Breaking news: Jersey girl discovers Montana

Guest post by Clemson student Sophia Marek

Growing up and even coming to Montana, I had little concept of what the word “acre” was. I knew that they were probably big units, that really the only time I heard them was on farms, and that I did not live on a farm. I checked, and my home is only 0.39 acres. So, 60,000 of anything, especially acres, I would consider substantial, impressive, and hard to imagine until you are literally standing right on top; this was what I found in Montana.

The great landscapes stretched on for miles and miles. They were once oceans and rivers, I was told. And another rancher told me that the land co-evolved with grazers like cattle and bison. The land was simply meant to be grazed. Now, what shapes the land is the people deciding what they want to do with it. For some people that we visited, it was simply continuing their life and livelihood from day to day the way it was so that they could keep living the way they had for decades (sometimes even generations). For others, it was a different kind of conservation, one where you return things to the way that they were over 100 years ago. And, of course, many different research projects also take place in the prairie.

One of the most notable conflicts that I found very interesting was the controversy over prairie dogs. These cute little buddies welcomed us into our camp ground when we first arrived, then scurried back into their burrows as soon as we stepped one foot too into their comfort zone. The opinions that ranchers versus conservationists or researchers vary, partly because of the many aspects surrounding a prairie dog.

They are a keystone species, taking them out of the picture would indefinitely crack the glass and break the frame (good :) ).

Their burrows are sometimes hazards, and they could cause disruptions in a ranch (bad :( )

The fleas that they carry sometimes have the bubonic plague (pretty bad! :( )

Research is being done to prevent that (good! :D )

I found it interesting how The Nature Conservancy, one of the many stops that we made, chose to tackle this issue. Ranchers that rent their grasslands would get a discount depending on their populations of prairie dogs. Instead of asking a rancher to change with no reward, they incentivize to protect the population of prairie dogs. The combined interest of both parties can be used, and a rancher that we met with even suggested paying ranchers to herd bison, which brought on another interesting discussion.

Visiting site to site, going from conservation to rancher to researcher and back again has made me realize something psychological about human nature: we are often swayed by the very last thing that we hear. Each speaker was extremely nice and welcoming; not one gave the wrong vibe or rubbed me the wrong way. I often found myself in the car saying to myself “That makes sense!” to each and every one of the people I met. I ping-ponged between view points and saw aspects and clarity in both.

Then and finally, there is the research portion. We met with researchers for prairie dogs, black-footed ferrets, Sprague’s pipit, and more projects. The science, experiments, and tests that each did could be simple field experiments but with big conclusions. For example, the researcher catching Sprague’s pipits told us that there was not a lot of known information about the species. Using the tags, she could determine their moment and more about their role in the prairie. Furthermore, a simple dusting versus a special treat for prairie dogs could determine how to protect against plague and ultimately keep the prairie’s ecosystem alive and well, which benefits all.