I live in Kansas, in college one of my professors owned a ranch and his son started a small B&B business on it. They did trail rides and such with guests through their land, and every time they had a guest from Japan (or sometimes southeast Asia) they would almost always cry at some point in the ride because they were just so overwhelmed by seeing that much open land. I guess the vastness of it can be a lot if you're not used to it. One retired businessman actually had a full blown panic attack and had to be rushed back to the house bc he hyperventilated so badly. My professor said after the guest finally calmed down he kept saying he felt like the land was going to swallow him and he'd never find his way back home.
Had similar experiences multiple times taking guests from Japan to my Dad’s B&B in western Wyoming. All the open space would make them get emotional. Gave me a better appreciation
It is really something for people from Asia to see so much openness the dense population and really the absence of large plains at all means they've never seen or experienced this
That fear he described is a very real and appropriate feeling. If you were to go back in time to when the prairies were untouched, be placed in the middle of it all and try to find shelter/food/rescue... Oh boy haha Kinda like the myth of the Wendigo
Here in the UK, where bison have been extinct for thousands of years, a few European Bison have been recently reintroduced to a nature preserve in SE England. Like the bison in Oklahoma, the British bison will help restore ecosystems' lost diversity. Being ecosystem engineers, they will shape the environment by invigorating natural processes to create bio-abundance. Apart from grazing grass, the bison will create openings in woodlands by knocking down small trees, interspersing the habitat with open, light-flooded patches. These patches of sunlight can ultimately allow a wider array of plants and animals to flourish. The reintroduction of bison is part of a wider project of rewilding in the UK, which plans to reintroduce more once-native species to protected areas. In the future, wolves and lynxes may once again roam free in the British landscape. A wonderful prospect!
This the most encouraging bit of news I've seen in years; I've been fighting discouragement, depression and anger with freeloading, lying politicians, and the constant abuse of God's gift of mother earth to this country. I love this, guys [have belonged to Nature Conservancy for years.].
I took a road trip to South Dakota last summer. It was the best trip of my life. In the badlands national park we saw a ton of wild bison roaming around. Me and my dad came close to one near the edge of a cliff. It was a crazy experience. You can never forget seeing a bison up close. They are beautiful creatures. After that we visited a Lakota tribe museum and I bought a handmade necklace from them with a bison on it, it preserves my memory of wild bison with it
I really hope we can bring back the plants and animals our ancestors knew. The European Bison have even been reintroduced in a few places of their former range. It's a real shame we lost many ice age species, like the Irish Elk or even Cave Lions.
Hopefully, in time, we can bring back some of those lost species--especially the woolly mammoth, which was one of the most important keystone species in arctic ecosystems. T-Rex? No. The ecosystem it lived in died out millions of years ago.
@@JamesBond-so1of Yes the republican doesn't deserver wildlife, They destroy it and don't respect it or the Earth, so why should they be allowed to benefit from it, to enjoy and see it if all they'll do will be exploiting and destroy it even more.
2,000, for reference there used to be millions of bison roaming the Great Plains. On the Flathead Reservation I used to see them on the horizon just grazing. My mom's tribe says they're very sacred. It'd be wonderous to see them roaming freely again.
I came up over a hill one day near Blanchard Oklahoma and saw a bunch of animals grazing and didn’t know what they were for a few minutes, it was Buffalo and it really was a strange sacred experience. I don’t know why. They looked totally different than in the movies.
530,000 bison in North America today from Alaska into Mexico, with about 15,000 being free-range. Huge herds in the State/National parks and preserves. Beautiful animals, but unpredictable and bad-tempered. Tourists need to keep a respectful distance but too often don't.
I'd like to see us, as a civilization, undo the destruction we've done worldwide and learn to use more efficient, smaller scale means of maintaining what we have to limit our impact going forwards.
