Professors Frank and Deborah Popper were nearly tarred and feathered two decades ago when they advocated turning large swaths of the Great Plains into a Buffalo Commons to counter rural economic decline.
But a USA Today feature says the Poppers’ alternative ideas for making a living in the region are catching on, and the couple is feeling some vindication.
Montana is looking at setting aside millions of acres for a bison reserve. In Kansas and elsewhere, agriculture producers are pursuing agritourism, wind energy, sustainable ranching and other ideas that might have been dismissed in the past.
Such new thinking has “got to be better economically, even if it’s a gamble, than the continued slow-leak decline,” Frank Popper said. “It’s got to be better than things like casinos, prisons and hazardous waste dumps. . . . What we’ve got is a Plan B for a region whose Plan A has been failing it for well over a century.”
Posted by Randy Scholfield
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13 Comments
IN ADDITION TO DESTRUCTIVE USES OF WESTERN AND CENTRAL KANSAS RESOURCES AND LAND LISTED ABOVE … I WOULD ADD ETHANOL MANUFACTURING PLANTS.
It’s well known that ethanol manufacturing plants require millions of gallons of our relatively pure ancient underground Ogallala aquifer water. Currently this valuable resource is being GIVEN AWAY by our state politicians.
One alternative would be for ethanol plants to use sewage treatment plant effluent for their water sources but so far I don’t see any rush by ethanol companies to use this alternative source of water.
Stealing our underground Ogallala aquifer water is a threat to all of our Kansas municipal water supplies including Wichita.
Its amazing … ethanol manufacturers get our pure drinking water to manufacture a gasoline supplement. As a result, Kansas citizens will eventually be drinking recycled, treated sewage treatment effluent.
IS THAT REALLY WHAT WE WANT IN KANSAS?
There isn’t enough sewage in Western Kansas to be treated and used. I’m sorry folks, but Western Kansas will run out of water soon and it will spread as far east to Pratt.
Ethanol plants only perpetuate more farmland into corn corps, which require daily irrigation from seed to harvest.
Say thanks to the destructive policy set up by the farm lobby who convinced the government that forcing gasoline refineries to blend ethanol was the best thing to do.
Ethanol is a net-loss energy production. It’s nothing more than using the force of government to make people buy ethanol at the pump so that blue-blood farmers can get more money for corn. It’s all bs.
The farm lobby better hope to god that the next President of the USA will be a farm butt licker so they can continue their fraud on the American pocketbook and continue their environmental destruction.
There is a real good chance that the ethanol scam will be yanked out and all those government wealth farmers who put in money in ethanol plants will go belly up.
People! This was done before in the 70’s and people who invested in ethanol lost their butts. It will happen again!
I am sure W Kansas will wait until Montana, Nebraska, Wyoming, and South Dakota have all made a huge success of their bison preserve and wind farms before starting EITHER.
Use Western Kansas for windmills and a buffalo preserve.
Besides being a water hog, corn crops contribute to ground polution (fertilizers, etc,) than any other crop. What a waste of a valuable food resource. Hell, use Kudzu for ethanol; grows like wild weeds, and has the redeeming quality as a better source of ethanol.
Stumper, unfortunately, you forget. There are no SUBSIDIES for kudzu…
I love Buffalo meat, though it’s hard to find fresh and with the right cuts you want. Mail order works, but is inconveient.
I’d like to see a buffalo section right next to beef – in every grocery store.
It’s more lean then venison and very tasty.
The global warming nuts say cows cause global warming though. Buffalo must certainly be worse.
At least if you put wind turbines in the buffalo fields you could disperse the odor a little bit. Would still heat the earth though.
Windmills and Bufalo farts, what was I thinking!
Maybe they could add some deer and antelope too.
Great Toto, then not only would Ihave doggy doo, but buffaloe chips, deer dung, and antelope poop to step in.
Improve habitat by returning land to native grasses etc. Inproved habitat will support more game. Then allow landowners to purchase hunting permits wholesale and re-sell them for hunting on their property.
The combination of revenues from hunting and wind farms can provide a base income for landowners. And, when the water runs out, they won’t be able to irrigate anyway.
Frank and Deb wrote a wonderful history of the Buffalo Commons issue for the Online Journal of Rrural Research & Policy (http://www.ojrrp.org) earlier this year. The two took a lot of heat when they first presented the idea some years ago, including a large slice from then-Governor of Kansas Mike Hayden. Also in the Journal is a response from Hayden that may surprise some of you.
The bottom line, of course, is that many of those opposed to the idea of the Buffalo Commons are working very hard to make it happen, whether it is water rights in areas like the San Luis Valley of Colorado or the very old debate over the Arkansas River (that’s R-Kansas for those of you west of Limon and north of Oberlin). The over-use of water in the Greatt Plains will make this happen, willing or no.
The question is … would Wichita and its new $300,000,000.15 downtown ice hockey arena be within the boundaries of the Buffalo Commons district and therefor be returned to the tall grass country it once was?