Wild Idea Buffalo
Guest post by Clemson Montana Summer Program student Brett Jenkinson
After
riding on a makeshift hayride transport to the summit of seemingly just another
rolling hill, it appeared. With the slight summer breeze tugging at our shirts and
the hay bale seats prickling our legs, the pickup came to a halt. On both sides
of us were waves, but these waves were different from any I’d ever seen. It was
an ocean, alright, but not of water: instead, of lush, green, healthy,
vegetation. While awestruck, I faintly heard Dan O’Brien’s voice in the
background proudly exclaim, “…and this is what we want every acre to look
like.” It was just grasses, yet it was breathtaking. This simplicity, yet the
beauty and power it conveyed, are a paradox that I haven’t yet figured out. Four
weeks ago I would have stood in that same spot and looked out into those same
fields with nowhere near the appreciation I now have. And that’s all thanks to
a hardworking, tractor riding, weathered man named Mr. Dan O’Brien.
Perhaps
what makes me remember and feel those fields so vividly is not how they look,
although stunning, but what they symbolize. Keep in mind that Mr. O’Brien isn’t
an ordinary man. This is a man who had a wild idea of using bison as pasture
grazers, as proclaimed by his company Wild Idea Buffalo, and who used that idea
to better himself and the land he is so infinitely proud to call his. His
philosophy is unlike any other, as I quickly noticed when he nobly said, “responsibility
doesn’t end at the property line.” This promise is what makes Mr. O’Brien
unique. He doesn’t believe in corrals or feedlots for his animals, nor does he
believe in feeding them anything but what they were engineered by nature to eat
- grass. Which brings me back to what I said before: what the grass symbolizes.
In one
way, the grass shows a fight to restore as many acres of the plains as he can
to what they were before cattle overgrazing ravaged the habitat. Mr. O’Brien
strongly believes that the cattle industry is destroying, or already has
destroyed, much of the unique landscape that once covered the central United
States. He told us that although he thinks the cattle philosophy will not change
remotely in his lifetime, he takes pride in the fact that his property will be
more productive, on both a vegetative scale and in overall better environmental
standing, when he dies than it was when he initially bought it, some forty
years ago. A fact he attributes to his
natural bison herd grazing and management. He told us that although he has
accomplished so much and done more than his fair share on the conservation
level, he isn’t finished yet. Those
pastures, although seemingly endless from the back of the pickup, are a diminutive
fraction of the Plains that once was and can be again.
I was also
struck by the fragility and intricacy of the native life on the Plains. Dr.
McMillan informed us about multiple different types of invasives and how their
takeover means just another obstacle for hopeful pastures to overcome. While
plants like cheat grass, crested wheat, and sweet clover can take over a striking
pasture in what seems like the blink of an eye, it can take many painstaking years
to even remotely eradicate them from even a small area of a pasture. Often
times, seemingly good looking fields on even the best ranches are polluted with
blemishes of these tarnishing plant species. Besides taking away from the
aesthetic beauty of the plains, these plants are foreign to this landscape, and
thus inhibiting the natural order of other plants and animals on the Plains
which won’t eat this forage, thus taking away from the yield capability that a
rancher might need. Furthermore, Mr. O’Brien explained to us how another goal
of his pristine fields is to sequester as much carbon as he can, and that
these invasive grasses are not as efficient in doing so as the native grasses.
Besides
symbolizing the possible future of restoration and fragility of the landscape,
the grass also exemplifies the future of bison and other native wildlife on the
Great Plains. In my opinion, unfortunately, the most feasible way for bison to
make a true comeback and restore the natural landscape of the Plains to what it
was is to rely on private ranching of herds. Dan O’Brien has shown us what the
possibilities are for just one ranch. Through
his endeavors, he has accumulated over 30,000 acres of property and counting that
he lets his bison herd roam over just as they would centuries ago. And through
this, he creates a symbiotic relationship between man, bison, and the Plains. I
saw firsthand how bison are good for the environment and more responsible for
human consumption. The exciting possibilities that these “wild ideas” propose
are difficult to ignore and definitely worth at least giving a shot.