Buffalo Commons Thesis of Land Use in the Great Plains Region

friend Deborah popper are visiting here from Rutgers University where Frank is on the faculty and Deborah is a visiting scholar dr. popper drank popper has a degree in government and public administration from Harvard University and Deborah draws her degree from Rutgers University in geography they've both been working in the planning department planning studies or urban planning at Rutgers University in New Jersey and that up with some very interesting ideas about the Great Plains states these ideas of theirs have been quite controversial in some sectors of America and have been picked up by the mainstream press from papers as far away as endless and Washington DC in the Boston Globe the New York Times had done quite a lot with the article on a couple occasions and a woman who writes for New York Times Magazine has put out a book for about their ideas calls where the buffalo roam and her name's Anne Matthews if anybody would like to find them the book the poppers are going to talk about their idea for the Buffalo comments and I hope you'll enjoy it we'll have a time for questions after they finish and Frank popper will start their presentation then Deborah possible to the second town Thank You Kristina it's just um okay and Deborah and I would also like to thank all the organizations that made this really atmospheric occasion possible Debra could you stand up per minute and Matthews book about our work was reviewed in USA today when the USA Today reviewer described poppers as quote as fearsome as Buffalo to many of the residents of the Great Plains now I am today Debra and I would like to tell you about the work we've been doing on the agricultural and economic and environmental and land use future of the Great Plains we'll focus on why that work convinces us that much of the fate of the plains lies in a vision that we called the buffalo Commerce we'd like to spell out some of the details of that vision because they've been frequently misunderstood in part because they've been frequently misunderstood just so we start from the same point of view the same reference Paul let me show you the area that we mean by the Great Plains like that now the area that we consider the Great Plains and I should say it's a very standard historians geographers definition going back for example to the work of the Great Plains for story and Walter Prescott Webb in 1931 for us for Webb for lots of other people the Great Plains begins at the monday meridian solid line running from north dakota detects the solid line about say where aurora nebraska is over Hudgens you can is the west edge of the flames and again it's the part of standard definition is the wavy dotted line there to the west which is the easternmost extension of the Rockies the region consists of by this definition parks and that may become important later when we go again to the question parts of Penn State's no one state is actually totally within the plains the area as defined here accounts for almost a fifth of the land area of the contiguous United States it has a distinctive grass pattern short grass and mixed grass has a distinctive soil profile crop output geology elevation and most obvious to the eyeball relatively little in the way of trees and rainfall is relatively sparse if you go through each the West's annual rainfall drops below on an average basis 20 inches of rain a year we've shown San Antonio on the east edge of the plains here Denver on the west edge of the plains but the largest city actually in the plane is Lubbock Texas about 170,000 people think of that here you have fifths of the United States and the largest city in it it's the size approximately slightly less than Des Moines it is on the whole as it's very well known a rural and small-town place total population of the plains as of the latest census is about six million people maybe a little bit over that that makes it about the size of a middle sized state like Georgia or Indiana as I say I'm a fifth of the contiguous United States it's a very evocative area in American history this is the area legendarily at least of the pioneer homesteads of Big Sky the small one-room schoolhouses straight line interstates custom combines prairie dogs and antelope and yes Buffalo it's the locus of novels like giants in the earth movies like The Last Picture Show and most recently and of course very evocative Lee Dances with Wolves it had an interesting literary history in fact the Great Plains does a lot of the early 19th century mid 19th century great American writers spend a surprising amount of time in the plains here I'm thinking not just to George Catlin but also of Washington Irving and Walt Whitman and basically all of them were captivated by the oceans of Grass mr. intimations of it with the planes off the region's history and again this is a very standard interpretation shows a basic pattern federally subsidized settlement and cultivation produced the boom that boom then goes too far it leads over grazing and over plowing these then lead to a bust which features heavy depopulation especially heavy in the deepest rural parts of the plains so it's a region that historically shows this boom and bust highly unstable economic pattern to such cycles and already run full term in the American period already won in the late 19th century the other in the early 20th century the first began with the Homestead Act in 1862 then immediately after the Civil War running through a lot of the 1870s there was very heavy settlement in the plains the 1870s period happened to coincide quite coincidentally with a period of relatively high deceptively high rainfall in the plains but beginning in the 1880s there was a series of very difficult winners heavy cattle die ups beginning in the late 1880s and running through the 1890s there was what we would now call a depression that hit the plains if the country as a whole hit the plains especially hard so that by about 1895 or so Nellie Bly the famous reporter for the New York world was chronicling writing about fully loaded wagon trains of settlers head each out of the planes in Nebraska and Kansas no doubt hitting many of them back in Iowa the defeated settlers of the first cycle of settlement on the plains second such cycle as I mentioned began early in the 20th century there were new homesteading laws that allowed larger parcels of land to be homesteaded up to 640 acres by about 1916 and again there were some good years early 1910s were very good again I believe rainfall was very high and then the World War one hit and it made World War one did the wheat produced by the plains an enormous strategic asset for the Allied cause if you recall the World War 1 history most of the main battles of World War 1 in France or Belgium or Russia or what is now