They found that a century of agriculture had depleted western soils. In response to this, more and more fertilizers were applied. As large-scale corporate agribusinesses took over, farming methods became more intensive, taking an even greater toll on the land. In addition, the farming of endless square miles of crops in a semiarid environment meant that massive irrigation was needed, which consumed enormous amounts of water, a precious commodity in the West. The Ogallala aquifer, a vast underground water reserve, was slowly being siphoned off. The Poppers contended that farming was, is, and will be poor use of the western plains.
Cattle ranching has also exacted a toll. The prairie landscape is a very fragile ecosystem, one that is easily damaged. Beef cattle, introduced by Europeans, tend to overgraze, eating everything in their path and leaving only a stubble of prairie grasses. Bison are more selective grazers, eating only certain plants, thus leaving behind a diversity of plant species to reseed the plains.
Bison are more naturally suited to the plains. After all, they evolved as the prairie itself evolved. Bison are more physically able to survive the hot, dry summers and the cold, windy winters. They have existed in this environment for tens of thousands of years, a time during which the prairie grasslands flourished.
When the pioneers first came west, they saw an endless sea of grass, the rich tapestry of plant species that made up the prairie. Settlers plowed the sod to plant crops. Ranchers built up the cattle herds that would become the ranching industry, often grazing more cattle per acre than the land could support. The prairie ecosystem disappeared. The bits of native prairie left today are set aside in nature preserves or, ironically, are growing wild in pioneer cemeteries.
From a purely economic standpoint, bison are cheaper to raise than cattle. Essentially undomesticated, bison still manage to give birth on the plains as they have for centuries, pretty much fending for themselves. Cattle, on the other hand, usually require more human intervention, particularly during birthing, which translates into lots of additional work and expensive veterinary bills. In addition, cattle are frequently crossbred for desired characteristics, and this genetic tampering sometimes creates new problems that require medical attention. Costs rise each time an animal is handled by humans, and cattle demand more attention than bison.
Bison are cheaper to raise and more ecologically suited to the plains. Viable herds, however, need large unfenced areas in which to roam. After analyzing maps and computer data on population shifts in the West, the Poppers offered an intriguing proposal. Called the "Buffalo Commons," it outlined a plan according to which the federal government would buy up huge tracts of land and repopulate the areas with native bison.
When the Poppers suggested this idea nearly a decade ago, it prompted a loud outcry from the West. What about the people? was the resounding response. What about our communities, our schools, our way of life? The Poppers explained that their concept for the Buffalo Commons would not include all of the West. They had narrowed it down to areas experiencing the most dramatic decrease in population and loss of economic bases and with little hope of reversing the downward trend.
The area the Poppers mapped out included 110 counties in 10 western states, home to approximately 400,000 people (out of 6.5 million inhabiting the plains states). Over the next forty years, the Poppers proposed, these are as totaling nearly 140,000 square miles could be purchased by the government and allowed to revert to prairie, where, once again, the buffalo would roam. This free-range Buffalo Commons would encompass much of the western Dakotas, western Nebraska, and eastern Montana as well as good-sized portions of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas, and parts of Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming.
What the Poppers suggested was nothing short of revolutionary. Some Westerners considered it treason. No matter how well reasoned and supported by fact the Poppers' concept was, it had hit an emotional nerve. As public attention focused on their Buffalo Commons proposal mostly through newspaper articles and letters to the editor pointing out how preposterous the idea was interest swelled. And so did emotions.
Above all, the Poppers had embarked on their analysis of the West as an intellectual exercise. No one was paying them to do it, nor was it part of their academic duties. They were not out to make policy; they had simply wanted to stimulate healthy debate about the future of the West. It quickly turned into much more. People wanted to know where the heck these Easterners came off telling Westerners how to run things. The mail poured in, stacking high in the Poppers' home and university offices.
The Poppers felt it was important that people not misunderstand what they were proposing, and they wanted to explain their research and why they had reached these conclusions. They made a number of trips to the West, crisscrossing the plains, speaking in school auditoriums and church halls. On at least one occasion, the local sheriffs felt that armed security was necessary. Fortunately, there were no violent incidents. But there was certainly a healthy and heated debate. The Buffalo Commons was a startling idea regarding the future of the New West, and it raised a lot of western hackles.
Ten years later, however, there is a surprising twist to this story. It appears that the plains are reverting to buffalo grazing grounds after all and faster than expected. Even more surprising, it is almost entirely the result of the private sector not the government investing in bison ranching operations. The reason for both of these changes is a simple one: money.
It was market economics, not the wild prognostic theories of two East Coast academic elitists, that spurred these changes. The idea of the Buffalo Commons, initially and quite vocally rejected by independent Westerners, was happening naturally. Perhaps it is a self-correction of sorts, a leveling of the ecological and economic scales to a balance more in line with what works best in the plains environment.
The number of bison ranchers is increasing every year. In fact, there are bison ranches in every state in the country, a considerable expansion of the animals' original range. The National Bison Association, which merged with the American Bison Association in 1995, has nearly 2,500 members. The NBA lobbies for bison-ranching legislation, supports research on bison-related issues, and promotes education about bison, the healthful qualities of bison meat, and the advantages of bison ranching over cattle ranching. The association also works with the Canadian Bison Association and the Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative.
With more than thirty member tribes, the Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative assists Indian tribes in establishing their own herds and helps those with existing herds to expand them. Reservations are often the recipients of bison that have outgrown national parks. Excess animals from Custer State Park in South Dakotaa herd that originated from sixty animals sold to the park by Scotty Philip in the early twentieth centuryare regularly given to various Sioux Indian tribes who run buffalo herds on their reservations.