MEDICINE LODGE — The Kansas Nature Conservancy in Kansas has launched a $1 million campaign to buy conservation easements in the Red Hills in south-central Kansas. The Red Hills are a 2-million-acre area of rugged prairie hills with a deep rusty soil color. Kansas has designated a 41-mile section of U.S. 160 that runs east and west through the Red Hills as a scenic byway. Kansas Nature Conservancy director Rob Manes said the Red Hills are gorgeous and the natural habitat to many species of wildlife, including the vulnerable lesser prairie chicken, as well as some of the state’s most primitive steams. The Red Hills are primarily used as rangeland and are largely intact, but there is mining of gypsum, growing residential “ranchette” development, and interest in wind-energy development, which threatened them, he said. Eastern cedars are also taking over the area, he said. Under the proposal, property owners would be paid to give up residential subdivision or industrial development rights to the land.
Tuesday, Jan. 10, 3 p.m.
