Fire-bison, the Great Spirit and Other Missouri Prairies Features

I'm trying to decide what's cooler. Fire-managed prairies, or bison-managed prairies. Whoa. What if there were fire-bison? Debate over.

Fire Bison. My new favorite animal.

Take a look at this drone-generated video of fire at Tucker Prairie, a research site managed by the University of Missouri. In General Ecology at MU, I learned about secession from Dr. Faaborg and my awesome TA Alicia Burke, and observed (one square meter by one square meter, a hundred times, for six hours), how burns change plant composition over one, two, five and 30 years. It's cooler than it sounds, guys.

So in honor of all those prairies about to rise like so many Phoenix, here's a look at more tallgrass havens bumpin' around the Show-Me State. Descriptions come from Public Prairies of Missouri, a Missouri Department of Conservation book published in 1999 (i.e., don't blame me if a species is extinct or the conservation area added more land or something...though I did try to check it for you). The book features 72 sites, but before you get excited, remember:

"More than 13 million acres of tallgrass prairie once covered more than one-third of Missouri’s landscape. Today, less than 65,000 acres remain." - Missouri State Parks

Womp womp.

But seriously, if those numbers disturb you (and you'd like to make sure kids aren't saying Little House on the What? when you tell them about Laura Ingalls Wilder), visit the Missouri Prairie Foundation website for opportunities to help. Every prairie is important, from smallest to largest, from cutesy names to serious bird-watching. So saddle up that prairie schooner and venture out to these sites!

The Smallest: Steyermark Sand Prairie
Size: 6 acres*

Named after botanist Julian Steyermark, this Missouri Department of Conservation site features an extremely rare sand prairie on the banks of the Des Moines River.

What's a sand prairie? Well geeze, what does it sound like? It's a prairie. Made of sand (sandy loam or loamy sand, to be uber technical). It has species such as sand dropseed, sand milkweek, dotted beebalm and plains puccoon. Don't believe me? Go look yourself, at the Frost Island Conservation Area in Clark County.

*The Frost Island webpage says it has 16 acres of prairie, so MDC either expanded the sand prairie since 1999 or has another kind of prairie on site. Don't worry, it's still the smallest.

Just click. I know you're dying to see Missouri's natural features related to major soil areas.

The Largest: Prairie State Park
Size: 3,702 acres

Just how big is Prairie State Park? Big enough to host 100 head of bison and 25 head of elk. The most romantic thing is the name of two natural areas: "Tzi-Sho," meaning "sky people," and "Hunkah," meaning "Earth people," are named for two grand divisions of the Osage tribe. Because it's original tallgrass prairie, fairly huge, and run in part by the Nature Conservancy, the space houses 600+ species of plants and 150+ species of birds. Next chance I get, I want to see prairie-chickens again.

I'll never stop wanting to watch prairie-chickens. Photo from Flickr user Wildreturn.

Most cozy name: Goodnight-Henry Prairie
Size: 40 acres

This tiny TNC plot off Highway U south of Sedalia has more species of flowering plants than days in the flowering season.

Its much-larger (627 acres) neighbor, the Hi Lonesome Prairie Conservation Area, also has greater prairie chickens, and the description says, "One gets the feeling of being at the point where prairies meet Ozark forests when standing on the prairie ridgetops and seeing forested hills to the south." Liminal landscapes, people. It's what I live for.

But I digress. Runner up for cozy name: Grandfather Prairie, a 78-acre plot in Pettis County; and Friendly Prairie, another 40-acre spot that houses greater prairie-chickens!

Best Birding: Taberville and Wah'Kon-Tah
Size: 1,680 and 2,858, respectively

Ok, so I haven't been here. But this guy had a pretty good time at Taberville and the prairie-chicken apparently had a semi-triumphant return at Wah'Kon-Tah. Combined, they're bigger than Prairie State Park, and here's to hoping there's some semblance of a corridor in the 10 miles between them along Highway H.

Wah'Kon-Tah is named after the Osage word for "Great Spirit" or "Great Mystery," and it sounds like a dream: three permanent springs, several draws, a resident flock of greater prairie chickens, as well as upland sandpipers, scissor-tailed flycatchers, Bell's vireo, short-eared owls and Henslow's sparrows. Taberville is a National Natural Landmark with around 400 recorded plant species. Perfect for bugs, which are perfect for birds, which is perfect for birding.

Know what else is perfect? The way prairie plant roots are adapted for this drought-prone climate. Even fire-bison aren't that cool.

Basically growing to the other side of the world. This is where South Pacific fish get their nutrients. Global-scale aquaponics.