“In 1987, Rutgers University professor Frank Popper and Deborah Epstein Popper, then a graduate student in geography at Rutgers, published a colossally bold proposal to return much of the Great Plains to a “Buffalo Commons.” As originally conceived, the Buffalo Commons would have involved returning about ninety million acres of the plains back to the conditions that had prevailed before the westward expansion of the frontier. Involving significant portions of ten states, the proposal received a good deal of exposure, collected some editorial support, and led to the creation of a grassroots organization (the Great Plains Restoration Council) to promote the vision. However, the primary impact of the Buffalo Commons was to inspire people who care about vibrant, diverse ecosystems to begin to think on a much larger scale.
The closest thing to a near-term realization of the vision may be the creation of the American Prairie Reserve, funded by rich individuals and celebrated scientists who care about preserving grassland for pureblood bison and other native creatures and plants. The group is buying out ranches in northeastern Montana and owns 58,000 acres outright and leases 215,000 acres from the federal government. It hopes to ultimately purchase 500,000 acres and lease or otherwise protect an additional 2.7 million acres. Its scientists and those of affiliated organizations have determined that 3.2 million acres would be adequate to preserve a fully functioning ecosystem, an “American Serengeti” large enough to survive fire, disease, and winter ice events. With large sustainable amounts of prairie vegetation, as well as sustainable populations of bison, pronghorn antelope, burrowing owls, elk, and wolves, the reserve would offer a glimpse of the land as Lewis and Clark traversed it.
Some cattle ranchers in the area oppose the goals of the American Prairie Reserve because they see a threat to their way of life. They worry about bison spreading diseases to their cattle. They worry that the ridiculously low grazing fees that are keeping some of them afloat might rise if the government develops a preference for free-ranging bison over cattle.33 They might be right. But bison should be preferred. Cattle ranching has seldom been very successful in that dry country, but plains bison thrived there for five to ten thousand years. As climate disruption creates conditions even more hostile to cattle, the American Prairie Reserve may be the best hope to save this unique ecosystem. Family-run ranches sometimes survive by paying as much attention to the ecology of their land as to the bloodlines of their cows.”
(extract from “Cowed: The Hidden Impact of 93 Million Cows on America’s Health, Economy, Politics, Culture, and Environment” by Denis Hayes and Gail Boyer Hayes)
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BUFFALOES THUNDER ACROSS POSTERS, POSE FOR BUMPER STICKERS and glower from coffee mugs in Frank Popper’s crowded office at Rutgers University in New Jersey. There is even a sack of dried buffalo droppings. ”Genuine Virgin Buffalo Chips,” the label reads. ”Pioneer Fertilizer and Fuel. Not for Microwave Ovens. Contents Public Domain.”
Frank Popper, chairman of the Rutgers urban studies department and an international expert on land-use planning, and his wife, Deborah Epstein Popper, a Rutgers geographer, want to convert much of America’s prairie outback into public domain for its original residents – the buffalo. According to their research, vast areas in the 10 Great Plains states – from the 98th meridian to the Rockies – are already experiencing or will undergo a sharp decline in population and prosperity.
In Nebraska, for instance, says Deborah Popper, the distressed locales are found in counties ”that have at least a 50 percent population loss since 1930. An over-10-percent loss between 1980 and 1988. Four people or fewer per square mile. High median age. Twenty percent or more in poverty. New annual construction investment under $50 per capita. All very bad news.”
Over the next 30 years, the Poppers argue, the depressed areas should become a huge reserve, more than 139,000 square miles of open land and wildlife refuge. That zone, which the Poppers call the Buffalo Commons, includes much of the western Dakotas, western Nebraska and eastern Montana; portions of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, and selected counties in Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming (map on page 26).
Set in place, the Buffalo Commons – most likely to be administered by a consortium of government agencies and private groups – would be the world’s largest national park, an act of ecological restoration that would, the Poppers contend, boldly reverse more than 100 years of American history. Commons visitors would once again see the heart of the continent as Lewis and Clark first knew it, a true frontier of waving grass and migrant game.
The Buffalo Commons idea came to the Poppers late in the winter of 1987, while they were stuck in six-lane traffic on the New Jersey Turnpike heading into Manhattan. Their moment of inspiration, deep in the industrial wasteland, has turned these academics into the most controversial pair to wander the West since Bonnie and Clyde.
Read more
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Study
https://newprairiepress.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1005&context=ojrrp
2006
The Buffalo Commons: Its Antecedents and Their Implications
Deborah E. Popper
City University of New York’s College of Staten Island
Frank Popper
Rutgers University
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Profile on Frank Popper – Rutgers University
His article “The Great Plains: From Dust to Dust” (Planning, December 1987), written with his wife, Deborah Popper, a geographer at the City University of New York and Princeton University, put forward the controversial Buffalo Commons idea that touched off a national debate on the future of the depopulating rural parts of the Great Plains. The Poppers’ Plains work was the subject of Anne Matthews’ book Where the Buffalo Roam (1992), one of four finalists for the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. It appeared in a second edition in 2002. The Poppers’ work inspired Richard Wheeler’s The Buffalo Commons (1998), a novel where the concept wins out in the end. The Poppers and their work appeared in documentary films such as Dreams Turn to Dust (1994), The Fate of the Plains (1995),The Buffalo Commons: The Return of the Buffalo (2008) and Facing the Storm: Story of the American Bison (2010).
Symposia on the Buffalo Commons came out in the American Geographical Society’s Focus (Winter 1993), the Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy (Winter 1994) and North Dakota Quarterly (Fall 1996). In 1997 the Poppers’ Buffalo Commons work received the American Geographical Society’s Paul Vouras Medal for regional geography, and Frank Popper received Rutgers’ Presidential Award for Distinguished Public Service. In 2001 the Poppers became associate fellows at the Center for Great Plains Studies at the University of Nebraska, and from 2002 to 2009 they were members of the National Prairie Writers Circle at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas.
PROFILE ON DEBORAH POPPER – HIGH MEADOWS ENVIRONMENTAL INSTITUTE, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
Research Interests
Alternative development strategies for the Great Plains; regional adaptations to population loss; strategies for frontier communications.
