Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Facing The Storm -- Story of The American Bison

"This land still has the memory of what the bison means to it."

I've read a lot in the last year on bison and prairie ecosystems, and the PBS documentary Facing the Storm hit every subject in under one hour (watch it here). Of course, it infuriated me and made me cry and made me leap for joy, but I'm a prairie nerd.

What most strikes me about our legacy with bison is what's now and next: that Montana continues to sponsor hunts / kills for bison who "escape" Yellowstone in the winter. How neat our national parks are. How contained like a garden. Here is where some things may be partially wild, but only here, and only how and when we want them. Our national parks are reflections of ourselves--we fear ourselves, we work so hard to control our wildness, our emotions, our passions. And the harder we work, the tighter the coil, so when we snap we snap big. We can't stand the illusion of our civilization, but we work hard to pretend we do--with helicopters and snowmobiles chasing animals.

Bison may be saved from extinction, but wild bison hardly exist at all. We pick and choose traits we favor, and breed out the wild. We try to breed out the wild in us, too--in cubicles, in ipads, in crazy bloggers using computers to ironically convey a message of the wild. Words fail here. Out there, out there they do not.

I want to see a buffalo commons in western Kansas come to fruition. Soon, the Ogallala aquifer will run dry there and the last remnants of duped settlers will be gone. I can't think of a better way to heal the land, our country, and ourselves then to see the apex creature return to the Plains--one that manages (what an awful word) the landscape far better than we do. That's why when I saw the image of bison grazing in a prairie dog town I fist pumped the air. Prairie dogs create lush vegetation for bison. Bison create landscapes for prairie dogs. Then all kinds of other wildlife come in and benefit even more.

We can't stand that the land still remembers the past. Our rows of GMO, chemical-infested corn can't cover it enough. Our doped-up, super fatty cattle can't cover it up even as they foul streams and trample grasslands and wildflowers. I think the Plains will return to some echo of their memory. But we carry that memory in us, too--the wonder of first coming across the ocean of grass, and the reverberation of rifles from passing train cars filled with sport hunters. 

7 comments:

Susan in the Pink Hat said...

Great post. In spite of Ted Turner's craziness, his live of bison is awesome. An island here in the Great Salt Lake is left free range to a herd of bison...at least they don't have to worry about them leaving, I guess.

Desert Dweller said...

I saw a lecture by the Popper husband/wife years ago on the concept of a Buffalo Commons. Like you and some others, I would like to see less fencing and the occasional bison herd when I drive out on the great plains, not cows, winter wheat, cotton and corn. Some interesting ideas to reclaim that land, for sure, and probably more to come. Hopefully, some of those concepts are refined to take into account existing livelihoods (and lack-thereof)...as a designer, I think within reason, both can be accomodated.

Having gone to HS in a county called Arapahoe, where there is no evidence of what it was named after...and having driven Denver-Norman countless times, what was done to all the inhabitants of that region is *$##&, for sure. As a 1st generation-born American, it is humbling.

I'll try to find the documentary you note. Good topic, and I include plant species / ecologies in bringing the original inhabitants back.

Benjamin Vogt said...

S--Ted Turner though has cultivated bison. I guess it's something. Didn't know you had some in UT!
D--The Popper's made an appearance in the vid (I linked to it online). I lived, for a brief time, on Arapaho St. in Oklahoma. We had such subversive policies toward native americans--such a great and horrible nation we have.

Kathryn said...

I look forward to watching the video you posted. I live small in an East Coast urban container and have no real sense of the freedoms that have been lost in your great wide prairie. They were lost hundreds of years earlier here.

frank popper said...

Anyone wanting more information about the Buffalo Commons should go to my Rutgers website, policy.rutgers.edu/faculty/popper. The Texas-based Great Plains Restoration Council, gprc.org, is the only national group that explicitly aims to create the Buffalo Commons. Its president is Jarid Manos, greatplains@gprc.org and I chair its board. Another pertinent group is the New Mexico-based National Center for Frontier Communities, frontier.org. Its executive director is Charlie Alfero, calfero@hmsnm.org, and Deborah and I are on its board. The group advocates for and does research on small isolated rural communities not just in the West or Great Plains, but throughout the country. Best wishes,
Frank Popper
Rutgers and Princeton Universities
fpopper@rutgers.edu, fpopper@princeton.edu
848-932-2790

frank popper said...

Anyone wanting more information about the Buffalo Commons should go to my Rutgers website, policy.rutgers.edu/faculty/popper. The Texas-based Great Plains Restoration Council, gprc.org, is the only national group that explicitly aims to create the Buffalo Commons. Its president is Jarid Manos, greatplains@gprc.org and I chair its board. Another pertinent group is the New Mexico-based National Center for Frontier Communities, frontier.org. Its executive director is Charlie Alfero, calfero@hmsnm.org, and Deborah and I are on its board. The group advocates for and does research on small isolated rural communities not just in the West or Great Plains, but throughout the country. Best wishes,
Frank Popper
Rutgers and Princeton Universities
fpopper@rutgers.edu, fpopper@princeton.edu
848-932-2790

Benjamin Vogt said...

K--So true. And yet, New England is slowly getting reforested, right? Returning to some small echo of the past?
FP--Thanks for the info (if it is really you?).