Reintroducing Bison Restores the Great Plains Ecosystem
Great Plains history
The Great Plains offer a familiar story of overexploitation and the emergence of the need to fix the damage. Today rural areas are showing the decline of traditional agriculture and extractive land uses that have left the area barren and unproductive. Restoration projects, in particular those involving the reintroduction of the bison, give an example of bringing the native ecosystem of an area back to life.
Grasslands once covered 40% of our nation, the bison once ranged over 48 of our states. Pre-settlement bison population estimates range from 30 to 70 million, after the extensive overexploitation of these animals their numbers dwindled to less than two dozen (Walters, 1996). The grasslands were a highly productive ecosystem even when the bison numbered in the millions because the two coevolved with each other adapting to conditions as well as each other. Today's cattle from the old world have replaced the bison's place in the plains degrading them while collecting the majority of the grains produced by American agriculture. Given the natural intact environment, bison thrive on their own without outside help. They are adapted to the harsh plains, "burned into the genes of bison is the speed and agility needed to outrun a prairie fire or track the greenup path of a summer thunderstorm. This is an animal shaped by millennia of natural selective pressures in the Great Plains environment," Fox and biologist Craig Knowles wrote (Defenders).
The Great Plains have suffered cycles of booms and busts since its early white settlement. The first began in 1862 with the Homestead Act. The Act gave pioneer families 160 acres of free federal land to be farmed for five years. This was the start of federally subsidized settlement that caused soil erosion and the lowering of the water table eventually leading to heavy depopulation. The next cycle began in the early 1900s with new homestead laws and larger free land incentives. This second cycle ended with the Great Depression, drought, the Dust Bowl, the abolition of homesteading, and was illustrated to us in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. The third cycle beginning in the 1940s reached its peak in the 1970s when the Department of Agriculture encouraged fence-post to fence-post cultivation. By the mid 1980s the bust phase set in and is still continuing (Popper, 1994).
The Buffalo Commons
The Buffalo Commons is a phrase that was coined by Deborah E.
Through the period of 1865-1900, America’s agriculture underwent a series of changes .Changes that were a product of influential role that technology, government policy and economic conditions played. To extend on this idea, changes included the increase on exported goods, do the availability of products as well as the improved traveling system of rail roads. In the primate stages of these developing changes, farmers were able to benefit from the product, yet as time passed by, dissatisfaction grew within them. They no longer benefited from the changes (economy went bad), and therefore they no longer supported railroads. Moreover they were discontented with the approach that the government had taken towards the situation.
The period between 1870 and 1900 was a time to change politics. The country was for once free from war and was united as one nation. However, as these decades passed by, the American farmer found it harder to live comfortably. Crops such as cotton and wheat, once the cash crop of agriculture, were selling at prices so low that it was nearly impossible for farmers to make a profit. Improvements in transportation allowed larger competitors to sell more easily and more cheaply, making it harder for American yeoman farmers to sell their crops. Finally, years of drought in the Midwest and the fall of business in the 1890s devastated the farming community. Most notably, the Populist Party arose to fight what farmers saw as the issues affecting the agricultural community. During the last thirty years of the nineteenth century, many farmers in the United States saw railroads and banking enterprises threaten their way of life; their work to fight these elements eventually led to a change in national politics.
Ganzel,Bill “farming in the 1930s” Wessels living history farms. 2003. Web. 19 Nov. 2013 http://www.livinghistoryfarm.org/farminginthe30s/farminginthe1930s.html
However, the issues that the southern Plains tribes faced did not end there: intensive pastoralism brought on negative environmental impacts that led to the decline of the bison population.
Unfortunately, the circumstances in the Great Plains all came to a head, resulting in a horrific ten years for citizens of the Great Plains. The Dust Bowl caused government and people to look at farming practices and evaluate their output. These policies resulted in overproduction of crops, causing the prices to fall. The conclusion of World War I and countries that stopped importing foods added to the pain the farmers were already feeling.