Ukraine were actually fought in or near former wheat fields and often by people who in peacetime would be tending cultivating those wheat fields under wartime conditions they could not this made the wheat of Montana and Kansas and Nebraska as I say a great strategic asset the slogan at the time was wheat will win the war and these were very good years for the plains that was the high point of that cycle the cycle soon turned that were locusts in the early 20s a rural Depression hit the Great Plains in 1921 followed by the National Great Depression in 1929 and then finally the ecological catastrophe of the duck ball beginning in 1933 these two cycles the late 19th century one and the early 20th century won decisively demonstrated for many observers not just for Deborah me for many observers the economic and demographic of marginality or at least the very heavy difficulty of settlement on much of the Great Plains and the cycles the two cycles in the past and the one going on now third one are cumulative they add onto each other and as a result there are large numbers of deeper all Plains towns and counties that had their high year population in 1930 or 1920 or even in a surprising number of cases 1890 and have been steadily losing population ever since there's an old saying of the plain there's been two good years of agriculture 1916 and next year the the overall story of the plains in terms of these cycles demonstrates very clearly with the great again Plains historian this time from the University of North Dakota Elwood Robinson called the to call the too much mistake he was writing and I would call 1966 looking back on Plains news three Robinson is too much mistake basically is what I've just been describing to you in terms of these cycles too many people too many railroads too many farms to me roads too much cultivation too much for the land to take land nature the economy eventually Rebecca thus the slightest the instability and thus the cumulative aspect of those cycles the instability they're adding on to now Deborah and I writing in planning magazine in December of 1987 argued that in the 1980s a new such cycle was clearly clearly evident its roots in fact went back to the 1940s with the onset of large modern contemporary federal agriculture subsidies but then it was ongoing as of the late 80s and we also argued in the 87 the tip cycle was likely was likely to go lots farther than the two previous was rated in the late 80s we had lots of evidence the agriculture and energy economies of the Great Plains were in near depression there was continued depopulation and not just of newcomers now of people who themselves or their ancestors had been able to withstand the two previous terms of the cycle there were heavy rises in soil erosion by the late 80s and by some measures these rises in short oil and roses erosion in some places actually approached Dust Bowl 1930 style rates they've been drawdown in the Ogallala Aquifer which is a giant limestone water bearing formation of the plain even changes in American dietary habits had shifted against the plains by 1987 Americans already consumed only two thirds of the beef per capita that they were consuming in 1975 before that uneaten beef they were substituting in their diets fish mainly and chicken the plains didn't produce either of those so that the shift in dietary habits was harming the plains also by the late 80s the federal government no longer built or had decided rather no longer to build the large dam and irrigation projects they like the one along one belong the Missouri River in the northern half of the planes that had done so much in the past underwrite Great Plains economic development now that's what we were saying in late 87 since 87 a number of new tractors on the plains have emerged and the ones I've just described have largely persisted let me describe some of the new ones for you 88 89 and 90 saw serious Drive especially in the Northern Plains from 88 onward there was the Savings and Loan collapse which in truth actually seems to have begun in Plains rule plains Oklahoma and Texas as we all know it's still it's spread nationally but there's no question that the savings and loan collapse came earliest to the southern plains and seems practically lingered longest there since 87 there has also been growing credibility for the greenhouse effect and while the various models of what the effect will actually do to the plains vary a lot in their details most of them are not really very happy in their main lines or what will happen to agriculture in the southern say half of the plains and again on the sort of front of perversity even American foreign policy has shifted as it were against the plains those of you who've traveled saying Anna oh Wyoming will have noticed a large number of missile silos and Air Force bases most of whose targets essentially with a former Soviet Union as the former Soviet Union looks less menacing to the true interests of American national security and as the federal budget deficit becomes more pressing many of these bases in the Northern Plains will become more and more and n silos in the northern plains will become more and more expendable North Dakota supposedly is the world's third greatest nuclear power as those silos are dismantled or made less prevalent the actual economic impact they offer to the Northern Plains is going to go away and there's going to be a lot of local hurt as far as we can see and still yet another front the nation has become much more dubious about the farm subsidies that underline a lot of Great Plains agriculture the 1990 farm bill actually lowered some of the prices paid for planes our subsidies plank paid for planes commodities and the early indications from the Clinton administration ha with that the new USDA will in the next farm bill likely lower some of those subsidies even further other indications from the new Clinton administration come from the Interior Department which seems to want to for example increase the prices of fed of money of of water from federal dam and irrigation projects historically the plains and a lot of the rest of the West have gotten these water subsidy or the these water rentals and well below market price it's a form of subsidy it is likely to be diminished some some also is the land rental on BLM there are Land Management land which again historically has been below market BLM has heavy home B's in Plains Montana Wyoming and New Mexico and these changes in land and water prices on the part of BLM are likely to amount to assuming they're going through of course a replication of what has been in the past a substantial subsidy above all however since 1987 the most striking thing has been the continued outflow of population particularly young people from the plans the 1990 census for example showed