Word: tallgrass
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Dates: during 1986-1986
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When Louis Jolliet wrote these prophetic words, after a 1673 voyage on the Illinois and Mississippi rivers, the great tallgrass prairie of central North America covered a quarter of a billion acres, a shimmering sea of grass stretching from what is now Indiana to Kansas, from Canada into Texas. But the soil was indeed ideal for corn, and in the three centuries since, that cultivated cousin of the tallgrasses has thrived. Only a few patches of the original tallgrass prairie are left, many of them scattered across the country in such small plots as old cemeteries and railroad rights...
There are still, however, some places where the tallgrass prairie remains nearly as the pioneers saw it--vast, rolling expanses reaching beyond the horizon. U.S. environmentalists would like to keep it that way, and so would the National Park Service. Last month Park Service Director William Penn Mott toured the proposed site for the nation's first Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve: 50,000 acres near Pawhuska, in the Osage Hills of Oklahoma. "You have a jewel here," he told ranchers and conservationists at a barbecue on the Foraker Ranch, one of the properties that could make up the preserve...
...bison and elk are virtually gone, and preserving what remains of the prairie has long been a challenge for conservationists. An effort to establish a tallgrass park at a site in Kansas foundered seven years ago because of local opposition. Ranchers were reluctant to surrender commercially exploitable land...
...hopes of resolving the conflict between conservationists and local interests, the Park Service has endorsed the idea of creating a tallgrass "preserve" instead of a prairie park. That way, limited cattle grazing, hunting and oil drilling would still be permitted. The Government also plans to acquire land for the preserve only from willing sellers. Even so, the Indians remain wary. "Any act creating the preserve can later be amended," says Attorney Ralph Adkisson, a member of the Osage tribal council. "There will be pressures later for limiting any economic activity in the preserve...
...persuade Congress to approve the plan as early as next year. "We are going to have a prairie preserve," he vows, "and it's going to look just like it looks now. We want to tell the whole story, not just the botanical story, not just the tallgrass story, but also the story of the Osage Indians, the raising of cattle and the exploration for oil. I think it's just a matter of sitting down with all the interests and working out the details." The preserve can be created, he believes, for about $20 million. Says Mott...