Egan notes, “No group of people took a more dramatic leap in lifestyle or prosperity, in such a short time, than wheat farmers on the Great Plains” (Egan 42). The revenue from selling wheat far exceeded the cost of producing the wheat, so the large profit attracted people to produce more and more wheat. On top of the high profit from wheat, the Great War caused the price of wheat to rise even more. The supply of wheat rose with the price, but Egan points to information to demonstrate that the rapid increase in production can lead to overproduction, which is damaging to the land. Also, the invention of the tractor also lead to overproduction of the land by creating the ability to dramatically cut the time it took to harvest acres. When the prices for wheat began to fall due to overproduction, this caused the farmers to produce even more output to be able to make the same earnings as when the prices were higher. The government also played a part in promoting the overproduction of the land. The Federal Bureau of Soils claimed that, “The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possessed. It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted, that cannot be used up” (Egan 51). Egan points to factors such as a high profit margin, the Great War, tractors, increased outputs when wheat prices fell, and governmental claims that caused the people to overproduce the land of the Great Plains. Egan then gives examples of how the overproduction destroyed the land. Egan explains that the farmers saw their only way out was to plant more wheat. This overproduction tore up the grass of the Great Plains, thus making the land more susceptible to the severe dust storms of the Dust
The nature of the Southern Plains soils and the periodic influence of drought could not be changed, but the technological abuse of the land could have been stopped. This is not to say that mechanized agriculture irreparably damaged the land-it did not. New and improved implements such as tractors, one-way disk plows, grain drills, and combines reduced plowing, planting, and harvesting costs and increased agricultural productivity. Increased productivity caused prices to fall, and farmers compensated by breaking more sod for wheat. At the same time, farmers gave little thought to using their new technology in ways to conserve the
The country at the time was in the deepest and soon to be longest-lasting economic downturn in the history of the Western industrialized world and this caused years of over-cultivation of wheat, because “during the laissez-faire, expansionist 1920’s the plains were extensively and put to wheat - turned into highly mechanized factory farms that produced highly unprecedented harvests” (Worster 12). The farmer’s actions were prompted by the economic decline America was facing. With the economy in a recession, farmers were looking for a way to make a living and in 1930 wheat crops were becoming very popular. In 1931 the wheat crop was considered a bumper crop with over twelve million bushels of wheat. Wheat was emerging all over the plains.
The main characters of this novel are Ralph, Jack, Simon, and Piggy. Ralph, who represents civilizing instinct, is elected as the leader of the group of the boys and tries to promote harmony among themselves. Even though he seeks to lead the group and defeats Jack in the election, he doesn’t try to dominate people. Rather, he focuses on the group’s common interest of being rescued. For example, he gives responsibility to the hunters to keep a signal fire while he tries to make a shelter. Unlike Ralph, Jack would like to dominate people. This is especially evident once he becomes the leader of the hunters on the island. He tends to show the other boys how strong and brave he is while expressing his dominance over them. By the end of the novel, Jack usurps Ralph to become the general leader, in which position he shows how barbaric and cruel he can be.
The 1920’s were the singularly most influential years of farming in our country. The loss of farms following the war, and new agricultural practices resulted in the dawn of modern agriculture in our country. The shift from small family to big corporation during this time is now the basis for how our society deals with food today. Traditional farming in the 1920’s underwent a series of massive transitions following WWI as the number of farms decreased and the size of farms increased.
In the last decade, from the Rockies to New England and the Deep South, rural and suburban areas have been beset by white-tailed deer gnawing shrubbery and crops, spreading disease and causing hundreds of thousands of auto wrecks. But the deer problem has proved even more profound, biologists say. Fast-multiplying herds are altering the ecology of forests, stripping them of native vegetation and eliminating niches for other wildlife. ' 'I don 't want to paint deer as Eastern devils, ' ' said Dr. McShea, a wildlife biologist associated with the National Zoo in Washington, ' 'but this is indicative of what happens when an ecosystem is out of whack. ' ' The damage is worse than anyone expected, he and other scientists say. Higher deer densities have affected growth, survival, and reproduction of many plant species which have aesthetic, economic or ecological value. In some cases, many species of trees have also been shown to have reduced growth as a result of high deer density (Environmental Benefits of Hunting, 1). Deer prefer certain plant species over others and frequently feed on economically valuable tree species. For example, they prefer oak and sugar maple seedlings, as well as acorns, over less palatable species like American Beech and striped maple. Thus, less marketable species are more likely to survive to maturity,
The Roaring Twenties approached and the citizens in Colorado were facing rough times. In 1920, many people such as farm owners, manufacturers, and even miners were having a hard time making a living due to an economic downfall. The farmers especially, where facing the toughest of times. The price of various farm-grown goods like wheat, sugar beets, and even cattle was dropping because their goods were no longer needed by the public. Wheat had dropped in price from $2.02 in 1918 to $0.76 by the time 1921 came around. Sadly, the land that they were using to grow wheat became dry and many farmers had to learn to grow through “dryland farming” which became very popular in the eastern plains from 1910 to 1930 (Hard Times: 1920 - 1940). Apple trees began to die due to the lack of desire for apples, poor land, and decreased prices. Over the course of World War I, the prices of farm goods began to increase slowly. Farmers were not the only one facing this economic hardship while others in big cities were enjoying the Roaring Twenties.
The ancient Maya once occupied a vast geographic area in Central America. Their civilization inhabited an area that encompasses Mexico's Yucatan peninsula and parts of the states of Chiapas and Tabasco, as well as Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. "From the third to the ninth century, Maya civilization produced awe-inspiring temples and pyramids, highly accurate calendars, mathematics and hieroglyphics, and a complex social and political order" ("Collapse..." 1). Urban centers were important to the Maya during the Classic period; they offered the Mayans a central place to practice religion.
"Chapter 2 Western Settlement and the Frontier." Major Problems in American History: Documents and Essays. Ed. Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, Edward J. Blum, and Jon Gjerde. 3rd ed. Vol. II: Since 1865. Boston, MA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012. 37-68. Print.
Thompson, Paul B. and Stout, Bill A. Beyond The Large Farm. Westview Press, Inc.: Colorado 1991