continuing population hemorrhages in the plains especially in the rural plains as defined here in Nebraska has 52 counties in the plains 50 of them showed population losses in 1990 as against 1980 locked the Cota has 41 counties in the plans 38 of them showed population losses in the 1990 census Oklahoma had 23 Plains counties 22 of them showed population losses and in fact across all 10 Plains states in every single one of them the majority of Plains counties note population losses of course going across the plains some counties were hit harder than others and in particular the biggest proportion of losses seemed to occur in the smallest and often the most remote and most rural counties that is the ones that were already the falling behind the most economically now I want to emphasize that this ongoing depopulation of the deep rural Plains is an evolutionary process it's largely about entirely largely free market driven that is stated simply people are voting with their feet they are however reluctantly and despite their determination and their deep love of the land with which Deborah and I fully sympathise they're leaving the deep roar plains they may not want to necessarily the families may not want them to the communities may not want them to they're feeling they have to do so anyway that is again in Elwin Robinson too much mistake manner nature and the economy are taking their course if this process continues in Deborah and I think it has so much momentum and such profound roots that it most likely will then in about a generation large parts of the rural planes will be extensively depopulated not totally depopulated but certainly more depopulated than they are today we've done a very rough estimate of the likely extent of these areas using Census and other publicly available figures and projects very roughly that about a hundred and ten counties representing about a quarter of the land area of the plains could it be possibilities for this continued heavy depopulation we're talking about they have this quarter of the land area quarter of the number of counties only six percent of the total population of the plains which again would give you a sense of how comparatively underpopulated they are already they have a total population of about 400,000 people these are the kinds of places that we think are possible candidates to become part of the Buffalo Commons which Deborah will now tell you this is truly an interesting setting we haven't spoken in some place like this I'm not sure where the frack shouldn't start it shouldn't have started this out is singing the Great Glen Plains Blues or something to pick up where he left off when we first began talking about and writing about the Buffalo Commons we were really using a metaphor as a way of reinventing the practices in an area that he clearly experienced difficulties over the course of decades really the loss of income loss of topsoil loss of water loss of people and loss of community and so we're trying to discuss and describe and think about where present practices were proving unworkable what could be done what could be a replacement practices and we expected that the trends that Frank described to you would continue pretty much along the same lines over the next generation and only at that point only after these trends and the effects of them had become so over so clear would they be confronted head-on and we expected that at that point only then if I say when things had become so clear wood would say government feel obliged to do something that's government generally waits for extreme problems to actually get in and do something and so we hope that its actions would incorporate an epoch that treated land and people with respect we wrote of tearing down the fences replanting the grasses restocking the animals including the Bison and creating the Buffalo Commons but remember the term was thought of by us as a metaphor and as a metaphor it was supposed to really be evocative we discovered it was provocative rather than Ibaka but that was our intent now the first term Buffalo was supposed to above the region's past one that might suggest lessons to us and so what were these blessings really largely ones of the wisdom of less intensive use of the land the importance of ecological diversity and I think the need to look at what distinguished the region what would particularity zuv it that one should keep in mind and should value and try to emphasize perhaps so where their practices in this past they could be brought forward into the future not to recreate it since after all that's really not possible but to really learn from it whether things that we're done better in the past that might suggest ways of approaching the present now the second term Commons really would refer to the need to value the land as a resource that we all have an interest in much like air and water and so private property rights should not supersede the common good on these lands but instead they really need to be held in balance Public Interest general Ogun community interest as well as the individuals interest so what kinds of practices would be suggested by such a metaphor it really didn't mean to us buffalo on every acre in fact you couldn't have Buffalo on every acre since that wouldn't be sustainable look at the long term and what we have found since we started reading this is I guess in 1987 is that we've seen many practices springing up around the area much faster than we anticipated and whereas we had expected that only Kent the government would be the really most critical player we found strong private and private public kinds of actions occurring and most of them really originated from within the region so let me give you some example the kinds of things we've seen emerging as a change of the pen taking place Catalan wheat the region's prime agricultural products ecologically mimics the natural Great Plains but in many places they don't renew it really economically or ecologically so restock Buffalo not domesticated because they really are not tame animals but but manage really offer one example Buffalo bringing past and future together private bison ranching in fact is on the upswing in the plans really we found lots and lots of people suddenly getting into this lots of ranchers around the area and in in preference to cattle those who have made this change have told us that it's economically viable and in fact it's a lot easier to do requiring less labor on their part they find Buffalo raised more widely than cattle certainly both because they don't favor a wider range of grasses and also a more willing to leave the riparian areas they survive adverse weather conditions more easily they bring good prices and both for the meat which at least up through now has been basically organic and lowering cholesterol than beef and