Garden City ? Two electric cooperatives have purchased 34,000 acres of irrigated cropland in southwest Kansas and plan to restore it to native grass, approximating the region’s original sand sage prairie.

The effort by Wheatland Cooperative and Sunflower Power Corp. is part of an expansion project in Finney County.

The site will feature a large area of permanent grass cover to the Sand Sage Prairie Region, which already provides critical habitat for lesser prairie chicken, northern bobwhite quail and numerous other native species.

“The land purchase was made primarily to acquire the water rights associated with it,” said Lynn Freese of the Wheatland Cooperative. “We’ve established a three-year program to get a cover crop planted on it and then come back in and seed a native grass mixture.”

Although the primary purpose is to obtain the water rights, Freese says it’s not only good business, it’s good policy.

“Certainly, conservation is something that a lot of people are looking at today – conserving land, conserving soil, conserving water,” he said, “and I think any time a landowner participates in these types of programs, the community looks upon them favorably.”

The site is adjacent to 20,000 acres of native sand sage prairie that already provides habitat for lesser prairie chickens, northern bobwhites, loggerhead shrikes and Cassin’s sparrows, among other prairie birds.

The power companies consulted with Wildlife and Parks, Pheasants Forever, Sharp Brothers Seed Co. and the original landowners to develop a restoration plan that state biologists believe is on the right track.

“I think they have every intention of managing the property well,” said Randy Rodgers, an state upland-game-bird biologist. “This has the potential to be one of the best prairie chicken areas anywhere.”

Sunflower Electric plans to build two 700-megawatt plants that will be concentrated on a few hundred acres adjacent to the current plant.

Since the area is located in an Intensive Groundwater Use Control Area, the only way to obtain the water needed to operate the plants was to purchase the land and water rights.