Swope Park: Environmental Analysis

The golden petals of prairie sunflowers fill a field in Swope Park not with solar brilliance, but the earthly variety. They sway to the rhythm of a cool summer breeze while bees fall into orbits around them. Blazing star asters dot this cosmic landscape to fill a scene that has existed for millennia and to evoke a sense of timelessness. This has been replicated countlessly by the artist of nature; revisited and revised epoch after epoch. Each one a slight deviation of the original, but always just as brilliant. And it almost disappeared, obscured by invasive species and attacked by an explosive deer population. Thus, a mission to preserve a natural history and save a galaxy of flowers began in earnest. Our heroes of this grand endeavor are

Living in a city leaves us with a paradoxical union of an ability to lighten our footprint on the environment, but at the cost of treading in an already massive crater of ecological destruction. These cities were once habitats to flora and fauna that had adapted to this environment and flourished, but were cut down in droves due to the stark modernization of humanity. Many have watched this occur and only very recently in our history have few began to act. A local chapter of such activists appear in the Kansas City Metropolitan Region in the form of the KC WildLands Project. Their mission statement is, “Kansas City WildLands is a coalition of resource professionals, private conservation organizations and conservation-minded citizens established to restore and conserve the remnants of Kansas City’s original landscape by involving people in the stewardship of the land” (Bridging the Gap). This goal is a hefty one that will require a lot of action from most citizens. The impact will be great

Overseen by KC WildLands and regulated by the city, this bow hunting event allowed for the deer population to be curbed to a healthy size. And in doing so something other than saving the deer happened. The flowers came back in outstanding numbers. Because of the overpopulation of deer in the park, resources were being overconsumed as well. Grazing damage was seen on many of the flowers before they even bloomed because deer were eating them. By minimizing the deer population, the flowers came back. This is an important lesson in the power of conservational movements. By helping to keep an equilibrium we had disturbed, we can keep a population