Grasslands are a very delicate ecosystem. In the regions where the dust storms and soil erosion became the most severe during the Dust Bowl, there were few rivers and nearly no trees. If one were to drive through the Great Plains, one might say it is a wasteland. One might dismiss the grassland as land that should be put to better use. As Timothy Egan pointed out in his book, The Worst Hard Time, Robert Marcy, who was exploring the area for Jefferson, compared it to the African Sahara desert.

But, as in every ecosystem, birds, prairie dogs, coyotes, birds of prey, grazing herbivores, insects, and the plants are part of a large process, each dependent on the existence of the other for survival. The conditions that led to the Dust Bowl were driven by a need to market and sell land. Once the land was sold or claimed, those who had their few acres needed to do what their ancestors had done, they needed to grow things, and support a family from their land. By 1921 tractors were pulling the plows, carving dense sod and turning over the roots of the grass. When the drought came, there was nothing to hold the soil in place, so it blew away. The ecosystem was dead. Grazing herbivores had been replaced by the plow.

In 1935 a man named Rexford Tugwell, who was head of the Resettlement Administration, helped an ambitious young filmmaker, Pare Lorenz make a film dramatizing what had happened to the grasslands, called The Plow that Broke the Plains. Many looked at it as propedganda. The film, although banned in some communities, was seen by 10 million people in 1937.

The full version of The Plow That Broke the Plains can be viewed here.

Although many New Deal agencies took up the task of restoring the plains, in 1940, the Great Plains Committee, which had been created to study the problems in the region, issued a report called The Northern Plains. The report concluded that, "The problem of land-use adjustment on an enduring basis in the Great Plains, in the Northern Plains and Southern Plains alike, still remains the most difficult agricultural problem of its kind in the United States."

photo by Jack Delano, Farm land in Texas panhandle near Amarillo, Texas,  March 1943  

We all know that the buffalo were the original grazers of the Great Plains.  Cattle ranchers who practice rotational grazing try to mimic the movement of buffalo on grasslands.   Buffalo were nearly killed to extinction by the turn of the last century, but in the last couple decades there has been a movement among ranchers and conservationists to bring the buffalo back.

This is what Dan O’Brian, a falconer, wildlife biologist, and writer has done on his ranch near the Black Hills of South Dakota.   Not only have Dan and his partner Jill Maguire taken up raising buffalo on their High Plains ranch, but they have also made a commitment to keeping their buffalo grass-fed.  This would seem like an obvious choice, especially for a wild herbivore, but even in the homeland of the great Bison herds, many buffalo are sent to feedlots where they are finished on grain and a heavy dose of antibiotics, just like cattle.  So out of respect for the cycles of birth and death and the wild nature of the buffalo, Dan and Jill made the choice to raise, sell, process, and market the buffalo on their own with a partnership called Wild Idea Buffalo.

The ranch keeps a Cheyenne River Blog, where with the keen eye of a falconer, Dan is able to convey his insights into the ecosystem restoration, Jill contributes recipes, and Gerevese Hittle keeps a River Ranch Diary.  I recently finished (and loved) reading Dan’s book, Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch, which tells his story of the trials and tribulations of starting a herd during the buffalo boom of the late 90’s.  I was amazed to find out that Dan harvests his buffalo on his land.  Referring to the rituals of birth and death, Dan says, “Celebrating those rituals was an integral part of my giant scheme to restore the buffalo to my ranch.”  After recently reading a book on the Great Dust Bowl, it was refreshing to read a true tale from a person who is turning a piece of the High Plains back around with careful, deliberate action.


Why do you run buffalo on your ranch?                           

Dan:  I had worked for a long time as a seasonal biologist for the State of SD and for the Peregrine Fund and come to realize the subtle things that could change when you remove a species from an ecosystem. For all of my adult life I'd been running both mother cows and yearlings, and other people had done the same for generations before me. I'd begun to notice that certain grasses were missing from the pastures. The draws that should have been filled with brushy plants weren't. The forbs component was sick. I wanted to break the cycle that was causing that and had a few options. Buffalo seemed like the most fun.
 
How have the buffalo improved your grasslands?
 
Dan: The buffalo don't spend much time in the brushy draws or the riparian areas, so those places are much healthier. We turned all the hay fields into pastures and winter graze instead of farm hay and feed all winter. This makes the whole ranch more like it was pre-European. The wildlife habitat is very much like what the wildlife evolved to thrive upon. The buffalo move on their own and so they simply touch the pastures more lightly. Of course, a simulate thing can be done with other animals and rotation systems but, when they are stocked at a reasonable rate, buffalo are a nearly labor free way to get this done.
 
 
I read on your website that you harvest with a movable harvest facility.  There are few facilities like this in the U.S., and many believe that if they were more common, a greater number of ranchers would be able to produce and sell “grass-fed” meats.   How were you able to obtain access to such a facility in your area?
 
Dan:  Mobile harvesters deserve to become a standard component in all red meat production. They are certainly a much more humane, and in our case culturally appropriate way to harvest buffalo - many of the buffalo harvested by our machine are owned by Native American buffalo producers. The standard American slaughter plant is set up for speed and efficiency and does not consider intangibles like dignity or tradition. It is a national disgrace. Mobile harvesters are not cheap and the operating them is not cheap either. But they are worth the price - less many machines that are standard on many farms and ranches. They are also fully licensable for anyone who is willing to wade into the necessary morass of meat inspection regulation.    
 

Tell me a little about your work with the Sustainable Harvest Alliance.  How did it develop?
 
Dan: We have a meat inspector assigned to us every Weds, though we don't run every week. In the first year we harvested 243 buffalo. This year we're shooting for three hundred and are on track to get it done. I am the chief cook and bottle washer. I raised the money to buy the machine, do the books, and started off driving, butchering and scheduling. Now we've got a great crew that gets a lot more done. But every trip is an adventure.
 

When I last talk to you, you were about to attend a conference for the Northern Plains Sustainable Agriculture Society.  How is the movement towards sustainability in agriculture growing on the High Plains?
 
Dan: As is typical of the Northern Great Plains --- we got snowed in that week.   But sustainability is slowly coming back to the NGP.

Photos of the Ranch by Wild Idea Buffalo, All Rights Reserved.