The Star's editorial | Time for some tall (grass) dreaming

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Dream forward. Don’t dream just for your children, but their children. And their children.

Imagine the foundation of this country’s past, the breadbasket of the world, covered in 100 different species of grasses and flowers, head-high, waving green, brown, red and yellow like an inland grass ocean. Imagine it so lush that even herds of broad-shouldered bison vanish as they enter, leaving behind a rustling trail, sending out nothing more than a spray of prairie birds.

That’s the dream of the Tallgrass Legacy Alliance, a collection including farmers, ranchers and environmentalists and led by an effort of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to preserve a million-plus acres of the remaining American tallgrass prairie. It’s a dream that began when those who love the Midwest looked around and realized that the once vast tallgrass prairie was vanishing. It had been an American prairie that dwarfed the Serengeti in size and matched it in grandeur, with millions of bison, deer, elk, bear, mountain lions, and flocks of birds so thick they could blot out the sun when in flight.

But now wake up. Because what should be very possible to accomplish during the next couple of decades is on the edge of moving permanently into the land of dreams, unless Congress, the White House and people who love this nation and its heritage act now.

Not much more than a century ago, this prairie seemed limitless, unending. It poured out of Canada, through the Dakotas and down into Texas. To the east, it covered the land as far as Indiana. Its western edge was just past the Kansas Flint Hills. The tallgrass covered 140 million acres. Today, as the effort to save it ratchets up, less than 4 percent remains, and 80 percent of that is in the Flint Hills.

The tallgrass prairie is the most threatened ecosystem on earth, more endangered than wetlands or rainforests.

Last year, Congress approved an innovative plan to save this prairie and keep it in the hands of those who’ve kept and treasured it for the last century. The federal (and sometimes private) purchase of conservation easements would leave the land with ranchers, requiring them only to honor it in the way they and their families have since settling, but not cutting the sod to plant grain, or replace the grass with non-native (and less valuable) grasses. They would be paid to protect their land and our heritage.

It is a beautiful dream. And after a century of neglect, it should be a practical one. It even has a dedicated funding source, the national Land and Water Conservation Act of 1965. Congress decided revenue from offshore oil leases, boat fuel taxes and other sources should be used to protect and preserve the environment. It called for $700 million a year for the fund until 1977, and $900 million a year from 1978.

Despite the fact that $900 million in 1978 is now the equivalent of about $3 billion, funding today is only about $305 million. The other $600 million vanished into the maw of government.

This matters because it’s money from this fund that will make tallgrass preservation a reality. For this year, Fish and Wildlife had about $1 million to set up and begin buying conservation easements. At this moment, they’re making decisions on their first offers, from ranchers who’ve volunteered to take part in the program.

President Barack Obama believes in tallgrass preservation. He has included $5 million in his budget for the next fiscal year.

But given the partisan rancor that overwhelms everything in the nation’s capital these days, there are very real fears that this amount will be collateral damage, slashed or eliminated as Republicans and Democrats squabble.

The Republican Kansas Congressional delegation could, and must, stop this from happening. Every year that the Flint Hills tallgrass goes un-preserved a bit more vanishes. The decisions we make in these partisan times will determine whether our grandchildren, and great-grandchildren ever have a chance to see this beautiful and vital American landscape. To choose to deny this privilege to future generations is unconscionable.

Right now, we’re 100 years late in starting preservation efforts. But it is vital that we are now, at last, starting. And that’s a dream we should all be able to share.