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.
