Wildlife, Politics, and Tradition
Guest post by student Maya Moran -
For this first portion of the course, I already felt I’ve taken in so much and have learned an incredible amount surrounding not only wildlife restoration in the west but also more about how different groups of people in Montana think, how grad students really go about their research, how diverse the landscape is, and countless other things. There have been a few things that have really stuck with me from this first section though.
On one day we met with Andrew Dreelin, a graduate student who was conducting research on Horned Larks and Chestnut Colored Longspurs on Prairie Dog towns. Not only was this research fascinating, but Andrew was super knowledgeable and an excellent teacher to help inform our group. He was great at answering all of our questions, and at one point I asked him what sort of outreach programs he would like to see to help people change their opinions surrounding prairie dog towns and wildlife restoration, among some other things. This led to a discussion from Andrew that made a lot of sense, but had not been something that I had previously thought about. Andrew talked about how much he’d like to see Native American Reservations, such as Fort Belknap, receive some of the same levels of funding that other groups like the Winnett ACES receive. Some of these groups have been able to receive millions of dollars, which is great for them and well deserved. However, places like Fort Belknap are so special for wildlife. These reservations have a sovereignty not able to be achieved elsewhere, making the landscape and wildlife diversity levels ideal for restoration, and essentially contain conditions as close as possible to pre-human interaction (which is impossible today unfortunately). This got me thinking, and it made me wonder why these places aren’t swamped with donations to restore or research countless species of wildlife that are endangered or understudied. Unfortunately, most barriers often come down to politics, which seems to be the main occurrence.
We have been learning about research surrounding different species, including Swift Fox, Horned Larks, Sprague’s Pipits, Bison, etc. As seems to be the theme, many barriers to their restoration are related to politics. Take the Swift Fox, which we learned about with Dana Nelson. We learned that most people really don’t have ecological issues with this animal, so why was it so difficult to get their restoration efforts going? It turns out that because the American Prairie Reserve was involved, other groups did not want to get behind the effort. Thanks to Fort Belknap and their sovereignty, there have been Swift Foxes returned to the land, but not with ease. We also talked with Damien, an American Prairie Reserve faculty member. After this talk, it seemed as though this group should have no reason to be disliked and really had only good intentions. Due to them not befriending everyone in the area during the early days of the company, they remain villainized by most groups here today. The American Prairie Reserve may also represent something that many people don’t like, which is a return of the land to pre-ranching days.
We’ve learned about a lot this week, but one main thing I’m taking away is that certain things bring their own symbolism to folks in Montana, and perhaps people are set in their ways and tradition. Politics and opinion hold a lot of weight in this country, and although this can be good and important to hold on to your roots, it can potentially hold back wildlife efforts and aid going to groups and places who truly deserve it. To me it seems like there is a fear of the land and ecology returning to a time when it belonged to someone other than the ranchers, namely Native Americans. This is not something that isn’t understandable, as there is really a deep history of ranching that comes with a great deal of struggle. It’s interesting to consider who wants what, and what the state of Montana used to look like as different people lived on the land.