so therefore fits into this little growing demand the fact is talking about miserable way from so high cholesterol beef and then also horns skins and so on bring good prices as well so you've got a good range of things that you can get money from so those who we have talked with and found that the anticipated problems of fencing and brucellosis which were certainly you know the big things that I raised is why you really can't go into this have been in fact something that they could manage they can deal with it can inoculate if you manage your Buffalo they won't jump your fences although they probably can if they really want to no matter how high that you build it and how strong in North Dakota in fact last February about a hundred ranchers or so got together and formed the North Dakota Buffalo producers association with the intent of establishing their own slaughterhouse doing joint marketing and so on and in fact they have just selected us like a site for that slaughterhouse in in New Rockford North Dakota and several towns put together serious bids been wanting that particular business so they're real pleased about that there have been associations springing up with Buffalo producers in Kansas and Wyoming as well so you can see this is a basically a growth sector and at this stage in the development of the Buffalo industry producers can still take control and hopefully hit control avoiding this large-scale corporate organization that has really overtaken much of the meat industry so raising bison in this way seems to be a way to diversify the region's economy and it's a part of there's a Breeden's niche agricultural market and it works on some of the more arid land in the region that's one kind of thing we've seen springing up that I think a pretty positive sign Native Americans are actively pursuing initiatives to restore the place of Buffalo in their culture for both economic and spiritual purposes and there's a Native American Fish and Wildlife Society which is in conjunction with about more than 20 between 20 and 30 trucks worked on a project which would increasing or creating bias encouraged on many of these reservations also talked about doing their own slaughtering and doing their own management doing their increasing and improving management and developing marketing skills as well so they formed an intertribal bison cooperative for all of this in addition several individual tribes the Lakota for example have put forth similar proposals and they really do stress the need to incorporate the price on into tribal life as well as the economics in fact I think we could read somewhere that there has been some resistance or to joining the North Dakota slaughterhouse in fact because it might not incorporate the ability to do with slaughtering in as a spiritual ritual so they would like to keep that independent but it's so it's very clearly got numerous different threads but it resonates with their and additionally individual tribes are encouraging their own members to get into private Buffalo ranching for themselves on their own private land as well another kind of Buffalo Commons land use we see emerging is that sometimes farmers and ranchers have found their land really more valuable as habitat for game than its farmland and they've made their living from fees paid by individuals who or groups have come out to hunt that's in some cases they form and they rent out the land in this matter in other cases basically this becomes their primary focus but you can again see this as a sort of private Buffalo comments emerging another example the Nature Conservancy the nation's leading land preservation organization you really did the plans until about five years ago or so and since then they have begun to buy up to preserve a restored different sections in the plains and looking at various ecosystems that they consider to be particularly sensitive and made contact with an awful lot of landowners one of their most ambitious projects is in Texas where they're working with a number of other groups local governments is included and thinking about the relationships between different areas within about an 18,000 square mile region pretty large region so it's Rim the Austin of the hill country and then rest from there and so within that area they've been setting up some wilderness preserves then designating sort of buffer zones and basically doing this with an eye to you know what is particularly ecologically important and perhaps preservable land at this point what the population within the area would be interested in maintaining and having access to and so on so preservation is not just for the land's sake there but also for the local populations and there are numbers of other groups whether private like the Nature Conservancy or public that are considering things like this as well certainly Bruce Babbitt Secretary of the Interior has been talking about the new environmental policies and describing them very much as he feels moving in the direction under there under than the Clinton administration to pay closer attention to ecosystem decisions rather than specific species you know preserving one endangered species without thinking of the larger context and thinking about doing this within our nation mixing public and private groups together to with plans to do this so I think that this particular way of dealing with things is certainly more in line with what this present administration is talking with now another example I think is the the possibly the largest scale existing example of buffalo Commons - is actually Canadian the prairie provinces have long experience the same kinds of pressures that the lower 48 hips have felt and so they basically in Canada have established a public Buffalo Commons they've opened in southwest Saskatchewan along frenchmen River grasslands National Park and it borders Montana it's basically I think in two parts it's about 350 square miles and they've talked and what they've largely concentrated on is basically restoring native grasses to the area and they talked about putting in bison I haven't but as far as far as I know now farmers and ranchers in the area initially were very skeptical not terribly happy with the plan when they first heard it but subsequently as they re-examined their own situation have decided that in fact what they're unhappy with now is the slow pace of the buyers thing I think the the prices that they were have been paid have been fair and nobody has been forced out so in fact they wanting there have been ranchers in the area who felt wait a minute why doesn't this go forward faster this is really what we need in this in this area so that's another example but it's Canadian now I think these several examples can be viewed as building blocks really of a buffalo Commons along with a variety of other