For more than 40 years, that principle has guided Koger’s management of the Hashknife Ranch in the Red Hills of southwest Kansas. When Ed assumed operation of the Hashknife in 1974, he brought the Flint Hills fire culture with him. Knowing firsthand how fire improves grassland health and productivity, Ed pioneered prescribed burning in the Red Hills, where it was seldom if ever used for habitat management. Despite plenty of local skepticism, he began burning his pastures in 1977.
In the early 2000s, Koger shifted from burning whole pastures to burning only a portion of each pasture each year. This practice, known as “patch burn grazing,” mimics historic dynamics in which the interaction of fire and grazing by large mammals — mainly bison — shaped prairie habitat.
Koger attributes the health and resilience of the grasslands, wildlife, and cattle on his ranch to his burning practices. His overall management, which includes prescribed burning, improves soil health and nutrient cycling, increases native plant and wildlife diversity, reduces the risk of catastrophic wildfire, and increases drought resilience and carbon sequestration. These ecological benefits, in turn, yield higher quality forage and increased livestock utilization, which benefits Koger’s ranching operation.
“As long as I incorporate fire in my management of the prairie on this ranch,” he says, “I’m going to have more wildlife, and I’m going to produce more pounds of beef.”
For as long as he’s managed the Hashknife, Ed has managed for the wildlife species needing the most attention. As he puts it, “If I take care of that species, everything else will fall into place and take care of itself.” On the Hashknife, the lesser prairie-chicken is that species.
“Back in the 70s, I had a few prairie-chickens—20 to 30 birds, maybe. When I started cutting the cedars aggressively and started burning, the numbers started going up. The more I cut and burned, the more chickens there were, along with quail, and grasshopper sparrows, and everything else.”
Researchers from Kansas State University (KSU) study the Hashknife’s thriving lesser prairie-chicken population, helping build scientific understanding of this umbrella species. This knowledge directly informs the management strategies of the LPCI partnership, which works to restore lesser prairie-chicken populations.
Looking out across the ranch’s rolling grasslands, Koger says, “I feel like the luckiest guy in the world that I get to take care of all this while I’m here.” Lucky, too, for the rest of us, who benefit in so many ways from his remarkable stewardship.
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