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The American bison: Romance and realityThe most shocking abuse of a natural resource is embodied in the buffalo of the American plains: 60,000,000 animals reduced to 300 in less than 25 years. That is an expression of the mentality of our ancestors who first saw the western herds of massive herbivores in the early 19th century and decimated them to the point that President Grover Cleveland signed a law in 1894 that made it illegal to shoot a buffalo. What a desperate and greedy lot we must have been to enter the pristine plains and attempt to harvest and remove its plants and wildlife with a parallel goal of assimilating its indigenous people. There were a lot of extenuating circumstances that encouraged these actions, but there is no denial of the results of an onslaught of white settlement in a land that had been in harmony with nature for thousands of years. Now we turn to the present and what we've learned about this native beast and how it was able to graze in such incredible numbers on an ecosystem that has shown to be so fragile under the plow and the cow. I base my inspiration for this writing on a book by Dan O'Brien--"Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch" (Random House, 2001). The title of his book is the name of his ranch in the Black Hills of South Dakota. O'Brien is a writer turned rancher, turned writer, turned Internet marketer. He uses his literary skill to describe the unforgiving landscape and his economic failure in raising cattle. He redeems himself by making a leap of faith to build strong fences and run buffalo on the ranch. His best move appears to be the wild shot at marketing the meat to those who want to apologize for the destruction of the species but are still carnivores who want to taste a bite of bison just to connect with its legend. I wrote an article several years ago that was critical of the bison breeders in this country who continued to expand their numbers until the market for breeding stock collapsed. Some, including Indian tribes, wanted a government bailout for overproduction, so I compared them to farmers. The feedback on the story was 100 percent negative! The hard fact is that you cannot raise any animal unless you have a market. Selling to each other didn't work in ostrich and emus, and it didn't work in bison. O'Brien's decision to slaughter bulls and sell the meat is the only one he could make that had any chance of success. As it turned out, he was able to treat a bison like a bison and profit from it. O'Brien points out that we have a mindset that cows were always here and this is their native range. He compares the actions of buffalo to those of cattle in everything from their grazing patterns to the way they walk across the pasture. Cattle follow each other, single file, and make paths where bison have a different shaped hoof that cuts the soil in a different pattern. O'Brien argues that their migrations tilled the soil and supported the ecosystem. Bison open up seeps on the hillsides, and they create "wallows" across the landscape that support other wildlife. His description of the winter hardiness of bison is especially telling, as their ability to survive the harsh climate on an open prairie is far superior to that of a bovine. Can we roll up the fences and roll back the clock? No, but there are successful buffalo ranches led by Ted Turner and his immense wealth and marketing savvy. Turner, love him or hate him, is the largest private landowner and largest buffalo producer in America. He has a retail outlet called Ted's Montana Grill, a chain of restaurants that specialize in buffalo meat. His slogan--"Eat Great, Do Good"--sells the sizzle as much as the steak, just like O'Brien, who merchandises the product to people far away from the plains. A look at the website www.wildideabuffalo.com shows that you can buy four pounds of ground buffalo for $85, and a gift package with eight steaks and several colorfully described lesser cuts will cost just $320 with shipping included. That high-end market can't be too deep, but it has kept O'Brien on his ranch and given him the capital to invest in another one that has a substantial lease of public lands to go with it. I keep looking at our history of settlement of this continent and ask why we were so rambunctious and destructive. If the bison still roamed, would the Native Americans still have their cultures? Would the plowing of land have been prohibited on the plains? Would the thin topsoil still exist in Oklahoma and Kansas, and would the Dust Bowl have never happened? If Buffalo Bill and thousands like him had never fired their rifles and killed millions of these beasts, would we be better off for it? We'll never know, but as educated descendants, we do know more about the raw nature of our being. Surely, this history can teach us something about our worst tendencies and help us to control them. Editor's Note: Ken Root is an independent agricultural journalist. He was named the 2009 Farm Broadcaster of the Year and was the 2008 winner of the Oscar in Agriculture. He is an Oklahoma native and graduated from Oklahoma State University with a degree in Agriculture Education. Ken taught vocational agriculture at Union City, Okla., before taking his first broadcasting job with WKY Radio and Television. He worked in Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri as an agricultural broadcaster and began writing for the High Plains Journal eight years ago. He has spent the last five years as Lead Farm Broadcaster at WHO Radio in Des Moines, Iowa. Ken has also been the executive director of the National AgriChemical Retailers Association in Washington, D.C. and the National Association of Farm Broadcasting in Kansas City, Mo. He and his wife Gail have two adult children and two grandchildren.
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