The Buffalo Commons

Frank J. Popper chairs the Urban Studies Department of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Deborah E. Popper is a graduate student in the Department of Geography. Frank Popper proposed the concept of a Buffalo Commons after in-depth population studies of the Great Plains throughout the 20th Century revealed human populations will continue dwindling until vast sections of the region will eventually become virtually empty .

It defies imagination that a wilderness area is slowly emerging from the heavily farmed and ranched expanses of the Great Plains. As the region's resources of soil and water are depleted, an aging population dwindles and young people leave for better opportunities. In a highly controversial proposal, academicians Frank and Deborah Popper suggest that the depopulation of the Great Plains will allow creation of the nation's largest natural area, the "Buffalo Commons".

Driven by the forces of a warming climate and a cooling economy, the American frontier is slowly reemerging. The growing flight of Americans from the sparsely populated states of the Great Plains may provide the prelude to a restorationist's dream -the creation of a great Buffalo Commons, a re-invented frontier that will be impossible to overlook.

At the center of the U. S., between the Rockies and the tall-grass prairies of the Midwest and South, lies the shortgrass expanse of the Great Plains -America's steppes. The plains region boasts the nation's hottest summers and coldest winters; greatest temperature swings; worst hail, locusts and range fires; fiercest droughts and blizzards; and, therefore, the country's shortest growing season. The plains are the land of the Big Sky and the Dust Bowl.

We believe that over the next generation much of the plains will become almost totally depopulated, as a result of the largest, longest-running agricultural and environmental miscalculation in American history. At that point, a new use for the region will emerge, one that is fact so old that it predates the American presence. We are suggesting that the most rural, environmentally fragile parts of the region be returned to their original pre-white-settler state; that they be deprivatized and returned to their native grasslands and the buffalo.

The creation of a great "Buffalo Common's" will become the world's largest historic preservation project. Big sections of the Great Plains will become what all of the United States once was -a vast land mass, largely empty of humanity, biologically teeming and unexploited.

The Great Plains extend over much of 10 states -an endlessly windswept, nearly treeless, semi-arid, somberly beautiful and increasingly depopulated vastness. It is not uncommon for a plains dweller to drive 40 miles to a school or movie, a hundred miles to a clothing store or a dentist. Occupying about 20 percent of the contiguous United States, the plains contain barely two percent of the nation's population -a number which is dwindling dramatically.

The Dust Bowl of the '30s was only the most dramatic result of a settlement style that has endured at least since the Homestead Act of 1862. The pioneer's excess of cattle and sheep ate and trampled vastly more of the native, drought-resistant shortgrass than their predecessor, the buffalo; the excess of corn, wheat and cotton the settlers planted replaced the grass entirely. But nothing could hold the soil in place like the shortgrass. When drought returned as part of the region's merciless cycle, the land was defenseless.

In the late '30s, the Dust Bowl covered 150,000 square miles in Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas -nearly a third of the plains. It kicked up dirt clouds five miles high, large enough to obstruct navigation of planes as far away as the eastern seaboard and of ships 300 miles out in the Atlantic. The dust tore the paint off houses and cars; it asphyxiated animals, babies and small children.

Today the plains are once again beset by problems. The region's farm/ranch energy and mineral economies are weak or deeply depressed. The 1988 and 1989 droughts hit the northern plains with particular ferocity. Many towns are now emptying and aging at record rates as farms and small businesses fail and young people flee. Water shortages loom, especially atop the Ogallala Aquifer. The giant but nonrenewable source of groundwater that nourishes more than 11million acres once measured 58 feet deep below parts of Kansas. Today, in many places less than six feet of water remains.

The Tragedy of the Commons

"Grass no good upside down," said a Pawnee chief in northeastern Colorado as he watched the late-nineteenth-century homesteaders rip through the shortgrass prairie with their steel plows. He mourned a stretch of land where the Indians had hunted buffalo for millennia. Under the plows of the homesteaders, however, the land grew crops for a few years and then went the way of the Dust Bowl as farmers abandoned it. Today, it is federal land, part of the system of national grasslands -an austere monument to American self-delusion. Over the past 100 years, three separate waves of farmers and ranchers, with increasingly significant federal support, have tried to make settlement stick on the plains. The settlers of the 1890s and the 1930s were largely uprooted and many of those of the 1990s seem likely to follow.

Attempts to settle the plains frontier represent a spectacular variation of Garrett Hardin's Tragedy of the Commons -the famous ecological fable that shows how individual short-term economic rationality can lead to collective long-term environmental disaster.

Various remedies have been proposed, including new crops (genetically engineered corn and wheat) new incomes (jojoba, triticale and rapeseed farms; Hama, donkey and Angora goat industries) and new land uses (millionaire ranchette developments and East African-style hunting reserves three times the size of Connecticut). But so far, none of these plans appears likely to help the plains on a region-wide basis.

