Tallgrass Prairie Threatened By Development

The Tallgrass Prairie once covered more than 140 million acres of the United States and Canada from Indiana on the east to Kansas on the west and from Canada on the north to Texas on the south. Nearly all of it has been plowed under for agriculture but an ancient past survives in the irreplaceable Flint Hills Tallgrass Prairie Ecosystem.

Today the Tallgrass Prairie covers less than 4 percent of its original area. This makes it one of the rarest and most endangered ecosystems in the world, and one that is profoundly affected by a variety of potential ecological changes.

The Flint Hills Tallgrass Prairie Ecosystem is known to be home to approximately 1100 species of plants, 100 species of butterflies and moths, 100 species of fish, 78 species of reptiles and amphibians, 300 species of birds and 31 species of mammals. It is one of the last strongholds of the Greater Prairie-chicken, a signature species of the Tallgrass Prairie ecosystem, as well as many other grassland nesting species that, because of habitat loss, have declined more than any other class of birds. The Flint Hills also serve as an important avian migration corridor.

Industrialization of the Flint Hills by commercial wind power generation facilities with extensive networks of wind turbines, service roads and high voltage transmission power lines as well as the security fences required now as an element of homeland security, together with the strobe or other lights needed to alert aircraft, the overhead movement and noise of the propeller blades, will fragment the Flint Hills Tallgrass ecosystem and endanger the entire regional environmental system. A study on bird mortality in California recommends removing up to 653 wind turbines in the Altamont Pass because an estimated 880 to 1300 birds of prey, including 75 to 115 protected golden eagles, are killed by wind farms there each year.