Make Way for Buffalo

New York Times ^ | Oct 29, 2003 | NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

[gcruse]

AWSON, N.D.

This forlorn farm town — Rawson, population 6 — is a fine place to contemplate the boldest idea in America today: rescuing the rural Great Plains by returning much of it to a vast "Buffalo Commons."

The result would be the world's largest nature park, drawing tourists from all over the world to see parts of 10 states alive again with buffalo, elk, grizzlies and wolves. Restoring a large chunk of the plains — which cover nearly one-fifth of the lower 48 states — to their original state may also be the best way to revive local economies and keep hamlets like Rawson from becoming ghost towns.

Rawson used to be a bustling town with a railroad depot, two stores, a hotel, a bank, a post office, a gas station, a Lutheran church, a lumber yard, a grain elevator and a school. It had its own newspaper, The Rawson Tribune, and its slogan was "Rawson, where opportunity awaits you."

It has been downhill ever since. Two years ago, after the election for mayor ended in an exact tie (one vote for Nels Heggen and one vote for Garvin Gullickson), after the four adult residents tired of taxing themselves to pay for seven streetlights, they dissolved the city and turned it into an unincorporated village.

"My children won't come back here to live," admitted Mr. Heggen, whose grandfather ran the hotel in town. "There isn't much to do here. Right around here, it's kind of desolate." (Some journalists reach judgments about a place after interviewing just a few inhabitants; I boast that I talked to half the town.)

It sounds cruel to say so, but towns like Rawson are a reminder that the oversettlement of the Great Plains has turned out to be a 150-year-long mistake, one of the longest-running and most costly errors in American history. Families struggled for generations to survive droughts and blizzards, then finally gave up and moved on. You can buy a home out here for $3,000, and you can sometimes rent one for nothing at all if you promise to mow the lawn and keep up the house.

The rural parts of the Great Plains are emptying, and in some cases reverting to wilderness.

It's immensely sad to travel through the Dakotas' ghost towns or Nebraska's cattle country — where Loup is the poorest county in America — because they are full of warm, hard-working, honest farmers and ranchers who are having their hearts broken. How can one not admire the people of Sentinel Butte, N.D., where there is no attendant at the gasoline station but the townspeople all have keys and pay on the honor system?

Yet honesty and sweat aren't enough to make farming and ranching successful in marginal lands. The farms produce plenty of grain and beef, but they will never make much money, even with billions of dollars in agricultural subsidies. The economic model will be even less viable as underground aquifers run out in the next two or three decades. Much plains farming relies on the vast Ogallala aquifer, which is dropping at a rate of four feet per year.

So it's time to reach for something bold, like the Buffalo Commons idea, proposed in 1987 by Frank and Deborah Popper, two New Jersey social scientists. This would be the biggest step to redefine America since the Alaska purchase. Pushing it would give the environmental movement a chance to be known mainly by what it's for instead of for what it's against. But it would take close cooperation with the people with the most at stake: struggling farmers and ranchers, who for now are irritated by East Coast city slickers trying to turn their land into a buffalo playground.

"Why not let us manage our own affairs, just as people in New York would want to manage their own affairs?" asked Keith Winter, a veteran rancher, during a break from working with his calves.

It's a fair question, and a Buffalo Commons can be achieved only if it benefits North Dakotans more than New Yorkers. That should be possible, for states like Colorado, Utah and Idaho have boomed by branching out from their traditional economic base to embrace tourism and recreation, and Buffalo Commons would become one of the world's wonders. If Buffalo Commons comes about, perhaps a hotel can reopen in Rawlins, and Mr. Winter's ranch could draw German tourists who would pay to herd cattle. If the thunder of buffalo hooves is again heard on the open plains, that will not be the death knell for towns like Rawlins — it will be their last, best hope.

[gcruse]

There is a Candide-ish naivete here in thinking what a huge tourist draw this would be. It reminds me of the antebellum black and white pictures of picnickers on a hill watching buffalo graze. Hotcha! There will be those, I'm sure, who think $127 billion agriwelfare is a better use of taxpayer money than letting flyover barrens go back to seed, but to others, it's no different from subsidizing failing rust belt behemoths.

[gcruse]

Dismal science ping

[Mr. Bird]

Let me get this straight: the Plains were oversettled and are now dying. We should now return it to nature, so it can become attractive enough to be oversettled again?

