CLARK AND COMANCHE COUNTIES — The Red Hills are prime cattle country.
The iron-rich terrain spans two million square miles of mixed-grass and sandsage prairie across Barber, Comanche and Clark counties along the Oklahoma border, but it doesn’t have a historical fire culture like the Flint Hills to its east. When rancher Bill Barby prepared to conduct his first prescribed burn in 2014, there was pushback.
“I called into the dispatch to tell them we’re getting ready to ignite, and she goes, ‘permission denied,’ ” Barby said.
“I didn’t call to ask your permission,” Barby told the dispatcher. “I called to tell you I was getting ready to light a fire.”
The fire was enormous, he said, largely because of the presence of thousands of eastern red cedar trees that have come to dominate the Red Hills, also known as the Gypsum Hills. Six times, the dispatcher threatened to send fire trucks to extinguish the blaze, despite Barby’s efforts to convince her it was under control.
“Finally, the fire chief came out and sat on the hill with me, watching,” Barby said. “He says, ‘You guys really know what you’re doing, don’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, we do.’ ”
Fire culture in cattle country is reciprocal. Before his first burn, Barby traveled two counties over to join the Gyp Hills Prescribed Burn Association and spent years helping them, just to learn the ropes. In turn, they helped execute his first burn. Now, Barby leads a local burn cooperative of nine ranches.
Neighbors who said they would never burn, or were even openly hostile to the practice, now ask Barby to show them how, he said.
Fire, along with the grazing of herd animals, was a fundamental aspect of prairie’s evolution, and controlled burning has taken on a newfound urgency as woody species transform the landscape. Woody encroachment is threatening to collapse the grassland ecosystem and render the landscape unusable for cattle ranchers. Historically, fire kept woody species in check.
Now, the lack of regular fire is making wildfires worse. Eastern red cedar trees are extremely flammable and act as ready tinder, said Jesse Nippert, a distinguished professor of biology at Kansas State University who studies woody encroachment.
“You can manage a grass fire really easy,” Nippert said. “It’s difficult to manage a woodland fire, and as these woodlands are all around our cities, it has the potential to burn down our cities.”
Nippert pointed to the destruction in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where a recent wildfire was associated with cedar proliferation.
“Stillwater, Oklahoma, nearly burned to the ground,” he said.
Researchers at K–State, he said, have “done a risk assessment of Manhattan, Kansas. If we had a strong south wind and those cedars catch, something like 75% of Manhattan would burn to the ground.”
In 2017, the Starbuck wildfire burned more than 700,000 acres across Kansas and Oklahoma, consuming homes, cattle, and everything else in its path. At least one person died. A downed power line combined with dry conditions, high wind, and ample kindling in the form of eastern red cedar trees created the largest wildfire in state history. Barby’s entire ranch burned.
After the fire, however, the Cimarron River, which runs through the ranch, stopped drying up.
“We had the same amount of rain, or less rain, but the river ran,” Barby said. “In the past, we’d go dry the Fourth of July till Thanksgiving.”
The river stays flowing about seven years out of 10, now, he said. The Starbuck fire, it turns out, grew so intense that it was able to kill many of the invasive Tamarisk, or salt cedar, trees that multiply along the riverbank. The destructive species, like eastern red cedar, was planted for wind breaks, and now takes over riparian areas. Each tree consumes up to 200 gallons of water each day, dramatically altering streams and water tables.
“My most productive land is where the densest salt cedar was,” Barby said, but removing it wasn’t something he thought he could accomplish, because the costs of removal were too great.
“The land wasn’t even valued that high,” he said.
The salt cedar, which had been spreading for more than 50 years, was such a dense monoculture that controlled burns couldn’t beat it back.
“We could burn up to that salt cedar, and then it would just go out because there’s no fuel,” he said. “But in ’17, when (the Starbuck fire) came through with such intensity, it burned up a lot of it. It opened it up so much, and we had so much more warm season grass come out. We’ve actually increased our carrying capacity by about 50 cows.”
Barby said that his burn schedule has moved from invasive species control to ecological management. Now, he burns on an 8- to 10-year schedule, to thin out woody species and give grass room to grow. The transformation of his prairie, he said, was remarkable.
“It’s opened that canopy out, we had (more) grasses, it was beautiful. It was just a night and day difference,” he said.
Barby’s stewardship has earned him recognition as a leader of grassland conservation in the state. In 2024, he was awarded the Sand County Foundation’s Kansas Leopold Conservation Award for the work he has done restoring the 3,700-acre ranch to a healthy ecosystem for both his cattle and the wildlife. The ranch is home to threatened species such as lesser prairie chickens, whooping cranes, and Arkansas river shiners. Barby takes great pride in the biodiversity of his ranch.
“Songbird populations are an indicator of soil health,” he said, noting that ecologists who surveyed his land found it supported more species than other ranches in the area.
He has practiced rotational grazing since 1985, long before “regenerative grazing” entered the lexicon. At any given time, only 10% of Barby’s ranch is used by cattle, which he rotates between fenced parcels called paddocks. Each acre sees about 36 days of grazing per year, resulting in long periods of rest and rejuvenation. Barby keeps a spreadsheet detailing the grasses growing in each paddock, which allows him to estimate their production capacity.
Last year, Barby entered into a voluntary land protection agreement with the Nature Conservancy that will protect his ranch from development in perpetuity. The conservation easement is part of the Nature Conservancy’s Generational Grasslands initiative.
The initiative is working to protect the few remaining intact grasslands in the southern high plains, said Matt Bain, Kansas director of conservation for the Nature Conservancy. Ranchers, Bain said, are leading the way in conservation, and the Nature Conservancy works to support their efforts.
“What it boils down to,” Bain said, “is that landowners, like Bill, they’ve worked their entire lives to put this ranch together, to get it into the shape that it’s in. They love it dearly and want to make sure that it stays a working ranch forever.”
The land protection agreement allows the Nature Conservancy to help landowners achieve their long-term vision for their properties, Bain said.
Barby also has set up a succession plan that involves passing off the day-to-day operations of the ranch. It took him three years to find land managers who share his ecological goals. With these pieces in place, Barby’s family can continue to maintain ownership of the ranch after he’s gone, and his environmental vision can continue to flourish.
Barby said he loves cattle ranching, but what he loves most is the land.
“I love the grass and the soil,” he said. “I love just making it healthy, and it rewards you so well for doing that. It’s not like a secret recipe or anything, right? I guess you have to care.”
This story was originally published in the Kansas Reflector.
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