Great Plains history

The Great Plains offer a familiar story of overexploitation and the emergence of the need to fix the damage. Today rural areas are showing the decline of traditional agriculture and extractive land uses that have left the area barren and unproductive. Restoration projects, in particular those involving the reintroduction of the bison, give an example of bringing the native ecosystem of an area back to life.

Grasslands once covered 40% of our nation, the bison once ranged over 48 of our states. Pre-settlement bison population estimates range from 30 to 70 million, after the extensive overexploitation of these animals their numbers dwindled to less than two dozen (Walters, 1996). The grasslands were a highly productive ecosystem even when the bison numbered in the millions because the two coevolved with each other adapting to conditions as well as each other. Today's cattle from the old world have replaced the bison's place in the plains degrading them while collecting the majority of the grains produced by American agriculture. Given the natural intact environment, bison thrive on their own without outside help. They are adapted to the harsh plains, "burned into the genes of bison is the speed and agility needed to outrun a prairie fire or track the greenup path of a summer thunderstorm. This is an animal shaped by millennia of natural selective pressures in the Great Plains environment," Fox and biologist Craig Knowles wrote (Defenders).

The Great Plains have suffered cycles of booms and busts since its early white settlement. The first began in 1862 with the Homestead Act. The Act gave pioneer families 160 acres of free federal land to be farmed for five years. This was the start of federally subsidized settlement that caused soil erosion and the lowering of the water table eventually leading to heavy depopulation. The next cycle began in the early 1900s with new homestead laws and larger free land incentives. This second cycle ended with the Great Depression, drought, the Dust Bowl, the abolition of homesteading, and was illustrated to us in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. The third cycle beginning in the 1940s reached its peak in the 1970s when the Department of Agriculture encouraged fence-post to fence-post cultivation. By the mid 1980s the bust phase set in and is still continuing (Popper, 1994).

The Buffalo Commons

The Buffalo Commons is a phrase that was coined by Deborah E. Popper and Frank J. Popper in 1987. It is essentially "an appeal for rethinking Plains possibilities" says Popper. Over the years the Buffalo Commons idea has evolved becoming a description of the long-range, open-ended series of landuse changes that are occurring on the plains (Popper, 1994). Central to the changes is the reintroduction of the bison and the replanting of shortgrass.

There have already been many examples of the Buffalo Commons land uses in practice. In 1990 the InterTribal Bison Cooperative was formed to foster bison reintroduction as an alternative to raising cattle on tribal lands (Defenders). The Cooperative has grown to 37 member tribes collectively owning 7,000 bison. Dubray, a Sioux and president of the InterTribal Bison Cooperative regards his reservation's herd of 500 as a key to restoring his people's culture, health, and pride (Nikiforuk, 1993).

Another successful illustration of the Buffalo Commons can be seen in Ted Turner's five ranches collectively home to some 7,500 bison. The first and largest of these is the Flying D in Montana with a herd of 3,500 free-running bison. His permanent conservation plan bars subdivision on the Flying D and limits agricultural grazing so that enough forage is left for wildlife.

Alternatives to buffalo

With many examples of successful Buffalo Commons areas, these days there are not many who are adamantly opposed to the idea. Since the notion of restoring the bison to the plains began, the biggest opposition has come from cattle ranchers who stand by cattle raising and do not want to see the bison return. These objections also hold in the Indian community among those tribal members who run cows (Defenders). But, with the continuing decline of the plains, and as more people move out of the area, the return of the bison has become much more accepted.

There are other alternative land uses that some great plains communities are introducing. Forerunners are casinos and landfills for the eastern and western states which offer quick economic development for many of these dying counties. Casinos could employ almost everyone in many of the small counties, attract people, and bring in tourists greatly lifting the economy. Landfill sites are becoming more and more in demand as the populations boom in states such as California and New York; they could possibly bring in more money and provide more jobs than the casinos. These are two industries that could boast at least the economies of these great plains areas.

Bison and the plains

There are many advantages to raising bison over cattle. Bison have a tremendous evolutionary advantage of being adapted to the harsh plains environment. On average it costs about half as much to raise a bison instead of a cow while bison meat can bring in almost twice the money. Bison can sustain themselves on an intact ecosystem without grain or medicinal supplements.

In the reintroduction of bison to areas of the Great Plains there also lies the restoration of an entire ecosystem. These animals need the whole ecosystem to be successful and also form a keystone species within it. Bringing back the bison entails the restoration of all the plains animals and plants which means a sustainable ecosystem. "The Buffalo Commons attempts to develop stable deep-rural plains land uses that respect the region's genius turning space, sky and the past into resources" (Popper, April 1994).

Resources:

The Buffalo Commons and its National Restoration Implications.

http://nabalu.flas.ufl.edu/ser/Rutgers/Buffalo.html

Manning, Richard. The Buffalo is Coming Back. Defenders On Line.

http://www.defenders.org/magf-196.html

Nikiforuk, Andrew. 1993. Where the Buffalo Roam. Harrowsmith

Country Life, July/August 1993.

Popper, Deborah E. and Popper, Frank J. 1994. The Buffalo

Commons: A Bioregional Vision of the Great Plains. Landscape

Architecture, 1994, Apr, v84 n4: 144.

Popper, Deborah E. and Popper, Frank J. 1994. Great Plains: Checkered

Past, Hopeful Future. Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy,

Winter 1994.

Walters, Mark Jerome. 1996. Can Bison Claim the Range? Animals,

May-June 1996.

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