JULY 27 - AUGUST 2, 2005
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
UNIVERSITY
Biological Survey needs $500,000 for 160 acres
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The University of Kansas is raising money to buy about 160 acres to serve as a buffer between development and a piece of pristine prairie it already owns.
A private owner has offered to sell the 160 acres and the Kansas Biological Survey — a research and service unit of the University — is working to raise $500,000 to buy it. So far, the University has raised about $250,000, and the survey has bought 40 acres.
The land would become a nature park, with hiking trails, kiosks with wildlife and botanical information and space for public programs to teach subjects such as land management and bird-watching.
"We want to create a greater awareness of research and a greater appreciation for our natural heritage," Jerry deNoyelles, said associate director of the Kansas Biological Survey.
The survey hopes to use additional money to buy the rest of the 160 acres and to build trails and displays.
"Some of the problems are pretty subtle, too. If there's suddenly a bunch of houses across the fence from the prairie, you have the introduction of nonnative species..."
Scott Campbell Research associate at the Kansas Biological Survey
The survey also hopes that by buying the 160 acres, it can protect 10 acres it already owns called the Rockefeller prairie — land that deNoyelles calls "a little piece of history" because it has remained largely unchanged
since wagon trains crossed the prairie in the 1800s.
The Rockefeller prairie, with over 200 species of plants, is one of four known places on the planet where the western prairie fringed orchid and Mead's milkweed — two federally protected plant species — are found together.
Ed Martinko, Kansas Biological Survey director, said that as cities grow, original prairie land could be at risk.
More people around the Rockefeller prairie increases the possibility they could bring invasive species onto the land, he said.
"Some of the problems are pretty subtle, too," said Scott Campbell, a research associate with the survey. "If there's suddenly a bunch of houses across the fence from the prairie, you have the introduction of nonnative species like cool-season grasses, such as fescue and brome, or dandelions and weeds, or pesticides."
KANSAS DEATH PENALTY
Supreme Court to hear death penalty cases
BY CARL MANNING THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOPEKA — The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments Dec. 7 about whether the Kansas death penalty is constitutional, and Attorney General Phill Kline plans to be there to make the state's case.
Kansas' is one of four death penalty cases scheduled before the nation's highest court when it begins its new term in October. Seven men who had been sentenced to die in Kansas might yet face execution if the court upholds the law.
In December, the Kansas Supreme Court declared the 1994 death penalty law was flawed because of how it said juries should consider the evidence for imposing a death sentence. Kline appealed, and the high court agreed in May to take the case.
"He has been preparing ever since the court said it would hear the case and has a definite game plan. He will be well prepared to represent Kansas," said
Whitney Watson, spokesman for the attorney general's office.
Watson said this will be Kline's first time to argue before the justices, although he appeared before them in October when the court heard arguments in an Arkansas River water rights case between Kansas and Colorado.
At issue in the death penalty statute is the section that states if the evidence for or against imposing the death sentence seems equal, the jury must choose death.
The Kansas court disagreed, saying when the evidence seems equal, the defendant should benefit. To do otherwise amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and violates defendants' rights to due legal process, the court said.
Earlier this year, legislators could have fixed the flaw by rewriting the law. But they felt that doing that could discourage the high court from accepting the appeal and would end any chance of those on death row facing execution by lethal injection.