The most intriguing alternative -returning the land to its historical state- is being proposed with increasing frequency. For instance, University of Oklahoma geographer and MacArthur Fellow Bret Wallach has proposed that the U.S. Forest Service pay farmers to stop farming portions of the plains. Instead they would be paid to replant the native shortgrasses and, after 15 years, the Service would buy out their holdings except for a 40-acre homestead. Under this plan, un-needed agricultural land would disappear from cultivation, erosion would diminish and depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer would slow. The new acreage would be added to the Service's four-million-acre national grasslands.

The Strategy of the Commons

Whether the Buffalo Commons is governmentally assisted or privately induced on the newly emptied parts of the plains, the fences will inevitably come down, the shortgrass will be replanted by the animals -including the bison- will be re-stocked. Robert Scott of the Institute of the Rockies estimates that 15,000 square miles of eastern Montana, about a 10th of the state, could support a population of 75,000 bison, 150,000 deer, 40,000 elk and 40,000 antelope.

The task of restoring the Buffalo Commons will be time consuming: it will take at least 20-30 years before the vegetation and wildlife entirely re-assert themselves in the semiarid settings where the land changes so slowly that wagon trails that are a century old are still visible.

One group of natural caretakers of the Commons, of course, would be the native peoples themselves. In South Dakota, several Sioux tribes are now suing to regain control of 11,000 square miles, including much of the sacred Black Hills. The federal government might settle these and other long-standing Plains Indian land claims by giving or selling the tribes large portions of the new commons.

The building blocks for the Buffalo Commons could be the present national parks, grasslands, public grazing lands, wildlife refuges and Indian lands, as well as their state counterparts, and many private and land conservancy holdings. The small cities of the plains will amount to urban islands in a shortgrass sea.

Some settlements, like those within the urban shadow of cities like Denver and San Antonio, and self-contained service centers, such as Bismark and Cheyenne, will survive the depopulation of the plains and, in fact, prosper. Agriculture and other extractive activities will also persist and perhaps thrive, but will be confined to more economically and environmentally appropriate areas. For example:, the plains will still remain the nation's granary of last resort.

But the emptying of large areas of the plains is inevitable. The only remaining question is how soon. The government, the private sector and individuals must start planning to keep much of the region from turning into an area the nation has deserted -an American Empty Quarter.

The return of the American frontier will have profound cultural effects that are largely unknowable. Unlike the 19th century plains frontier where the settlers sought to conquer the land, the Buffalo Commons should be a place of preservation and conservation rather than extraction. Call it the kinder, gentler frontier -or maybe the end-of-history frontier. If we are lucky, it will be a sustainable-development frontier; if we are not, it will be a wasteland.

We are no longer a frontier nation, but we are still a nation with a frontier. And it will be a frontier that will expand far into the next century.

RELATED STORIES

Proponents Push "Buffalo Commons' Plan

Cheyenne, Wyoming (AP) Those who live on the Great Plains are willfully ignoring their ongoing economic tailspin, according to two Rutgers professors who see a vast "buffalo commons" as the region's salvation.

Frank Popper and his wife, Deborah, started talking about turning a chunk of the plains states into a buffalo preserve for years ago. Such a refuge filled with ranches, hunting grounds and preserves could counter the region's declining economic base and dwindling populations they said.

When the Popper's first published their idea in 1987, many thought the couple wanted a new national park. However, on Thursday the Popper's talked of a mixture of private and public buffalo industries.

Ranchers would "make a living by switching existing cattle ranches, which are really going down the tubes fast, to buffalo," Popper said. "There could also be buffalo refuges or safari lands," he said.

Low-fat, high-protein buffalo meat is currently trendy in supermarkets and so would prove more valuable to ranchers than cattle, and America's current fascination with the west and buffalo would lure tourists to the commons the couple said.

But apparently those in the plains haven't been listening.

Popper acknowledged during a luncheon with state and local officials that while he and his wife have been asked to discuss the idea before businessmen and municipal planners, not a single community has moved to create such a commons.

Part of the problem, said Popper, a professor of urban studies, might be that those living on the Great Plains don't accept the severity of their economic slump.

Or, suggested Max Maxfield, director of the Wyoming Commerce Department, "perhaps those in the plains don't see much wisdom coming from easterners who have screwed up their states so much..."

The Poppers don't dispute that they've been criticized for leaving New Jersey to tell those in the plains how to better themselves. But, they added, their only intention is to offer an alternative, not dictate how things should be.

"We're not telling people how to live their lives," Deborah Popper said. "…Nor is there an order that we have any power to enact."

But at the same time she added, "It's one country, one world, so what happens in Wyoming, in Colorado, in Texas affects us in New Jersey too."

