Three Riders on the Kansas Prairie at Sunset Poster

At sunset, three riders hurry to an area to be burned in the Flint Hills of Kansas. Smoke already fills the skies and plumes rise in the valley beyond. 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. 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.