Ecosystems are morphing beasts with fuzzy edges. It’s hard to say where one leaves off and the next one begins – hard to say exactly what influence a mangrove swamp has on, say, the sand dunes behind them. But to make a meaningful stab at conserving that swamp we have to draw a line somewhere and the more delicate the ecosystem is, and the more attractive in terms of potential human use, the more important it is to get that line drawn quickly. Given the state of environmental degradation in the world, when it comes to drawing lines, speed might be more important than accuracy.
No one knows how much land it would take to make a meaningful impact on the problem of restoration and preservation of the Great Plains. We do know that much of the Great Plains is extremely fragile and that the wet years and ease of access make humans think it would all be a good place to farm, recreate, and extract. It’s easy to see that the Great Plains are threatened with extinction, but difficult to figure out where to draw a line of defense. It depends a lot on the condition of the land over the horizon – how this portion could connect to the next. But when conservation groups and knowledgeable individuals make a stab at the area needed to make a difference, they begin with a million acres.
That is a chunk of undeveloped ground a little larger than Rhode Island and, if you are a Rhode Islander that might sound like a lot of land. Suggestions of halting and turning back the impact of human population pressures on such a land mass may startle some people, but I’m a Great Plains person and I’ve done some math.
Consider that Lieutenant John C. Fremont once rode horse-back eight hundred and forty miles in eight days and took one and a half of those days in the middle of the ride to meet with his commander. Consider that the Great Plains have most meaningfully been measured in terms of large quadrupeds crossing – surviving on nothing but grass and the scattered water they could find it. Think of buffalo moving hundreds of miles. Then understand that a million acres is only a square of land a little less than forty miles on a side.
By heredity and convention, most of our minds are calibrated on the European scale, where landscape and distance had shrunk long before there was an awareness of ecology. There is only one large group of Americans that I can think of, who have had in their recent heritage a vision in sync with the Great Plains. That group is the sub-set of Native Americans that we now know as Plains Indians. The iconic parts of their culture were formed after Europeans invaded the New World and very soon after those natives took up residence between the 100th meridian and the Rocky Mountains. The technological breakthrough that allowed this group’s mind-set and customs to meld with the ecosystem of the Great Plains was the horse. Their culture was built on the backs of horses. I have Native friends who truly believe they are brothers and sisters with the buffalo.
That perception of kinship has to do with distance and the sudden ability to fit into a world where movement is perhaps the defining characteristic. Within a hundred years a small group of humans who had, for the most part, sat on the sidelines of the Great Plains eking out a living by farming river drainages, and waiting for the great herds of buffalo and antelope to move closer, were handed a free pass to move with the herds. Imagine the wonder of finally coming to understand something of the movement of birds and animals. Imagine the awe of realizing the scale of the land, following the mystical herds, realizing that what happened below the distant, billowing thunder cloud affected you and the life of your family in a direct and essential way.
The Great Plains has as much in common with the ocean that roils off the coast of Rhode Island than it does with the static land surrounding Providence. Understanding the machinery of the prairie ecosystem is perhaps more akin to the knowledge of the seaman than the farmer, or the city-dweller that has come to define most of us.
Even the concept of a million acres is fraught with the tamer notions of metes and bounds, surveys, and limits. Think of the sky. No landscape on Earth, save the ocean herself, is there as much sky as on the Great Plains. When I travel east, I may be pleased to see those first blocks of trees, but I am barely past the Missouri River when I begin to resent their theft of the sky. Perfectly nice city people have moved in on both sides of my ranch above the Cheyenne River and both have taken advantage of dangerous USDA programs to plant trees. I watch them digging in the prairie sod and, though I understand their need to recreate the landscape that they know, I shake my head. Growing trees takes water that the Great Plains is short of. There is not much chance the trees will grow and no chance at all that a grove of trees can endure without human help. But in the mean-time the reallocation of water is cheating something that has been sustainable for eons. More troubling even than the waste of water is the phenomenon of fragmentation. The ground nesting birds that are perhaps the most elegant and unique feature of the Great Plains, evolved to depend on the protection of distance. Trees are anathema to most prairie birds and an incongruous row of them is a death sentence when you consider that predators, avian, terrestrial, and often invasive, cluster in these inadvertent launching pads for destruction.
If left void of tree groves a million acres would be a safe place for lark buntings, bobolinks, meadow larks, black birds, pipits, curlews, and plovers to nest. If a line of thunderstorms passed through and a hundred grass fires were struck, as happens more often than most of us might think, half of the million acres could burn. When such events happen they are signs of a healthy ecosystem and a million acres might well insure that there would still be continuity. The system would likely not unravel if it were the size of Rhode Island, but if it was fragmented by farming; roads, tree groves, buildings, or energy development things might come undone at one of many levels. It is easy to see how a population of ground nesting birds could be the loose strand of yarn jerked by Great Horned Owls suddenly given windbreak trees to hunt from. More difficult to understand is the evolution of strategies for survival of prairie insects and rodents that depend on a million contiguous acres. A fifty foot gravel path to an oil rig might seem insignificant, but if you are of a species of rodent whose existence has always depended on a canopy of grass, it is a big deal indeed. The rodents might seem like deuces in the game of Great Plains life, but the game is not poker. It’s more like dominos.