@@ashurean I think America gets a little bit too much hate regarding this considering how much as a country we’ve actually done over time to restore our past mistakes compared to other countries, granted we still have A LOT to work on but we’re actually doing better than a lot of other countries of similar size
In Saskatchewan there a is National Park named Grassland NP. It is just north the Montana border with a similar herd of bison. In Alberta and the Northwest Territories there is Wood Buffalo National Park with Bison that have been a wild herd for hundreds of years. There is also the world's largest beaver dam in that park. It is almost a kilometre in length. These two keystone environmental species keep the area pristine. The park is so isolated it is virtually impossible to visit. In my experience, it is much easier to lead bison by sprinkling grain and grass behind a truck rather than trying to push them. My neighbour managed his herd of about 100 animals with one truck.
From the opening scene I thought we were going to find out that GMC dually p/u one ton trucks were saving the prairies. There were SEVEN of them??? AT LEAST???
Saw a vid about this type of thing in Africa. Massive herds of hard hoofed animals like zebra, wildebeest, antelope, all migrated across the land and yet the grass sprang up after their passing when the rains came. Keep the animals moving seems to be the answer
@Martin Gary You mean the family that refused to pay grazing fees on public land, lies about their history, and run under their own made-up rules with no history in American Law? That's when when they aren't putting latrines in native archeological sites? Real stand up folks.
@Martin Gary The Bundy family moved to Nevada from Utah in 1877. Nevada became a state in 1864. They lie about their history to claim false legitimacy. Not that it matters because their claims to "historical grazing rights" have been laughed out of court multiple times. Anywho, I'll catch you at the next county supremacy convention.
Had the pleasure to be very close to Bisons in Roosevelt National Park. It was an amazing experience justvto see those giant herds roaming through the prairie.
In Europe the center for Bison preservation is actually Poland where the animal has almost a sacred status. We orchestrate and manage the reintroduction across the entire continent. Because they were near extinction and they come from a very small gene pool we keep track of a DNA of every single European bison. They really are majestic creatures. In Europe, obviously we don't have the plains North America has, so the bison lives mostly in the forest. Fun fact - their horns are as wide as the widest part of their body so when strolling through a forest a bison will measure the distance between two trees with his horns to check whether he can pass through.
Well small mistake from that management was to have a fixation on separating the few remaining bison because one linneage had ancestry from an ecotype. To keep gene pool purity over gene pool health. That aggravated the inbreeding and lack of of genetic diversity of the bison. Some even advocate that we breed some american wood bison for genetic diversity and then breed out every individual with physical and behavioural trait of wood bison. They're both the same specie now. And european bison would greatly benefit from that.
Wake up farmers ranchers care about the farm lands and grasslands. A multy generational farms and ranches can not survive if the the land is not taken care of. The dust bowl of the 1930s was a result of weather and Government Polices. Today, big government and corporate ranching and farming are destroying our farm lands and pasture lands. It was the government policy to destroy the Buffalo herds and starve the Indians that destroyed the carbon sequestering prarie lands. Cows are slightly smaller versions of the Buffalo that should not be raised on polluting corporate feed lots. They should be raised on properly managed grass lands where carbon will be sequestered.
burn the junk off, disc it, spread hay from this place onto it for seed. the natural grass will take over like it did a million years ago. to give you an idea, i disked between some fall planted rows of turnips. my turnips bolted, but i left the native sunflowers (TX) and fall grass, a rye like grass that grows 2'. we had a wet spring, so the coastal bermuda grass came up in the disked areas but the rye type held its rows. if you disked some land one section a month here, in a few years the january section would have different stuff than the march section. hope this helps you visualize
An ecosystem is an interdependent system. Removing a key component and then seeing the ecosystem die shouldn’t have been a surprise. The hubris of man is boundless. Beautiful and informative video. Thank you.
NT: No hubris involved. The needs of providing food for a growing population are what is involved. Different situations, different needs and priorities. This buffalo herd will feed no one. shrug.
@@vladiiidracula235 No. Your 60% figure is unsupported. For decades and decades a 30% figure has been generally quoted. Now, if YOU want to improve that, start bruised fruit and veggies at the store. Pass up the perfect ones. Don't throw out leftovers that are starting to smell in your fridge. Buy only dented and bulged cans in the discount basket. Every little bit helps! Snort.
