Kansas Rancher Watching a Controlled Prairie Burn Poster

"Kansas Rancher Watching a Controlled Prairie Burn" by Catherine Sherman. A rancher on horseback watches a controlled prairie burn in the Flint Hills of Kansas. The tallgrass prairie survives in areas unsuited to plowing, such as this section of the rocky hill country of the Flint Hills, which run north to south through east-central Kansas. Once vast, tallgrass prairie has shrunk to only one to four percent of its former size in North America. Ranchers replicate natural fires when they burn the prairie every few years to destroy tree seedlings and alien plant species, which preserves the prairie as a grassland. The tallgrass prairie biome depends on prairie fires, a form of wildfire, for its survival and renewal. Such fires may either be set by humans (for example, Native Americans used fires to drive bison and improve hunting, travel, and visibility) or started naturally by lightning. Photograph taken in March 2015.