By Jan Biles
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
MAYETTA -- Frank Norman was in his element -- standing among native grasses and plants, a hawk flying nearby, surrounded by garden club members eager to learn more about Snyder Prairie.
Norman is a board member of Grassland Heritage Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Johnson County that is devoted to prairie preservation and education, and coordinator of restoration efforts at the 140-acre plot of prairie east of Mayetta.
"Our goal is we want to keep the prairie -- our native vegetation," he told the group before they headed out on a walking tour of the land. "We're trying to get back to pre-settlement times."
In 1977, the late Rachel Snyder, author of "Gardening in the Heartland" and longtime editor of Flower and Garden magazine, purchased 160 acres of land three miles east of Mayetta. Snyder, who lived in Prairie Village and also worked as a reporter for The Topeka Daily Capital and the Washington Post, rebuilt the stone homestead and replanted some of the land that had been used for crops or grazing with prairie grasses. The site also has four small ponds and a river tributary running through it.
led t5 tubeIn the late 1990s, Snyder deeded the 160-acre area to the Grassland Heritage Foundation, which sold 20 acres and kept the rest to restore.
Joyce Wolf, president of the Grassland Heritage Foundation, said part of the foundation's mission is to educate others about the state's prairie land and how endangered it is.
makeup brushes "We in Kansas kind of take (the prairie) for granted because of its relevant abundance," Wolf said. "It's a threatened ecosystem and a lot of the creatures that call the prairie home are in decline. ... Grassland birds have been stressed the most because of decline of habitat."
Only about 2 percent of the nation's original tallgrass prairie remains, she said. At one time, the original tallgrass prairie stretched from Canada to Texas.
"In Kansas, there are counties that had prairie that have none remaining," she said.
Wolf said Snyder Prairie represents "thousands of years of ecological evolution" and contains "thousands of plants."
"The beauty of native prairie is the diversity of species," she said, adding she visits the prairie periodically during the summer months and it never looks the same because of its plant diversity.
In addition to grassland birds, the Snyder Prairie is home to raccoons, deer, bobcats, coyotes, turkeys, red-tail hawks, blue herons, monarch butterflies and many other creatures.
Wolf said Snyder Prairie, which is open to the public only for organized tours, is maintained by a group of 30 to 40 Grassland Heritage Foundation volunteers who call themselves the Groundhogs. They meet on the third Saturday of each month, and typically go in small groups to the prairie to perform specific tasks, such as collecting ripe seed to spread in areas being restored, mowing fire breaks, clearing or burning trees or spraying invasive weeds.
Norman said one of the group's biggest tasks is eliminating the encroachment of woody vegetation and invasive species like sericea lespedeza, a legume that reproduces rapidly, forms a dense stand and crowds out native prairie vegetation.
"In 1942, there were few woods here," he told the garden club memb
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