CHEYENNE BOTTOMS

An unexpected jewel in the heart of Kansas

For anyone who has never visited the Sunflower State, they might think of Kansas as just a vast grassland prairie. Driving through central and western Kansas, it’s easy to see how the state gets its reputation as generally flat farmland, covered with wheat and the occasional homestead. While this image is accurate for much of the state, it fails to capture some of the most exciting and majestic places in Kansas.

As you travel east on Kansas Highway 4 between Hoisington and Claflin, a large hill rises above the farmland fields. At the top is an overlook with a couple of parking spaces and a small observation tower. From here, it’s possible to view one of Kansas’ most unique and nationally vital resources, the Cheyenne Bottoms basin. On a clear day, the entire ridgeline surrounding the roughly 41,000 acres of wetlands – nearly 65 square miles in total – is visible.

Cheyenne Bottoms is designated as a wetland of international importance, primarily due to its location as a stopover for birds migrating along the Central Flyway. It hosts more than 350 different species of birds throughout the year. Many of these bird species are stopping over temporarily, but some can be found year-round, including many varieties of ducks, geese, egrets, gulls, herons, and pelicans. Yes, there are pelicans in Kansas.

The size of Cheyenne Bottoms makes it the largest wetland in the interior of the United States. Located near the center of this area is the Kansas Wetlands Education Center (KWEC), created through a partnership between Fort Hays State University and the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks.

Opened to the public in 2009, the KWEC is located in Barton County, at the southeastern corner of the Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area. The center’s mission is to provide “a better understanding of wetland communities and their importance through interpretive exhibits, educational programming, and research.”

The education center makes more than 27,000 total annual contacts throughout the year, including around 8,000 drop-in contacts within the center itself. Over 16,000 contacts are made through the more than 700 yearly educational programs, about 600 of them through local and regional schools.

Many of the education initiatives occur within the center, either in the auditorium, a classroom that includes various live animal exhibits, or the 11,000-square-foot museum. The museum consists of the Koch Wetlands Exhibit, featuring interpretive displays, historical and cultural artifacts, a natural history collection, and various hands-on activities, provided by funding through the Fred C. and Mary R. Koch Foundation.

An enhancement project paid for by donations from the Dorothy M. Morrison Foundation was completed in 2018 and included 14 new interactive features. These displays include a wetland children’s activity area, shorebird and wetland plant adaptation magnetic boards, build-a-bird and plant station, aquatic invertebrate viewer, a one-of-a-kind floor projector game, an augmented reality watershed simulator, and much more.

The KWEC offers a full range of activities for people of all ages, including free admission, a nature trail, a butterfly garden, a panoramic view of the mitigation marsh, outdoor classrooms, van tours, and a gift store.

“The Kansas Wetlands Education Center is your one-stop-shop for every visit to Cheyenne Bottoms,” said Curtis Wolf, KWEC director.

In addition to the various activities for drop-in visitors, the KWEC features a large variety of specific programs throughout the year. Activities for children include several spring break projects, summer camps in July, winter programs in February, and Turtle Tots – a monthly program for 3- to 5-year-olds.

Recently, the center has offered the popular STEM Drop-In Days, a come-and-go event centered around a theme that includes Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) activities for kids. A STEM event this past summer focused on water quality and conservation. In addition to making an edible aquifer, piloting drones, learning about drone use in water conservation, and discovering the earth’s amount of usable water, participants were able to tour the Water on Wheels trailer and work with the 4-H Water Ambassadors from Barton and Ellis counties.

While the education center dedicates a significant amount of time and resources to working with children, many activities are not age-specific. For example, the center hosts the Wings & Wetlands Festival, a two-day birding festival every other year on odd-numbered years. Held virtually in 2021 due to Covid-19, plans are already underway for an in-person 2023 event.

The festival generally brings hundreds of bird watchers from all over the United States and many international visitors.

“This festival is the event that people are willing to travel a great distance to see,” Wolf said, explaining why it is so popular. The spring migration has the largest concentration of birds in the shortest number of days. Between 150 to 180 species and several hundred thousand birds can be seen at any given time. Most of the birds will come through the wetlands in a period of a few weeks, and that is what people want to see. Also, given that Cheyenne Bottoms is the largest wetland on the interior of the United States and is part of the Central Flyway, this is one of the best places for bird watching anywhere.

Other spring events include an Earth Day Festival and the Greater Prairie Chicken Lek Tours in April. Tour participants have the opportunity to observe one of the most unique rituals of this native North American plains bird.

