|Just a glimpse of the elk!|
Saturday, June 16, 2012
While visiting Kentucky last summer, we spent an afternoon at the Elk and Bison Prairie, located near Kentucky Lake, Land Between the Lakes. It was a wonderful place to drive, offering the opportunity to see bison and elk in their natural habitat - from the safety of your vehicle, of course! The Prairie is a restoration of a native habitat that was lost more than a century ago. The enclosure is 700 acres and has several other wildlife species there - wild turkey, small game and some prairie mammals. We were lucky enough to see the bison up close, but the elk were resting - probably because it was beastly hot! We did spot one - but not very close, as you can see in the 3rd photo.
In 1975, some biologists with Land Between the Lakes discovered a small patch of native prairie grass growing. They suspected that Western Kentucky and middle Tennessee had once formed the eastern edge of a Great Plains ecosystem, maintained by Native Americans with the use of periodic fires. The biologists set some small "controlled burns" and were very happy to see that prairie grasses were coming up from the burned area. The seeds had been there all along - waiting for fire to provide germination. There were several agencies that provided funding and assistance in the project to reintroduce the bison and elk. Happily, we can now view the successful results of their work.