I'm sure the Sierra Club would encourage lots of hotels to sprout up around pristine, buffalo-laden landscapes. They promote that sort of thing all the time, right?

Leave the good people of the Great Plains alone. To think that any jackass from anyplace else has their welfare in mind is nuts...

[gcruse]

Think Serengti Plains without the lions, elephants, leopards and wildebeast. Hmmm. Maybe we could just release Hillary back into the wild. Hunting, anyone?

[Cicero]

It probably is the case that the settling of the Great Plains represented something of a triumph of hope over experience. Many farming towns have been turning into ghost towns as the young people move out to greener pastures.

But the solution obviously isn't government grants. The solution, like it or not, is to let it happen. These areas can only be settled by folks who are willing to farm them, and we aren't producing too many of that kind of folks these days. But who knows what the future will bring?

The one thing the government could do is to change the farming laws and subsidies so they are slanted toward family farms rather than factory farms. But that's not very likely, I'm afraid.

[dead]

If the place is reverting back to "the wild" on it's own, why the hell should the federal government get involved?

[gcruse]

Agreed. Even Russia is pulling out of her Soviet era subsidized Siberian outposts. Capitalism isn't always pretty.

[gcruse]

If the place is reverting back to "the wild" on it's own, why the hell should the federal government get involved?

As government of last resort?  Send in the American Mounties!

[Celtjew Libertarian]

Somebody who didn't mind being in the middle of nowhere and who had a job they could do over a computer could by a lot of land and get a large house for next to nothing.

[gcruse]

Spoken like a true libertarian Jew. LOL ;)

[Celtjew Libertarian]

8>) If I didn't have family in Florida, I'd be seriously considering it.... Come to think of it, I'd probably be being dragged there by my wife -- that would be her Scots blood kicking in.

[gcruse]

I'd rather live in the midwest than New Hampshire, for sure. The freestate people may be making a big mistake.

[Chewbacca]

$3,000 for a house, almost rent for free? Sounds like a great place to retire too.

Live in this area during the Spring/Summer/Fall, and then go on vacation during the Winter.

Someone could set up a huge retirement community.

[jim_trent]

I live in Nebraska and have spent at LOT of time driving the roads through the "buffalo commons" area (that is just about everything west of York and not on Interstate 80. It is unfortunate, but no one can make a living there. The "soil" is non-existent. They don't call the northwest part of the state the "sandhills" for nothing. Wherever the thin layer of prairie grass is damaged, you end up with a HUGE blowhole. The white sand has nothing to anchor it. You see the crops go from corn (which takes a lot of water) to beans and sorgum to wheat to forage (grass for cattle) to grazing as the water becomes more scarce.

And, there is no water. The only places that grow anything have huge center pivot irrigation equipment. And the water table is dropping like the article says. One of the biggest businesses out there is well drilling. You see one in EVERY small town. They have to drill a new one or continue the old one every few years when the water level drops below the depth of the old well.

There used to be some irrigation, but Colorado has reduced the flow of the Platte river by 90% and wants the remaining 10%. You can literally walk across the Platte in the western part of the state without getting your ankles wet. One South Park episode had Kenney with a cement block around his feet being tossed into the Platte. The water came up halfway on the block. The puchline was by the guys who threw him in, "Uh, just how deep is the Platte?" I bet most of the people watching the episode did not get the joke.

Anyway, I don't like some east coast liberals telling us what to do with our land, but the fact is the only thing that is keeping these places going is government "farming" subsidies. Is this the best way to be spending our money?

[Remole]

Last week, an op-ed based on Homer's Iliad. This week, an op-ed whose title plays with Robert McCloskey's childrens book, Make Way for Ducklings. Looks like Kristof has finally reached his level.

[kaktuskid]

Does not a buffalo do the same damage to land as a cow?? So if you have the same amount of buffalo on the land it will not be any different than running beef cattle?

[Libertarianize the GOP]

ping

[gcruse]

Redistribution of income for keeping parts of the country alive is a contentious problem. Conservatives who want things to be the way they used to be are caught in a dilemma of deciding how much it is worth to them.

[gcruse]

Next in the series, "Horton Hears a Hoof."

[gcruse]

Wild cattle, maybe. The domestic variety brings such a superstructure with it, it's hard to equate them with buffalo.