"If the Buffalo Commons is in fact established on the plains in any of the various forms, it's not because Deb and I thought it up in New Jersey," Popper added. "It will be because the local communities thought it was a good idea for them."

The Poppers see their work as a contribution to help the plains, and so, the nation, strengthening itself. The proposal does not call for the entire 139,000 square-mile region to be turned over to bison, but selects specific counties in Wyoming, Nebraska, Montana, the Dakotas, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas that have stagnated economically for much of the 20th century and which might benefit from bison-related industries.

Population and economic studies the Poppers conducted in the 1980s and again after the 1990 census, pinpoint which counties in the plains are experiencing a continuing decline.

"The plains really can't continue with the business-as-usual approach," Popper said.

State Lawmakers Criticize "Buffalo Common's" Author's Visit

Cheyenne (AP) A legislator has criticized the state's participation in a visit by the authors of a controversial proposal to turn a large portion of the Great Plains into a preserve.

State Representative, Patrick O'Toole, D-Carbon, said Monday that it is inappropriate for the state to help sponsor presentations by Frank and Deborah Popper.

Frank Popper, head of the urban studies department at Rutgers University, and his wife, geographer Deborah Popper, wrote a thesis suggesting that about one-quarter of the Great Plains should be turned into a preserve they call the "Buffalo Commons."

The Poppers, who gained national attention for their thesis, say the area's declining population and efforts since the turn of the [20th] century to develop the region's economy underscore the futility of further efforts.

Although he disagrees with the Poppers' opinions "100 percent," O'Toole said he doesn't deny their right to express them.

The lawmaker, however, doesn't believe the state should have any part in sponsoring the Popper's visit, which included stops in Laramie, Cheyenne, and Fort Laramie.

The Wyoming Council for the Humanities funded the Popper's tour through the state, and the Wyoming Department of Commerce, University of Wyoming, and Laramie County Community College were among the sponsors.

"The implications to Wyoming are that we are a valueless society out here, and better we turn into a park for people in urban areas to enjoy," O'Toole said. "I feel to give sponsorship to those kind of people really flies in the face of what we were doing in the past few years. "It's sort of like bringing in someone from Nazi Germany to talk about population control," he added.

University of Northern Colorado history professor Michael Welsh, whose department is also sponsoring the Poppers' speaking tour, said the proposal doesn't simply promote the west as a parkland. Rather, he said, it represents an alternative to the economic course the region has followed the past century.

"The Poppers have a whole range of economic indicators to demonstrate the potential an idea like this would have for the region," Welsh said. "This isn't simply a tourism plan. There are real benefits to be realized from restoring buffalo to the plains."

Welsh noted that a newly-formed American Indian group recently received permission from the U. S. Bureau of Land Management to establish a 320 acre "test site" in Nebraska.

"This is a first-step in testing the viability of restoring a buffalo-based economy to some areas of the Great Plains," Welsh said.

Although the Commerce Department is listed as a sponsor, the department isn't contributing any money to bring the Poppers to Wyoming, Director Max Maxfield said.

Nevertheless, Maxfield said he believes it is important that opposing opinions are aired. And he added, "it's important that people with fixed ideas about the west come see the area and listen to the people for themselves. It's better to be open, I believe, to opposing views and be able to air them out and give our standpoint rather than just reject them and not welcome that kind of discussion," Maxfield said.

He added that Wyoming's congressional delegation has invited different people who have taken controversial stands on issues to visit the state and hear different views. Maxfield said state officials will discuss such topics as agriculture and economic development with the Poppers while they are in Wyoming.

O'Toole concedes the lectures planned by the Poppers could focus attention on issues facing Wyoming. "It certainly has that potential, but I think that could happen with them [the Poppers] being sponsored by the state of Wyoming," O'Toole said.

The west is engaged in a fight for survival, the lawmaker said. The political battles over water rights, grazing fees, and federal mineral royalties are critical, O'Toole said. On the other hand, the Poppers are engaged in an intellectual exercise, making pronouncements about the west form New Jersey, he added.

The Poppers proposal calls for turning about 139,000 square miles into a preserve. The area the two have studied lies between Canada and Mexico and east of the Continental Divide. The Poppers have suggested "deprivitizing" the Great Plains and halting subsidizing of all enterprises there.

2006 Note from Bobby Bridger: Sadly, because of death threats, the Popper's had to have a police escort throughout most of their tours of the west in the early 1990s. Now many of the people who were originally so threatened by the Popper's suggestions have changed their perspective. Many states have asked the Poppers to return to discuss their concepts in detail. The web is full of updates...just google Frank and Deborah Popper or "Buffalo Commons". I'm just proud that Hoka Hey! was one of the first newspapers to report the Popper's intriguing concepts.

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