Released: February 12, 2004

Trees Are Invading the High Plains

MANHATTAN, Kan. – The prairie is under attack. Everyone who lives in or drives through the High Plains has seen it. Few, however, have recognized the situation is a war.

Ironically, the invader is a native “Christmas tree” – the Eastern redcedar – which is a widely adapted juniper. For generations, the tough native tree has been the backbone of windbreaks, park and cemetery plantings, highway snow “fences,” and erosion controls throughout the eastern United States.

The tree’s durable, fragrant wood is in cedar chests, closet linings and cedar chips. It’s shown up as fence posts, railroad ties, pencils and folk carvings.

But the redcedar now is multiplying so fast in its western-most range that everything from wildflowers to prairie chickens are at risk. That range sweeps from Texas to southern Canada.

The problem is a lack of fires – or, in today’s terms, a lack of sound grassland property management, said Joshua Pease, head of the Kansas Forest Service’s Conservation Tree Planting Program.

When buffalo roamed the prairies, lightning caused regular wildfires, he explained.

“Redcedars only become a large seed source every three years or so. And, if you cut or burn a seedling before it exceeds 3 years old, that will eradicate it. It won’t grow up again from the roots,” Pease said. “That’s why our state’s most invasive tree is also the easiest to control.”

In the prairie states, however, many self-seeded redcedars are not in check. Experts say the fault lies with everything from absentee land ownership to a fear of setting controlled “burns.”

So, the prairie already has entered a process called “natural succession” – the tendency for grasslands to develop shrub growth, then tree growth and finally a forest.

And, like some of their cohorts in other states, the Kansas Forest Service and Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks (KDWP) have signed an agreement to do what they can to slow the invasion. The Eastern redcedar is a recognized “pioneer species” in natural succession.

Although humans have really helped it along, the process has been obvious in the Branson, Mo., area. Natural succession has occurred since recreation and tourism replaced farming and ranching as the region’s economic base. It’s one reason the Ozarks have become a place to hunt turkey, not quail.

Missouri is a traditionally timbered state, so the change probably isn’t a recognized problem there.

But Plains wildlife biologists are concerned about its also happening in the nation’s grasslands. An article in the Sept.-Oct. 2003 issue of Kansas Wildlife and Parks magazine called the prairie “among Earth’s most threatened landscapes.” The article warned that “grassland birds have shown sharper and more widespread declines than any other ecological or behavioral guild of birds in North America.”

The range and animal scientists from Texas A&M to Kansas State and North Dakota State universities are worried, too. Emerging forests reduce cattle forage and make handling livestock difficult.

On the other hand, conservation foresters such as Pease have mixed feelings.

“If you’re in Nebraska or South Dakota, for example, you have alternatives. Right now, though, the Eastern redcedar is Kansas’ best windbreak tree because it’s our one truly adapted evergreen. It becomes a problem only next to unmanaged or mismanaged grasslands,” he said.

The tree has long given protection against prairie winds, which Kansans claim can carry topsoil into other states. Prairie winds can beat up landscape plants and make trees grow permanently “bent.”

In Kansas’ flatlands, blowing snow can travel 2 miles before it breaks up, said Troy Bratton, the state’s southwest district forester. As a result, a light snowfall can create enormous drifts.

The area’s only real protection for exposed vehicles, roads and buildings is evergreen snow fences.

Just any evergreen won’t do, however, because of the Plains’ natural extremes, he said. Rocky Mountain junipers develop diseases. Pines don’t grow well. Oriental arborvitae can’t handle the winters. Spruces aren’t tough enough.

“That doesn’t mean we’ve stopped testing possible alternatives, but it isn’t easy,” Bratton said.

He’s hoping the drought-resistant modoc (Arizona) cypress will test out as an option.

Northwest Kansas’ district forester is Jim Strine. He helped sell the idea of the state’s first living snow fences. Yet, he’s watched many windbreaks in his area go down, as economics brought fewer farmers, along with the herbicide use, tilling and planting that go with larger-scale farms. Even so, in the 25 years Strine’s been traveling Interstate 70, he’s also seen a “cedarfication” of western rangelands.

Nowadays, he’s promoting planting shrubs to provide wintertime public safety.

“We don’t yet have a good alternative for windbreaks, though, and redcedars can spread,” Strine said. “It doesn’t take many trees in rangeland to create a detrimental situation.”

In cooperation with K-State Research and Extension, the Kansas Forest Service has long been trying to spread the word about the importance of controlling volunteer trees. The foresters also coordinate everything from the state’s Tree City USA activities to programs that help Kansans design tree plantings, fight rural fires, and gain access to low-cost seedlings for conservation plantings.

Now, however, they’ll also be notifying KDWP biologists whenever they’re helping a Kansan whose planned planting could have an impact on wildlife. And, before designing a planting that meets the landowner’s goals, they’ll alert that person about the potential of a windbreak in rangeland, Strine said.

“We’re taking a proactive stance,” he said.

Pease suspects, however, that the forestation of the Plains will truly stop only when landowners become proactive, too, or when public leaders decide to take control – whichever comes first.

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K-State Research and Extension is a short name for the Kansas State University Agricultural Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service, a program designed to generate and distribute useful knowledge for the well-being of Kansans. Supported by county, state, federal and private funds, the program has county Extension offices, experiment fields, area Extension offices and regional research centers statewide. Its headquarters is on the K-State campus, Manhattan.

Story by:
Kathleen Ward, Communications Specialist
kward@oznet.ksu.edu
K-State Research& Extension News