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When a group of Native Americans took up bison ranching, they brought a prairie back to life

  • By Leslie Allen
  • Smithsonian magazine, February 2005, Subscribe
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Bison do roam, up to tens of miles per day. Their ranging and even wallowing habits can shape plant and animal life on the prairie. (Glenn Oakley)

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As we drive slowly into a formidable herd, the muscular animals stand their ground. Moving only slightly to allow the pickup through, they form a loose circle and stare steadily at us. Around bison, you stay in your vehicle.

Traditionally, Native Americans would set fires to attract bison, which prefer to graze on burned areas where fresh grasses grow. A drought makes controlled burns risky. But even without fire, bison are furthering the VE Ranch's restoration. The animals rub their horns against saplings, stunting tree growth. They avoid broad-leaved plants, or forbs, which then thrive in grazed areas. Pronghorn antelopes eat the forbs bison leave behind. And bison wallows can hold rainwater for other wildlife.

In their quest to restore prairie habitat, the Cheyenne River Sioux are maintaining colonies of black-tailed prairie dogs, which cattle ranchers revile as a scourge that nibbles pasture to a nub and digs holes that hobble cattle. But more than 150 grassland species depend on prairie dog "towns." The burrowing owl makes its home in abandoned burrows. Rattlesnakes, swift fox, eagles and hawks prey on prairie dogs, as do black-footed ferrets, the plains' most endangered species. Working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the tribe released dozens of ferrets onto its lands in 2000. Bison often gather around prairie dog towns. "Since the dogs constantly clip off grasses, there's always new growth, and it's very nutritious for the bison," Murray explains. Young bison grow faster when they graze in prairie dog towns.

Murray and I spy a herd of distant bison under a cornflower blue sky. A few pronghorn antelope stand motionless in the middle distance, poised to skitter away. Nearby, prairie dogs peer like sentries from atop their burrows, ready to sound an alarm as they watch a hawk wheel overhead.

Though the prairie is coming back on the VE Ranch, this venture remains a risky business. Prices for bison and bison meat have been unsteady. (Alone among South Dakota tribes, the Cheyenne River Sioux have forgone income from gambling.) The park won't earn much revenue from tourist admissions until a visitors' center is built, which will take years. And not everyone is pleased.

"On our reservation, it's not Democrats and Republicans, but traditionalists and progressives," says DuBray. Progressives, he says, loathe prairie dogs, believe livestock should be fenced, prefer cattle to bison, and are skeptical of establishing a tribal park to showcase prairie restoration. Traditionalists favor all of those things; DuBray says they are looking to the past for the shape of things to come.


A bison's death "is now such an event that it is immediately chronicled by the Associated Press and telegraphed all over the country," conservationist William T. Hornaday wrote in 1889. Fifty years earlier, bison by the tens of millions had ranged across North America in herds so vast that observers compared them to roaring avalanches, grand armies and thunder. But even then, overhunting, loss of prairie habitat and diseases spread by domesticated cattle were ravaging the species. By the time Hornaday organized the American Bison Society in 1905, one of the nation's first environmental organizations, only a few hundred of the animals remained.

A century after the society began working to save the species from extinction, bison are an environmental success story. Numbers are up to around 400,000 across North America, mostly on private ranches. Now a new generation of advocates wants to restore the prairie habitat that bison once dominated. Some, including Plains Indians, whose tribes were almost wiped out along with the bison, also hope to restore a way of life the animal represented.

For centuries, many Great Plains tribes had depended almost entirely on bison (known commonly as buffalo, although they're not related to true buffalo species in Asia and Africa) for food, shelter, clothing and other needs. These Indians counted more than 100 uses for bison parts, from paintbrushes from fibrous hump bones to ladles from horns. According to the tribes' spiritual beliefs, bison sacrificed their lives to sustain the first people.

"We have to restore the buffalo if we are going to survive as a culture," says Fred DuBray, executive director of the InterTribal Bison Cooperative, in Rapid City, South Dakota, which he helped start in 1990 with five member tribes. Now 53 tribes in 18 states manage 15,000 head of bison.

DuBray's tribe, the Cheyenne River Sioux of north central South Dakota, occupies a 2,820,000-acre reservation that sprawls across two of the state's poorest counties. In the late 1990s, the tribal council purchased a 21,500-acre cattle ranch called the VE, which DuBray convinced the council to turn over to bison. He argued that bison would provide the reservation, where Type 2 diabetes is rife, with low-fat, low-cholesterol protein. But the glint in DuBray's piercing green eyes came from the idea of establishing a vast prairie park of native plants and animals.

Many scientists agree with DuBray that prairies and bison are inextricably linked. Historically, the animal's grazing and ranging habits helped determine which species populated the North American grassland. Replicating historical conditions, as some researchers and conservationists have tried to do, has been hard because most native prairie is long gone.

