Cattle feast on new grass at the Z Bar/Spring Hill Ranch only a month after controlled fires swept across the landscape. Blazes set by lightning and American Indians once stormed across the U.S. heartland, helping to create the prairie—dry grasslands can turn to scrub when deprived of fire. Now outfits like the Z Bar/Spring Hill Ranch set fires each spring to maintain the prairie grasses.
(Photograph from and text adapted from "The Essential Element of Fire," September 1996, National Geographic magazine)
