Bison ranching is a growing branch of agriculture. There are about 150,000 bison in the United States today; about 80 percent are on ranches where they are raised for their meat, and the rest live in national parks and preserves. The population increases by about 15 to 20 percent annually, though it is minuscule compared with the number of cattle on ranches, where more than a half million animals are slaughtered each week to supply the American dinner table with beef. The Cattlemen's Association need not worry about competition from bison ranchers in the immediate future, but trends indicate that the ratio of beef to bison meat consumed by Americans may be changing. Not only is bison meat more nutritious than beef, but bison ranching is more economically and ecologically sound.
In talking to bison ranchers and members of bison associations, I have found that many hold ideological beliefs in the concepts of sustainable agriculture and minimum impact on the environment. Yes, bison ranching is a business, they have told me, but they also feel strongly about being good stewards of the land. They realize that only a healthy grassland ecosystem will sustain their businesses. Through wise use and minimum-impact ranching, they can maintain the value of this natural resource so that it does not diminish over time. Their concern is threefold: to maintain a healthy environment, which, in turn, will sustain a productive industry well into the future, which, in turn, will preserve the bison. As ranchers like to say, "If you want to save the buffalo, eat more bison." Or, put another way, "No one ever worries about chickens becoming extinct!"
Profit motive and ecological sensitivity are often thought of as antithetical, yet bison ranching is an industry in which the two go hand in hand. This, it seemed to me, was an odd marriage of conservative economics and liberal environmentalism. Environmentalism is often considered part of the "liberal agenda," yet among bison ranchers, a new conservative environmentalism has developed. I asked Paul Jonjak, president of the National Bison Association, about this, thinking that I had hit upon a great but unnoticed truth. "Sure, they're related," said Paul. 'That's why I got into bison ranching." So much for my probing insight into the obvious.
Paul Jonjak owns the Blue Mountain Bison Ranch near Loveland, Colorado. His land abuts Rocky Mountain National Park, and against a backdrop of majestic, snow-covered peaks, he runs some four hundred bison on 4,500 acres. As much as possible, Paul tries to create a natural range environment, leaving large areas unfenced and allowing the bison to roam freely for most of the year. Although his ranch could support a herd twice the size, Paul has decided to limit the number of bison to avoid overgrazing. He also wants to leave enough forage for the elk and deer that share the range. Paul's chief concern is not to maximize profits, but rather to maintain a healthy habitat while making a good living.
Bison meat is free of the hormones and chemicals frequently used to increase the size and weight of cattle. It has about the same taste as beef but contains less fat and cholesterol. A 3.5-ounce cut of bison steak has 3 grams of fat, 120 calories, and 21 grams of protein, compared with the same-sized piece of beef, which has 14 grams of fat, 210 calories, and 19 grams of protein. Bison costs more per pound, but the greater nutritional value compensates for the higher price.
An economically sound, sustainable agriculture that produces a more healthful meat is reason enough to request the grocery store to special order it. Yet there is still another, less tangible reason often mentioned by ranchers when they are asked about their motivation for getting into bison ranching. They view the bison as a living and breathing symbol of the Old West, a reminder of the spirit and romance of the frontier. Ironically, bison ranching is not only recapturing the Old West, it is also helping to define the New West.
Human settlement of the western plains was neither an easy nor a natural transition, but the people came. By 1890, the same year that the Indian Wars came to an end at Wounded Knee, the U.S. Census Bureau declared that the frontier was closed, because the human population density was two or more people per square mile.
The semiarid landscape of the West was not suited for farming. The thin prairie soil was not nearly as rich as the deep, organic, loamy soils of the Midwest, where wheat and corn grew so abundantly that these regions were named the nation's "breadbasket" and the "corn belt." On the western plains, the soils were thin and the rain infrequent. The short-grass prairie was better suited to large-scale ranching than to family farming. Many of the pioneers who tried to eke out an existence on 160-acre homesteads were defeated by the elements. Wave after wave of people left during times of drought. The last major drought, the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, coincided with the Great Depression and saw a mass exodus from the plains states. Today there are fewer people and fewer small towns on the plains than there were in the 1920s.
Agricultural practices have seen dramatic changes as well. As the number of family farms and ranches has dwindled, the land has been bought up and consolidated into corporate mega-farms, highly mechanized agribusinesses that employ fewer people. With work difficult to find, the young people pack up and leave for job opportunities in distant cities.
While small rural towns are experiencing outmigration, the major cities of the West are growing. People are moving from the East and West Coasts to escape unemployment, overcrowding, traffic jams, and the high stress of living in more heavily populated and congested urban areas. The populations of cities such as Denver and Phoenix, for example, are growing at unprecedented rates, and so is the resulting urban sprawl, with its associated problems ranging from crime to traffic.
The economic bases are changing as well, with the West seeing a shift away from large-scale extractive industries such as mining, ranching, and farming and toward high-tech computer and software companies, telecommunications, and other businesses born of the Information Age. The raw-material industries, though still vital to the region, are no longer the defining economic reality of the West.
These changing economic and demographic trends, as well as the resulting social and political ramifications, have led to a new designation for the region: the New West. Yet, by the very nature of this rapid change, the New West is difficult to define. It often seems as much an attitude as a place, holding the same powerful draw on newcomers today that the spirit of the Old West inspired in people generations ago. The New West is still considered relatively unspoiled, a place where opportunities abound and where the future is being shaped. The romantic ideal of the Old West has metamorphosed into that of the New West.
Planners and politicians are watching these trends and trying to respond to them. New ideas about what the West should be are coming from surprising places. Two professors from Rutgers University in New Jersey have been studying the changes taking place, and they have identified numerous and startling social currents affecting the region.
Frank and Deborah Popper began their investigation of the Great Plains in the mid-1980s as an academic exercise. Frank, a regional and urban planner, and his wife, Deborah, a geographer, have sorted through mountains of statistical data and census information on the West. By examining the demographics of the region, its transportation infrastructures, climate, economic bases, and numerous other factors, they created computer profiles that track the social changes now reshaping the West. Then they took their thinking a few steps further. They looked at the region in a larger context, taking into account what had worked or more importantly, what hadn't worked as the region was settled over the last 150 years. They combined this information with their computer profile and noticed the convergence of a number of trends. The Poppers then made some very interesting projections on the future of the New West.