The Great Plains is not like Rhode Island. The fertility is low, the nutrition is scattered, the distances great. The genes of species wander for miles and miles in search of kindred sprits. If they are denied the movement that defines them, they perish. It sometimes takes a million acres to have even a chance of passing genes from one generation to the next. It is a place of migration and movement. Forget the insular, picket-fence model of home. Consider the citizenship of region and beyond. The Great Plains is made up of landscapes that can not be viewed from one’s back porch. They cannot be appreciated in a day or even a week. To see the million miles in its totality a visitor must have the time to move with the animals, to rise early, to sleep when the sun is high and to stay up late.
Comments 15
I am fascinated with your story about water and birds and open space in the Great Plains. Keep on teaching. Most of us don’t know this stuff. In the great Northwest, we think only of protecting or planting more trees — and for good reason. We don’t understand the plains.
Reminds me of the folks that move to the desert to be free from allergies they suffer in the East. Then they plant grass where no grass should grow, trees, gardens using loads of water in a desert. Next thing, they’ve got those darn allergies again. Go figure.
I’m hopeful, barely, that the next administration will at least begin to reverse some of the wrong-headed policies of the prior administrations. Thinking back to geometry class and two lines moving forward in time, a small shift now can have a big change further out, later on; even if it doesn’t seem so at first.
Same for your neighbors, planting trees where none should be – and why in the world we have policies that reward the wrong behaviors…
One of the best short essays on native grasslands that I’ve read. A book of similar writings would be beautiful.
Thank you for again conveying the wonders and vastness of the great plains. I was lucky enough to grow up there and hope to move back again, but meanwhile I’ll enjoy my visits and your prose. As Jeanne notes above, people don’t understand the plains, but your words bring them closer to understanding.
I’m always amazed when I see that people who are not intimate with the Great Plains are interested. It is your interest, more than the interest of those of us out here, that will finally make a difference. It is you that have the power to influence the food and land policies. Gary – keep your eyes open next Sept. A book with my essays and Michael Forsberg’s photographs will be coming out from the Univeristy of Chicago Press. GREAT PLAINS: America’s lingering wild.
Glad to see you are writing again. Get to work.
Reading your essay, I feel a great kinship and encouragement, although at a different scale. In northern Illinois, at The Nature Conservancy’s 3,000 acre Nachusa Grasslands, volunteers and staff are having success restoring tall grass prairie. Our best restorations are nearly indistinguishable from native remnants. Planted species diversity exceeds 150 forbs and grasses. Spend a day with us collecting seeds, fighting invasives and enjoying this extraordinary rare environment .
Fascinating! I did know that the wagon trails of the 1800’s that cut across the Great Plains caused great ecological damage. Just the graising of the pioneer’s livestock created a food deprived line that buffalo would not cross, spiting the buffalo population into a northern and southern herd. I had no idea that the damage could be so devastatingly nuanced. Mike (Dan’s brother)
Thank you for the beautiful essay. This constant re-education is necessary for those of us not familiar with The Great Plains. My brief exposure to this at first seemingly simple but then unique and complex ecosystem was a total revelation. The Plains are a vast and beautiful expanse that needs our attention and protection.
I am looking forward to your book in September. If it’s like this essay, it will be more of a revelation than just an education. You have convicted me again of dreaming bigger dreams. Bigger dreams of bigger sky.
Thank you for your birds eye view on the fragility of the GreatPlains.At times I wonder why I ever left,never again. This truly is Gods Country
The Great Plains are a very fragile environment, that Euro American man at times throughout history has managed to almost destory, but nature has a funny way of reclaiming herself, if left to her own devises. Fire is one of the ways. Nature designed her grasses and forbs to regenerate after a fire, or go dorment during times of stress. Prolonged periods of drought are hard of every creature that inhabits the plains from the largest unglate to the smallest insect, yet they manage to regulate their habits and survive.
Our brothers the bison, during times of drought i.e.low forage hot,dry weather regulate the amount of cows that get bred so the next calf crop is smaller, and older non-productive animals die off. plus they don’t graze the land in the same way that cattle do. They graze on the move in many satallite groups of 5-10 animals that tend to spread out across their range. Cattle tend to graze riparian areas,creeks and rivers, and don’t want to leave.It’s been stated that cattle never graze more than a mile from a water source, while bison will graze two miles or more from that said source, unless they are sick then they tend to just stand in the water. thank you
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Dan,
Great job on this essay; it made me homesick for the big sky and the stiff wind. I can’t wait to get back home and look for shed antlers and sharpies dancing on leks.
That would be a wonderful treat for enduring this long and cold winter/
I was particularly struck by your mention of kinship and perception of distance in the context of obtaining a vision in sync with the Plains. It seems ironic how the Plains Indians’ appreciation of the vastness came from their increased mobility, whereas our ability to effortlessly traverse great areas has led to us taking it for granted. By transcending the natural modes of transportation (we can fly to the other side of the world in less than 1 day) we have lost our sense of scale. A trip via horse would be a humbling experience to those accustomed to more. Perhaps this idea is related to something I recently read by Arne Naess. This is horribly condensed, but by spreading ourselves too thin and rushing from task to task we’ve lost our sense of place and consequently our ability to relate to and care for the land. He is an advocate of conservation not just for nature for the sake of humans who gain fulfillment by identifying with the greater system of which they are a part. Our seeming inability to conserve is a function of our culture’s obsession with progress (development) and perpetual desire to reach the next step. There’s no time or effort to enjoy where we are and what we have. We identify with what we don’t have. Of course I mean this on a cultural scale.
Dan, your course was great.