Though overgrazed when the Cheyenne River Sioux bought it, the VE Ranch boasted an abundance of hardy native plants—western wheatgrass, needle and thread, sagewort—and few of the exotic plants like leafy spurge that plague Plains ranches. The tribe took down internal fences, let the land rest for a three-year spell and released more than 2,000 bison onto its gently rolling hills in 2002.

Joanna Murray, a wildlife biologist, takes me in search of bison on the VE Ranch. As we veer off the old ranch road and start lurching cross-country, she cautions me not to think of these animals as cattle, which have been bred for docility for some 10,000 years. "Bison just roam freely," she calls out over the rattle of the pickup's suspension. They spend less time grazing than cattle do and, she adds, "they're rarely in one spot two days in a row."

As we drive slowly into a formidable herd, the muscular animals stand their ground. Moving only slightly to allow the pickup through, they form a loose circle and stare steadily at us. Around bison, you stay in your vehicle.

Traditionally, Native Americans would set fires to attract bison, which prefer to graze on burned areas where fresh grasses grow. A drought makes controlled burns risky. But even without fire, bison are furthering the VE Ranch's restoration. The animals rub their horns against saplings, stunting tree growth. They avoid broad-leaved plants, or forbs, which then thrive in grazed areas. Pronghorn antelopes eat the forbs bison leave behind. And bison wallows can hold rainwater for other wildlife.

In their quest to restore prairie habitat, the Cheyenne River Sioux are maintaining colonies of black-tailed prairie dogs, which cattle ranchers revile as a scourge that nibbles pasture to a nub and digs holes that hobble cattle. But more than 150 grassland species depend on prairie dog "towns." The burrowing owl makes its home in abandoned burrows. Rattlesnakes, swift fox, eagles and hawks prey on prairie dogs, as do black-footed ferrets, the plains' most endangered species. Working with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the tribe released dozens of ferrets onto its lands in 2000. Bison often gather around prairie dog towns. "Since the dogs constantly clip off grasses, there's always new growth, and it's very nutritious for the bison," Murray explains. Young bison grow faster when they graze in prairie dog towns.

Murray and I spy a herd of distant bison under a cornflower blue sky. A few pronghorn antelope stand motionless in the middle distance, poised to skitter away. Nearby, prairie dogs peer like sentries from atop their burrows, ready to sound an alarm as they watch a hawk wheel overhead.

Though the prairie is coming back on the VE Ranch, this venture remains a risky business. Prices for bison and bison meat have been unsteady. (Alone among South Dakota tribes, the Cheyenne River Sioux have forgone income from gambling.) The park won't earn much revenue from tourist admissions until a visitors' center is built, which will take years. And not everyone is pleased.

"On our reservation, it's not Democrats and Republicans, but traditionalists and progressives," says DuBray. Progressives, he says, loathe prairie dogs, believe livestock should be fenced, prefer cattle to bison, and are skeptical of establishing a tribal park to showcase prairie restoration. Traditionalists favor all of those things; DuBray says they are looking to the past for the shape of things to come.


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Comments (5)

I am thankful for the vision of the American Indians in trying to restore natural prarie lands. I am also thankful that this tribe are eschewing casions. I grant you that my using a computer to write this is not traditional but I do persist in using hand looms to make cloth. Traditional ways are full of centuries of thought and planning and it behooves all of us to try to incorporate some form of traditionalism into our daily lives.

Posted by Laurence Holtz on April 24,2009 | 06:21 AM

I was fortunate to interview Lakota elder Pete Catches about how it was that the Plains Indians had such reverence for the buffalo.

This is the story he told me.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33zB7JhKkpg

Posted by Deb on April 13,2009 | 05:35 PM

If you want to know more about the land and the buffalo operation, although from an anthropological perspective, see my book "Buffalo In. American Indians and Economic Development" (2008 U. Oklahoma Press).

Posted by Sebastian Braun on December 15,2008 | 02:15 PM

this is one of several on-line Smithsonian articles I use in my AP Environmental Science class. It is a great illustration of how natural systems (should) operate and also provides me with examples of nutrient cycling in a range-land environment. The real benefit of using Smithosnian is that I can link the articles into my class syllabus and give my students access to well written, factual articles that are usually focused on a specific topic. It provides a great opportunity to provide a broader perspective to the students and expose them to information that they can integrate back into classroom discussions. Thanks for continuing to keep the articles on-line and accessable.

Posted by Mike LeBaron on February 7,2008 | 03:43 PM

I didn't look at the date of this magazine and article recently given to me; but am curious as to success of the VE Ranch; and has Fred Dubray been able to establish it as a park open to tourists. I think it admirable when one can turn to something other than casinos for a venture; as that seems to be the primary goal for investors here in Mississippi. I keep thinking there has to be another way; and appreciate Mr. Dubray's vision -- I would think that the tribes could ask for some of the casino profits on other reservations to help build the visitor center. After all, don't they consider themselves brothers? I'm 83 years old and have always thought the Indians should have been given a more helping hand.

Posted by Jacqueline Harper on January 13,2008 | 05:59 PM



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