previously established ones like the National Grasslands which appear only in the Great Plains created during Dust Bowl days out of land that was basically left or Bureau of Land Management acreage which is largely land that never publicans and I think that these examples all really reflect a change or expansion if you will in the way land is valued from the deeply ingrained notion that land is valuable when it is plowed or sold or developed that intensity of use is desirable to an attitude that sees some land is really better treated more gentle gingerly so what might the Great Plains look like a generation from now when Frank and I expected something like the Buffalo Commons to start to materialize now well what I think and obviously I don't know what its gonna look like but what I think I would I would expect is that much of the region will appear to continue in present patterns overall though we expect to see some broad shifts a sort of gradual reordering of population centers and the relationships between them we expect to see both an increase in frontier and an increase in urbanization in the region the urban areas are really likely to grow picking up out migrants from both the more rural sections of the plains as well as from urban areas to the east and west people really seeking a more manageable urban environment so places like Billings Montana or Lubbock Texas or Cheyenne Wyoming the largest cities in the plains reeling with their populations of 50 80 a hundred thousand are likely to be bigger than they are now and I think so at some of the smaller urban areas like say Aberdeen South Dakota or Nebraska for Elk City Oklahoma wood they're more typically 10 to 20,000 these two will pick up I think especially the more that's sort of the first place that the deep rural people go in their in their when they move out of the the deep broke plants now the vast both of Plains farming and ranching and mining areas that are economically stable I think will remain the region after all produces most of our wheat and we expect it to continue to do so but I think these activities may cover less land area than they do now they may occur really in the areas where they threw most workable most resistant to boom and bust places that are more reliable sources of water for example where they have raised difficulties I think where the free market has indicated there unsuitability they'll will retract and frontier light conditions I think will increase there and so the question is what will arrive in their place that's where we expect the kinds of private and public buffalo Commons land uses I've talked about to emerge there could be other uses which emerge there but that's really where we'd see them as likely and in some ways we see these as positive ones very definitely we see them as positive so we would like to see in these areas which are not viable economically replacement uses that incorporate high environmental values and high aesthetic values and high human values we first saw the Buffalo Commons as a unitary large-scale and today when we first started writing and it may be or it may instead be a variety of improvisation smaller improvisation but the region's economy we expect will be healthier if it features a larger role an important role for preservation for tourism especially ecotourism for recreation with more land devoted to wildlife refuges in parks and with larger populations of native species but whatever our vision the reality I think will be creative on the plains by the people of the plants now I think such areas can in fact have economic value and offer opportunities for people as I say we expect an increase in ecotourism and other forms of recreation with jobs with a bring but to do these things right really requires more than an increase in low-paying service jobs it requires people who know how to foster revival ecosystem who can do the complex research to figure out what the land used to look like who can make informed guesses about what happens when certain species are introduced or lit and can react intelligently when their guess is proved wrong now as well inevitably happen I'm sure it will need people to increase for example the seed stock of native grasses which if one does real restoration is certainly much too small at the moment and it will also need people to explain these same ecosystems to lay people in ways that really communicate their values and make them enticing and exciting and worthwhile to make the visitors to the plains see it and understand that and value it now so I think I wonder how we will treat the environment what values we will bring to creating the places in which we live in thirty-six at the height of the dustbowl the federal government published a report called the future of the Great Plains and this report concluded that the plains difficulties ultimately sprang from to what they call controlling attitudes of mind that Americans historically had towards land nature was to be conquered habitual practices are best natural resources are inexhaustible markets would expand indefinitely land values would keep rising and these attitudes gave rise to practices that really could not be sustained now these attitudes certainly still persist anybody wants to sell a house knows that they still hope that I'm values keep rising entity but we think they are increasingly being superseded there seems to be a growing willingness indeed desire to recognize limits the limits don't dictate specific land uses but practices need to take them into account and work with it until we see increasing experimentation within these limits and increasing experimentation and incorporating wilderness into our land use fabric so how will we view the landscape of the Great Plains a generation from now what will we actually see when we look at it well we only notice the urban oasis or will it be a breadbasket entirely tamed well much of a vention have been turned into a weight class as people leave the deep rural areas will new uses emerge for those places and the way stumps find their ways to the formerly over grassland will it be replete with crops and graph that we see with that understanding finding it really an endless boring scrubby Vista why nothing there or will we be thrilled by it instead will it evoke the response Walt Whitman had to it when he crossed the country in the 1870s he wrote the plains while less stunning at first sight lasts longer filled the aesthetic sense fuller proceeded all the rest and make North America's characteristic landscape we hope we can honor that landscape and let it fulfill the promise that Whitman saw in it allowing it to provide different kinds of bounty to the people of the nation wheat where it belongs grass where it belongs people where they belong and even Buffalo where they belong thank you we'd be