Buffalo Commons

With the English term Buffalo Commons (Eng. about buffalo commons ) a project in the Great Plains ( Great Plains Dt. ) in the middle of the United States of America ( USA) is called. In response to the massive decline in population since the 1960s, and increasingly from the late 20th century, the demographic development and the condition of time before the influx of white settlers in the second half of the 19th century should be restored. Those are after the big, devastating dust storms of the 1930s (see Dust Bowl ) in large part to more fertile coastal areas to the west of the Rocky Mountains moved on.

The plan was designed by the land-use planner Frank Popper, a professor at Rutgers University and Princeton University, and his wife, the geographer Deborah Popper. His goal is that once again reach large areas of land in public ownership, on which can attract large herds of buffalo on the vast plains of the prairie again. They lived here before the near-extinction by the white settlers by the hundreds of thousands in an environment characterized by extensive use juxtaposition with the Plains Indians, also based here. By marketing of buffalo meat and especially in tourism revenues should be created a permanent economic basis for the decreasing population of the Great Plains.

Situation

The trend towards industrial agriculture with large fields and pasture land, the lack of attractiveness of rural areas for younger and well-educated generations and the consequent demographic trends have led to large parts of Kansas and Nebraska, North and South Dakota and adjacent parts of Oklahoma and Montana, as well as parts of Texas and Colorado are now settled lower than they were in 1893. In that year the population of the United States was adopted according to the frontier thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner concluded. Alone in Kansas about 6000 settlements were completely abandoned. The development is accelerating further.

Moreover, the entire agriculture in the Great Plains is based on the use of pre-historic groundwater from the Ogallala Aquifer. Inventories have been exploited in the decades of intensive farming far beyond a sustainable level; the drying up of the water supply is imminent in some regions directly. The large-scale irrigated with today's methods can not be maintained for long.

The concept

The concept of the Buffalo Commons provides that the large-scale agriculture in the Great Plains is abandoned in favor of pasture use by largely wild bison. The plan assumes that in addition to the expected new tourism and the marketing of the meat of wild buffalo can bring back the people of the region a safer future. He already leads to descendants of the native Indians here earlier return to to deal with the animal with which they are inextricably linked by their mythology.

In addition, the Community land use with the buffalo breeding partnership would bring the couple Popper 's view, too large environmental benefits to the revival of agricultural by the ( private ) (over) use ( wheat ) partially deserted to the desertification of land with it. Thus, buffalo feed on the domestic here prairie grass, wear it in his re -proliferation and may in the very dry zone water much better use than the imported cattle and forth herein; in addition, they are also much more resistant to cold.

After initially pronounced skepticism, especially by critics of state ( land use ) planning, the idea among politicians, farmers, ranchers and the aforementioned Indians is gradually becoming a more and more popular; Along with demographic and sociological there are already economic and environmental success and a significant increase in the buffalo population.

A variant of it, on the border between Kansas and Colorado all areas in private ownership in the two counties Greeley and Wallace County would be (both Kansas) to buy, what would be required by market value slightly less than one billion dollars. There, a new national park to be created. The two counties are the least populated in Kansas and agriculture there is suffering particularly badly from the depletion of ground water supplies. In the environment of the park villages could specialize in tourist services. To finance income from the Land and Water Conservation Fund would serve that come from user fees for the exploitation of natural resources on public land and are settled by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. This variant was applied in late 2009 by the newspaper Kansas Star and represented to the public.