural outside of the fort we've had a lot of along the Ark particularly and starting to show up in other places where we've had elk starting to work back into the state and establish.

They're finding the places where they're tolerated.

Some landowners really like to have them and so they they protect them and allow them to persist in that area.

Those sort of large megafauna creatures are are showing back up in the landscape in places.

You know mountain lions is always everyone's biggest you know we get a lot of calls on mountain lion sightings and with the trail cameras that are put on the landscape these days whether they're young sub-adult males moving from the Black Hills in Nebraska following the rivers we are seeing or or being able to record those through those trail cam pictures a lot easier you just like the bears and the elks that the mountain line it's been more of a natural like where we see those things moving back in natural and that's really from our perspective if we can get that that's the best way to do it.

At times and as necessary we have reintroduced species.

We reintroduced the river otter west of Emporia in the Cottonwood River that species moved down I think to the Flint Hills National Wildlife Refuge and persisted there at low levels for for decades but the river otters that we've seen now have actually were natural recolonization so we had a small population that never really expanded that we put back but then as they've as the populations in Missouri got big they naturally recolonize and have spread far and wide there there that we've had otters showing up even as far west we had one in Dodge City last year show up.

You know another one that we've federally endangered black-footed ferret which wasn't our reintroduction but has been put back into the state out in western Kansas.

yep yep some other reintroductions that are Yeah in Logan County.

Some other reintroductions that are happening right now through our ecological services is the alligator snapping turtle and the Topeka Shiner.

They're working on efforts to reintroduce those two species.

I used to see a lot of snapping turtles on the roads and stuff and I haven't seen those.

You know we're able to put these really high dollar gps transmitters on these animals these days and and it's not uncommon for wildlife to make long treks and and so this year we had a moose come into jule county i think that's our second or third moose sighting you know we've had confirmed wolves and so there are those there are all those types of species that make long treks and end up sometimes where there you know we usually get a push of snowy owls every however many year when their prey species becomes limited and it makes them travel further so One of those things that that is you know is going to be a big uh influence on the species that we see more now of is the woody invasion so like cedar wax wings you know that's something that would have been here but but we're definitely seeing in more numbers now.

We've got a handful of woodcock hunters in the state now and you know woodcock is an early forest successional species And I think we might have already mentioned the white-tailed deer like again they were more of an eastern deciduous species that's been able to expand as we've had that woody expansion to the west With the restraints on ddt and some protections for raptors we've definitely seen a big increase in in the raptor populations but the big change is going to be our meso carnivores the the kind of mid-sized uh omnivores like raccoons and skunks and uh possums and they're not you know your true like predator predator where they're seeking out you know a raccoon will eat anything you know.

I always say like quail are like a little flying snickers bar.

Like any everything will eat a quail but the raccoons they're not normally like seeking.

You know they they are a nest predator.

They eat a lot of nests but it's not like they're out seeking nests out.

They're wandering down the edge of the road they may find a Mcdonald's wrapper and lick the cheese off of it and then stumble into a nest and eat every egg that's in the nest.

They're not actively they're not actively seeking out those nests and but but but Quill and cheese sauce.

That sounds pretty good.

But the problem with the predators like from from from an upland game bird standpoint is they do well if we if you give them the habitat that of avoiding predators but whenever you have more predators and less habitat like it becomes there's not as much area for those predators to search so it's harder for those quail to maintain you know 24, 25 days on a nest without being detected if all they've got is a 30 foot strip of grass on the edge of the road versus having a big pasture where they could be out there anywhere within that grassland landscape.

You can add and change habitat to to stack the deck in in the the prey's favor I guess.

You know coyotes have been on this landscape for a long time.

They're sometimes hated, often hated.

Sometimes some people really enjoy coyotes uh but they're um you know we've seen a steady increase in that in that population.

Jeff just talked about our meso predators increasing and if they have no predator outside of humans there's nothing there to help control them and so those folks that may want the coyote eradicated then you're doing away with your your your one predator of the meso predator that still exists and so i have a lot of respect for coyotes because you know we've thrown about everything at them uh as a population you can to to reduce their numbers but yet they still persist.

They're a survivor.

And i have a lot of respect and I also am pro hunt and and trap and and manage their populations in a way that's beneficial, but i love having them as part of that system and predators are important part of our of the ecosystem out here.

Our program in Kansas is called Habitat First.

So it's all part of the system but we want folks that are managing their land for wildlife to think about habitat first before they start thinking about you know the eradication of predators.

So what can you recommend to the people that sees Cottonwood Connections to do?

Again Kansas being a grassland state like like we're really the the big focus should be on protecting grasslands.

Property you have the ability to impact management on really work to to reduce trees fire is an important part of of managing grasslands that some people get pretty nervous about so anything we can do to push push our system back towards more native.

And you know reaching out to the department we've got a ton if we don't have the program we know the programs that we can help.

Kansas has been recognized for being having one of the most the highest investment in private lands conservation out of any any state agency in the country so we're a private land state we know that's where our impact is.

We're here to help.

If you own land and you have the ability to impact land management definitely reach out and see what programs are out there but if you don't manage land you know i just encourage folks to get outside you know utilize your state wildlife areas your state parks the little three percent that we do have that that's open to the public we want you to get out and you know it's good for your mental health.

It's good to be out and and have a connection with the land and wildlife and that's why I hunt, fish and camp is because it gives me a connection to this type of stuff and it makes me want to you know conserve it, makes me want to keep it for the next generation, and that's our goal as an agency is to get people outdoors.

And that doesn't mean you got to be hunting and fishing.

It just means getting out and enjoying what we have here in this state because our state changes drastically from west to east and you should know kind of the history of it is important and what we're out here to conserve [Music] [Music]