happy to take questions or whatever comment say work your critics perhaps not Legion are many particularly on the great place and they say number of things I'm wondering how you respond to one of which is that you fail to distinguish between sustainability and exploitation they say they spend that you don't adequately distinguish as well being so far plant use large land use and still others would say that it doesn't make a lot of sense to substitute buffalo workers ecologically maybe demographically delicate place that it's getting pushed farther and farther toward the age given the existing traditional forms of agriculture and other development there our sense is very strongly that preservation oriented alternatives will have to be developed in other deeper oral parts of the country that are experiencing maybe not to the same extent but certainly going in the same direction these depopulation pressures there are lots of these other places around the country I'm thinking here of the rural Pacific Northwest of the Great Basin or the Colorado Plateau in the western part of the country the same thing the fact is largely true if you look at say central Appalachian place like Eastern Kentucky the same thing is largely true if you look at the Lower Mississippi Delta the same thing true in most northern parts of the Midwest all of these places are places where traditional agriculture traditional extractive industries don't really seem that we have much of a future young people are leaving populations getting older a lot of government policies some of some long-standing seem to drive this depopulation even further some kind of alternative we think preservation oriented is going to have to be developed for many of these places our census as I say the process has gone farthest in the Great Plains and that other parts of the country are eventually we think going to have to develop some kind of locally adapted version of the buffalo Commons on their own for their own world cells your first point interesting between okay I I'd argue what you're about to say something so I'll say something well you probably something better okay.we but my own sense is that's based on a misunderstanding of our work this distinction between exploitation and sustainable development our sense is very strongly well.all right-it more frequent and more simply say in your face criticism of our work is we want to move people off the land who are doing fine as it is economically and I would argue to you that if you look at our work and listen to what we've said we've never said anybody like that but okay okay I think I heard you say is a kind of polite academic euphemistic way of saying the same thing our actual work if you listen to it closely allows people people to think we have any control over the situation don't says people economic enterprises farm ranchers mining or whatever that is doing fine in place should have no earthly reason to move and we and anybody associated in one of us should have no designs however there are so many places as we say we estimate about quarter of the counties of playings fall in this category where traditional ranching traditional farming traditional mineral exploitation is so clearly failing and in truth historically has been failing in many of these places for more than a century that it's so obvious that some new reason that some new preservation oriented use should come into its place one odd thing that happens here at least should we say less polite exchanges it's nice to be here this academic setting looking around the bar and the lights are only blinding me about 50% I don't think you stay I don't have much more appreciation for say rock music performers they're doing their stuff at once one of the things we are frequently accused of is voicing some kind of social engineering a social experiment approach on a place that doesn't want it okay that I think is a complete misunderstanding one of what we as academic researchers have within our tentacle-like power so we can't force anything on any money the fact is however that for the most part the traditional mining agriculture ranching that is failing in these quarter of counties that's the actual social experiment supported by government going back at least to the homesteading act supported by the contemporary subsidies supported by past Bureau of Land Management of Bureau of Reclamation policies and this is a century-long social experiment that in these places not all of the plains but in these places is not showing such great results and we're simply suggesting that there may be a more free-market alternative to that that reverses the political polarities we're not the federally oriented social engineers they are the recipients of federal largess from 100 hundred and 30 years and it's not working we're saying look at economic reality look at environmental reality these are failing towns failing counties dropping water tables rebounding soil erosion young people leave counties are getting old or an older depending very heavily off of them other subsidies that don't seem to have that much of a future we're simply saying look at the alternative to the century home or of ragged performance I think actually let me just respond to it slightly differently but two things one is that what we're talking about is is another form of sustainable development and so we're not saying that everybody has to do this we're saying can we in fact increase the pool of things we do then qualify a sustainable development I think that's really the most direct response I have to that yeah the other thing though that I think in I don't know that we're confusing exploitation I think there are cases on the plains of X clear exploitation if in fact you're mining the Ogallala Aquifer for your agriculture that is you are taking out a whole lot more water than your that then is going to come back into it you are exploiting there's no question about it you can't say you're not that that's sustainable you have to come up with an alternative practice that didn't use up the water to say that it was sustainable so there are cases of true exploitation on the plains but I I think we have you know when Frank says we have you know we we've mapped these things we have not actually though in any sense gone through and targeted mean safety maybe your farm is doing this and you're good and you're bad and so on we don't have a plan that's that specific in that sense that we are we aren't confusing sub marginal marginal and so on in those terms I think to get to your other questions I think they're related because we're not we're not designating anybody and air anybody's lands on that specific a basis we're talking in general about different kinds of practices and I think people in the area are going to have to figure out where they fit in