Kansas Forest Service
Show Kansas Forest Service on campus map
Interactive campus map
The Kansas Forest Service is housed as an independent agency within K-State Research and Extension. The agency consists of a state office and several district offices. The state office, located one mile west of K-State’s main campus, houses the state forester, program coordinators, statewide specialists, and support staff. The rural fire shop and conservation trees greenhouse also are located at the state office. About 1 million seedlings are grown here each year, and distributed across Kansas for conservation plantings. Plantings may function as wildlife habitat, windbreaks, wood lots, timber plantations, or Christmas tree farms, among others.
In the late 1930s, on property that is the present-day home of the Kansas Forest Service, Dr. Donald Duncan planted hundreds of Ponderosa pines as part of an Agriculture Research Service provenance study from seeds that he had collected from all over the pine’s native range. Evergreen and deciduous tree collections, a shrub collection, and several rare and unusual species can be found throughout the property, at what is known as the Kansas Forest Service Demonstration Arboretum and Honor Grove, which has been accredited at level one by The Morton Arboretum. Since the late 1970s, trees have been planted on the property to honor foresters and staff who have retired or passed away while in service to the agency, known as the Honor Grove. Oaks, pines, pecan, male Osage-orange, eastern redbud, Kentucky coffeetree, Ginkgo, and black walnut are among the species found in this space.
