SEDAN ? Journalist and television personality Bill Kurtis says the recession and accumulated debt have forced him to put nearly half his Red Buffalo Ranch in the Flint Hills of southeast Kansas up for sale.

Kurtis has purchased about 8,000 acres of land in Chautauqua County since the late 1990s and become a proponent of the health and environmental benefits of grass-fed beef. He also purchased several turn-of-the-20th-century buildings on main street in Sedan.

Kurtis, who grew up in nearby Independence, Kan., said Thursday he is selling 3,600 on the north end of his ranch, The Wichita Eagle reported. Kurtis is currently a news anchor for the CBS affiliate in Chicago.

“Selling it is like cutting off an arm,” he said. “It is beautiful. But the story is that we are coming out of this recession, and I wanted to clear some debt. I do have a note with the bank, and I want to settle that.”

Kurtis is not selling the ranch land that includes Butcher Falls, four miles northwest of Sedan, considered to be one of the most scenic waterfalls in Kansas. His ranch also features a rock sculpture by Kansas artist Stan Herd and a buffalo herd. The land, about 95 miles southeast of Wichita, is part of the Flint Hills, one of the last significant examples of the tallgrass prairie in North America.

“The water falls, the buffalo — I’m keeping all of that,” Kurtis said. “There are parts of it that looks like the Adirondacks in Kansas. It is a beautiful lay of the land in this river valley with the bluffs.”

The 3,600 acres is being offered for sale in six tracts. Three of the tracts are land; the other three include all seller’s minerals associated with tracts 1 through 3. An auction is May 17 at the Sedan Country Club.

A separate ranch near Independence, owned by Kurtis and his sister, was the original site that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about in her book Little House on the Prairie. It is operated as a tourist attraction.