these things it's not who can do that but if we're really talking about how can we rethink what's going on we know everybody knows that there are difficulties in the region and it's you know they're difficulties in the region we live in too and we all need to rethink what it is that we're doing wherever we live to come up with better practices so I think that's you know that's a kind of how I would respond the only about one fun one last quick point the shift we are talking about from if you will extractive uses to preservation uses it's happening anyway in the free market it's happening in terms of example population flows it's happening in the rise of white buffalo ranchers are busting throughout the Great Plains having a history of running cattle deciding cattle that work for them discovering that Buffalo does work for them all these kinds of changes the nature conservancy by ups the Indian things that were talking about all would be happening regardless of whether Deborah and I had ever appeared on the scene at all all we've really done is sort of observed it from the outside and chronicled it and coined the name to describe the overall process the process would be happening in any case even if we had never aired them it's a deeper process that has anything to do with Deborah and me I'm okay I guess in general I think that we're using we use the term Buffalo and as I try to say yeah I think that they they have an ax start place in the region but they do grace more widely so you're less likely to over graves but you can over grace you put too many Buffalo on too small a portion of land and you can over graze just the way you can with cattle but they will graze more widely they will move out further away from the rivers and I so I think those are two of the the reasons but you probably and much of the region do you do need something that goes around and trap as the ground and if you don't have Buffalo you may want cattle but I think that's kind of why we think it's a useful substitution also just in practical terms they drink less water they eat less grass the more easily moved they're easier to cab with a little foresight the ranchers we've talked to have told us in truth it's an easier and shorter day to run Buffalo and to run cattle and in the end you get better prices you also we've also started noticing some of the extension services of the area starting to move in this direction we gather in the face of some considerable political resistance that's for example North Dakota State University's expansion for the first time two months ago in January was it put out a pamphlet on how to raise buffalo in a very detailed and sort of in terms of sort of equipment requirements these requirements substandard balance sheet and where to get further information but it only did so after it discovered that perhaps you know 200 former cattle ranchers in the state were already in the Buffalo and we're doing well and wanted more information and more people seem likely to be going into the business if the market is actually moving in this direction of its own volition and while it may in the end turn out to be a niche market it seems to be a very large niche whose exact dimensions nobody knows you know too much stage okay a couple things here as this is developing its development as Deborah described about a couple of different folks in some cases you have yes private Buffalo ranchers may be in it just for the sort of standard economic motives okay and we're delighted to find that Buffalo at least for now work better that are however other fronts that then are described on this other sources of Buffalo cultivation other sources of Buffalo production and in some cases other form simply of having Buffalo and running them free but not all and a private formula and the basis said for example the Indian things that were talked about the Nature Conservancy getting to be larger than experiments in places like Texas Nebraska North Dakota you can have as we see the Buffalo Commons said of land-uses emerging both private Buffalo arrangement the four regions and elsewhere Holdings coming together here and given the early states that it's in it's hard to know how each of the different extremes would develop seeing this leave you with a whole bunch of emerging Buffalo Commons laying all over state would be working better than any of the individual components would have predicted even for three years this is why Deborah is describing our 1987 as being almost by now historical and querying for since 1990 but all these other funds you're right that Buffalo ranching in itself if conducted the wrong way could go down many of the path of the cattle industry that have proven some objection it could happen you're right one of the things we're encouraged by is the fact that for example the folks that go in to buffalo roam cattle seem quite aware of the problem of what happens with all of these these middle people operators they want to avoid that kind that's what they want to go for example in Barcelona in Kansas to a cooperative marketing arrangement complaint right rather that's bought into some kind of middle person attract early which seems to be their understanding possibilities attract they're talking about our possibility it could work that way or it could turn out to be you know the actual economic niche as it were for is smaller than anybody anticipated but right now there's never seem to be those limits there and folks in the Buffalo want to avoid the traps of the cattle industry basically as far as I can see seem to be really happy to escape these are all former county in some sense their weight this is this is again sort of moving into the future what will happen and we don't know in them but one of the things that we talked about with people and that they have indicated to us is that they know that the success of buffalo industry depends on keeping the Buffalo raised in a in a particular fashion the doesn't they don't want to shoot them up with all sorts of hormones we'll probably result in the market not work why in fact go into something and develop it when it turns out you might as well stay with the people at least at the moment more probably the leaders in the field and they're fairly influential are we understand going to be pretty careful about what goes on and use their influence as well as they can to maintain the industry in a way that keeps it successful I suppose as far as they're concerned there is some internal pressure at this point for it to keep working in you know in a somewhat more the way than everyone it is certainly I think that what we're talking about is a great part of a larger phenomenon of this kind of movement and I think it does generate a certain amount of pain while it takes place it's you know certainly people in the region you know look