The wide-open spaces of the Flint Hills may no longer provide a secure home on the range for several familiar grassland birds, according to research by a Kansas State University ecologist and her colleagues.

The low, booming sounds produced by greater prairie chicken cocks accounts for the common reference to their leks as "booming grounds." ... On a quiet spring morning, these sounds can carry as much as two miles across the open prairie, serving as an audible beacon to prairie chicken hens.

By Jan Biles * The Capital-Journal C\u200A\u200A\u200AOTTONWOOD FALLS - It's been called the "vast grassland empire" - an expanse of rolling prairie, blackened in the spring by burning, brightened by green growth after the fire and aged to a rusty tan by autumn.

By Tim Bradner, Alaska Journal of Commerce, Anchorage May 18--Flint Hills Resources told employees at its North Pole refinery near Fairbanks that it is considering a sale of the facility along with options to reconfigure the plant to lower operating costs or increase the value of products.

By Michael Pearce and Beccy Tanner, The Wichita Eagle, Kan. Apr. 20--They gather on prairie ridges while most of us are still asleep, humming a haunting three-note song that carries for miles in the pre-dawn stillness.