What’s left of the tallgrass prairie

Bobcats are common on the prairie but very seldom seen, let alone photographed.
Two curious young bison decide to investigate Harvey’s camera lens. One gets close enough to sniff it buck backs away when he finds nothing edible.
Tall tongues of flame leap into the air at the edge of an evening burn.
Bison usually aren’t bothered by fire – they just keep their distance. These young bison sense something different about the blaze and gallop away.
A praying mantis waits in ambush on a stalk of big bluestem.
Three white-tailed deer bound through the grass in a February snowstorm.
Northern harriers are easily identified when hunting. The slim raptors fly and glide low to the ground, looking and listening for prey. This female locates a rodent in the grass and swoops to seize it.
A cumulonimbus cloud glows in the rays of an April sunset.
In early autumn, the prairie glows with color. Green grasses become brown and gold, and wide swaths of sumac turn a firey, luminous red.
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In northeastern Oklahoma, hidden between plowed fields, pastures and oil rigs, the nearly 40,000-acre Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is an ecological relic of the vast landscape that once swept down the center of North America. In Visions of the Tall Grass: Prairie Photographs by Harvey Payne, two old friends, photographer Harvey Payne and historian James Ronda, explore what’s left of the prairie they love together.

Here are stunning photographs of bison grazing on lush tall grasses and prairie chickens with bright orange air sacs flamboyantly courting their mates. History weaves in and out of the story, following the changes the landscape and the region have endured over time. The prairie takes center stage, but a heart-warming personal story can be found here, too, as Ronda documents his own discovery of the prairie with wildlife photographer Payne: “Believing and seeing with Harvey — that has been my grassland education.”

Visions of the Tallgrass:
Prairie Photographs by Harvey Payne
By James P. Ronda, photographs by Harvey Payne, Foreword by Geoffrey M. Standing Bear
180 pages, hardcover: $34.95.
University of Oklahoma Press, 2018.

This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline What’s left of the tallgrass prairie.

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