at some of their towns and say and in the you know they feel like their ancestors were there you came out and they would like to stay there and don't feel that they can and that that is a painful process parents you know want their kids to come back and the kids don't come back whatever so I think they're you know it's not it's not is it the hardest thing in the world perhaps not but it is a process which which in fact in it's sort of natural workings and I think does generate a certain amount of pain I think we are saying that we're sort of tracking in some ways the process from the end of okay what's what's happening and then are there ways that you can ameliorate it in some ways there are there are kinds of practices that can go out into these areas that will make them more viable than they are which may in fact retain people in the area to do somewhat different things there's something to pick you look through the question enjoy it is is this this comparative perspective absolutely right that what's happening on the Great Plains is not the people catastrophe but let's say Mexico City or San Paulo or Karachi there's a much smaller number of people involved that for better or for worse less visible on the nation's screen of attention and as far as we can tell the people who are leaving deployments or deeper or more difficult part of the targets him to be going either to more stable rural areas within the place or to the large cities of complains or larger cities right on the edge of Minneapolis it's not the wrenching human you know slum creating thing one season here appears about in your example Mexico City but it is a population movement of some size occurring in an area of some considerable historic and cultural and mythic residence but you're right it's not the problems of these same things it's not that and at some level I'm suddenly feeling better about what our work because in the question the sorting process Oh yeah I think it is significant you know what we're doing because I can have a personal response to that which is that you know I I don't know that I think that there should be a preserve for rich people so that's my own political judgment and so I would like to see some other but that other people who want to stay there also get that opportunity but that's my own political judgment what you're talking about there absolutely right is happening in some places from employees in terms of rich people the fact is though that Ted Turner's of the world are not really attracted let us say to western Kansas or to western Oklahoma it's just not that triangle Tex rivers Ranch in fact it's not quite in lip leggings is actually in the mountains and gallant gateway if I recall a little bit outside the area we're talking however your idea of a local stuffer because sometimes wealthy sometimes we think that's a welcome the lead is much more active my sense is what keeps those people that your shirts number frequently you're talking about people who are not making that much money at all but they just like the lifestyle and that's what keeps them there and we get it different I get into arguments with them they say they're gonna stay they're going to run cattle you got no problem with it as long as their own satisfaction persists is however that in some places and he were certain the canvas mobile home might be better examples and say them all the parts of the plains have had huge amount of animals this local elite is finding it harder and harder to get by and these economic pressures we're talking about and the environment and perhaps in company enters the government subsidy pressures that is really going to squeeze this a week which is much less long certainly national politics and it was that time was bigger in farming in national politics remember state practice the actual influence of such people is even within their own states Colorado Texas would be a particularly good example as our special urban playing States for that but our senses you're right it's a local you'll need to when local elite which in many places if losing a certain amount of its power and withdrawing as it were from larger state or national politics and the influence of this can lead it's not strong enough to prevent the deeper structure forces we're talking about from creating something like Republican Congress for the legislation's even as this elite resistance and even has in so places the squeaky toy okay even even in Montana for example the latest congressional election which had this fascinating thing right about the liberal Democrat from western more environmental or urban more timber oriented Montana running against the conservative Republican playing flat plains you know the Western liberal environmental Democrat we decide over the wisest guy from from eastern Montana for the one seat that is left in the same you know the two of them after one against each other only one can survive and you know the hill to be montana polity goes in I wouldn't say a buffalo Commons direction but let's call it an environmentalist direction in a way that would have been inconceivable say fifteen I think I mean I think that the cops have gone up and so there indeed has been an increase in conservation through most of the plaintiff states they are in fact any kind of conservation of water of water yeah that there's less say if you went back ten years ago something like that if you looked at how much and what the practices were about a decade ago they would have been more wasteful than the present practices so there isn't a temple not to use things up it's not to use the water as fast what did you miss it's a complicated way of saying his argument basically incorporates pieces of what they're both saying like his more conservation lately but there's a wall out there this might be fairly soon he does he looks at some specific branches actually I guess he does a couple of case studies what he is found is that those particular people have a very comfortable life at this point based on very heavy water ease and they know it will come to an end because the only way they can do what they're doing is really it's a depleting way and they they know it'll come to an end they're going to keep it up until it comes to an end and their next generation won't be able to do it and it's sort of a sort of fabulous way of looking at it you know clearly that attitude exists out there as well as and there's some attempts in other places where the people think perhaps if we're a little more careful we can extend this and it won't be so bad I mean I think there's a time Texas is an especially heavy neutral story and the conservation instincts in Texas for complicated reasons are less than they are like Kansas Nebraska the rural areas my recollection may be misremembering plenty I can say is that the Texas wall