Summer activities at the KWEC include Gifts of the Garden Workshops, which are ongoing throughout the summer. Also, the Perseids Meteor Shower Watch Party takes place every August. A Butterfly Festival in September is the center’s single most popular event with as many as 700 visitors in 2019 – and growing each year. This festival is free, with plenty of activities for young and old alike, including monarch tagging, an insect zoo, milkweed seed bombs, a butterfly photo board, and crafts.

Many of the visitors to the Cheyenne Bottoms area are attracted by the variety of recreational activities available. Online reviews applaud the KWEC.

One visitor commented about the excellent quality and condition of the exhibits, saying, “It was a very neat experience to visit a wildlife refuge that is only one of 24 sites in the United States to be recognized on the international scale.” Others complimented the staff for being courteous, welcoming, and knowledgeable about the history of the wetlands, as well as being patient with children.

Bird watch programs, nature trail hiking, and fishing are all significant contributors to the ongoing success of the center. However, none of these activities contribute more to the continued management of the area than hunting. While community fundraising, charitable donations, gift shop sales, and a few paid activities are essential to the KWEC, state maintenance of the wetlands themselves are primarily funded through the sale of hunting permits for game, sales of waterfowl stamps, and revenue raised through taxes on hunting supplies and equipment. Recognizing that Cheyenne Bottoms is a premier location for waterfowl hunting, one activity the Wetlands Education Center provides is the KWEC Hunter Appreciation Breakfast. Scheduled to coincide with the first day of duck hunting season each fall, and in conjunction with partners like the Great Bend Convention and Visitors Bureau, hunters are offered an opportunity to have a hot meal and enjoy various other activities. This year’s activities included a silent auction and raffle provided by Ducks Unlimited and a dog retrieving demonstration from the Jayhawk Retriever Club.

As outdoor activities slow down during the winter, the KWEC continues its outreach to local community groups and area schools.

Additionally, each December, they hold the annual KWEC Holiday Open House. With seasonal decorations and an invitation to shop small at their gift shop, a “find the hidden goose” contest for a chance to win a gift certificate, and the popular build a gingerbread birdhouse event, the open house event has a little of something for everyone.

Partnering with Fort Hays State Universities Department of Biological Sciences, the KWEC offers four Graduate Wetlands Assistantships. Graduate assistants work part-time at the KWEC while working on their degrees. Students are encouraged to develop research projects that incorporate wetlands and take advantage of the KWEC facilities. In addition to the tremendous potential the wetlands have for research, the KWEC offers on-site lab facilities the students can use for their research projects.

Always searching for new ways to connect with the community and share information about the KWEC and Cheyenne Bottoms, Mandy Kern, FHSU program specialist, authored the book Ava: A Year of Adventure in the Life of an American Avocet this year. Along with the detailed drawings by illustrator Onalee Nicklin, not just of the American Avocet but of 33 different wetland birds, this book offers a fantastic introduction to the importance of wetlands, Cheyenne Bottoms, and the variety of wildlife that depends upon these lands to survive and thrive.

The release of this book coincided with a public reading, which included a variety of activities and a free copy of the book that attendees could get signed. The Dorothy M. Morrison Foundation provided funding that allowed copies of the book to be distributed to all K-6 classrooms in Barton County and public and school libraries within 70 miles of the center. The KWEC also provided several educational lesson plans connected with the book that teachers could incorporate into their classrooms.

Along with coral reefs and rainforests, wetlands are one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. With wetlands disappearing around the world three times faster than forests, conservation of these precious resources is essential to the continued health and survival of many species, including humans. Having such a fantastic location here in the heart of Kansas places a tremendous responsibility on both the people who work directly to ensure its continued survival as well as on the greater community. The staff at the KWEC have a mission to connect the people of this area with the Cheyenne Bottoms wetlands and work tirelessly at this effort.

Land ownership in Cheyenne Bottoms is shared among private lands, The Nature Conservancy, and the State of Kansas. Private lands currently include about 13,000 acres of the Bottoms and consist of croplands and fields for grazing cattle. Around 8,000 acres are known as the Cheyenne Bottoms Preserve. This area is owned by The Nature Conservancy, a global nonprofit environmental organization whose mission is to preserve “the lands and waters on which all life depends.”

The Nature Conservancy often partners with other groups to help achieve their goals. In Cheyenne Bottoms, these partnerships include working with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and, which oversees the Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area. With just under 20,000 acres, the Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Area is the largest landholder in the Bottoms. According to its website, “the primary management goal of Cheyenne Bottoms is to provide a diverse marsh habitat for waterfowl and shorebirds during the migrational periods.”

These groups ensure a place that provides adequate food, water, and nesting grounds that offer the potential for population increases, all while managing various human interactions. It is a significant undertaking. The KWEC was created to better manage these tasks and foster a variety of educational opportunities.