A local trails enthusiast wants to use an Anderson County prairie preservation site as a model for an area at the Lehigh Portland Trails.
The Anderson County Prairie Preserve, just north of Welda and bisected by U.S. 169, features 1,450 acres of tallgrass prairie and serves as both a nature preserve and an outdoor research laboratory. It is owned by the Nature Conservancy of Kansas and managed by the KU Kansas Biological Survey.
Randy Rasa, who helped develop the Lehigh Portland Trail system, attended a volunteer workday at the prairie in April, helping pull weeds to help preserve the plants being studied.
Learning about the prairie preserve ? an area less than 20 miles away that Rasa didn?t know existed, though like most he?s frequently driven past it ? inspired him to develop a similar area near the Iola trail system.
No formal plan has yet been developed, but Rasa has identified a small grassy area on the southeast side of Elks Lake that could be set aside for a small section of tallgrass prairie. Trail volunteers have been clearing the area for a couple of years, removing invasive trees like cedar and Siberian elm.
The idea of a tallgrass prairie fits with Rasa?s long-term vision for the Lehigh trail system as a natural space to enjoy or study nature. The prairie could serve as an educational resource for local school children.
?That connection to nature is important for our mental health,? Rasa said. ?It?s tremendously important to help children understand the interconnectedness between nature and people, and to instill an appreciation and understanding of how it all works together.?
Mead?s Milkweed is an endangered tallgrass prairie plant. The largest known reproducing population is in Anderson County. COURTESY OF THE NATURE CONSERVANCY
Tallgrass prairie once covered more than 170 million acres from Canada to Texas and as far east as Ohio. Most tallgrass prairie was converted to cropland. Only about 4% of tallgrass prairie survives, and about two-thirds of that is located in the Flint Hills of Kansas and Oklahoma, according to The Nature Conservancy.
The Anderson County site is a special pocket with deeper soil and higher rainfall that allows it to grow more diverse species than those in the Flint Hills. It features native grasses such as big bluestem, Indian grass, switchgrass, as well as wildflowers such as purple coneflower, leadplant, prairie clover, black-eyed susan?s, prairie gentian, and spiderwort.
The property also has the only known reproducing populations of Mead?s milkweed on Earth. Mead?s milkweed is a small green-flowered milkweed that should be found in eastern Kansas and in Missouri but was listed as a threatened species by the federal government in 1988.
The Nature Conservancy purchased 128 acres in Anderson County in the mid-1990s to protect Mead?s milkweed. The preserve eventually grew to 1,450 acres. It also serves as an outdoor laboratory for the Kansas Biological Survey, a research center at the University of Kansas.
KU doctoral student Theo Michaels leads volunteers in her tallgrass prairie restoration research, which considers restoration of the ecosystem and cares for the preserve.