@@KB4QAA you realize that stores literally throw away "imperfect" fruits and veggies, right? They only provide the good looking produce, and throw out all the little, slightly damaged ones. I worked at a grocery store not too long ago, and they're incredibly wasteful(*cough, cough* Walmart *cough*), even with food that's perfectly fine. Dented cans, scratched produce, slightly old cereals, everything. It's all thrown away, no matter how they are. Hell, I used to help with stocking every once in a while, and after just dropping an unopened, undamaged plastic bag of rice, management would force you to throw it away. All the food wasted could easily feed dozens and dozens of people, probably hundreds daily, but they don't. It's not always the people individually who waste so much. I bet a large percentage of the time, it's grocery stores.
@@KB4QAA Let's stop reproducing. We were 1 billion, a century ago, now we are almost 8 billions. Are we really gonna destroy all our planet because we can't control our populations?
It's just tragic. To imagine these lands as they used to be; vast, naturally free areas, with huge herds of bison, bountiful biodiversity and wildlife, Native Americans living on and with the land, moving freely on it. And now the Native peoples have been driven out, imprisoned in tiny areas, their freedom restricted, the bison extirpated, ecosystems massively impoverished and damaged, and fences and cattle as far as the eye can see. It just breaks my heart. This kind of restoration, in conjunction with a great empowering of Native people, needs to happen on a massive scale.
@@megamanx466 yeah seriously even Europe had its own groups of natives and they wiped them out too it’s tragic looking through history and seeing a fuckton of colonialism
It is always so good to hear a positive ecological story for once. This is awesome. Side note, I learned from a video once, a Lakota woman said buffalo nibble the grass down to the ground, while cattle tear it out from the root.
that's what cattlemen used to say about cows vs sheep. It makes me wonder how much of that is intrinsic to the animal, and how much is from being held too long on one patch of ground.
Last year I had the chance to talk to a Canadian rancher. He told me that this was a growing part of ranching, mimicking the Bison as the video indicated. They do not harm the environment, they enrich it. A tall grass prairie is a carbon sink and an ecosystem that can only exist with large grazing ungulates. It can be replicated by effective management of cattle grazing.
Wrong. Your rancher uses cattle, not bison. Cattle did not evolve with the ecosystem, humans created them, thus why they are so much more damaging. Ranchers are manipulating the good news of native grazers by pretending it applies to cattle.
Very cool! An Indian Shaman lady once told me the bison is my "spirit animal." I was like, "Oh, OK." But now I think it's cool. She said I was one of the ones who patrolled around the edges to protect the herd.
I live in Barton county MO about 5 miles in from the KS state line. When Europeans came to this county it was almost completely prairie. The only trees were along NFork cr. Little north fork, horse creek and drywood creek. The soils on my farm were mostly formed under woodland vegetation cause I live along Little north fork. The soils are mapped in the Hector Bolivar complex. This is my family farm and when I moved back here after my folks passed away the back side of the place had been overgrown in trees and brush. I started cutting spraying and burning until I managed to get 8 acres of prairie restored. It is ssoooo beautiful. There's still a lot of work to be done. I've had health problems the last few years and can't work as hard. I pray my family continued my work. We run a few cows and during drought I will graze this area and it actually helps improve it when I lightly graze it. I love the prairie so much, I love to be in the middle of big grasslands and see the horizons. That is where I went right before a major surgery I had to do. Sat in the middle of a big prairie and meditate.
Lot of countries have lots of natural beauty. Personally i prefer the Adirondack Mountains of my home state, just something about forrested mountains is deeply peaceful and beautiful to me. It helps that NY set them aside as a massive state park with the interesting situation of having lots of towns within it. (Entire counties) But i definitely recommend visiting as many different regions/national parks as possible when visiting. My own family needs to do a road trip to all the national parks at some point.
My cousin lives on the family homestead in SW Wisconsin, right on the NE edge of the historical prairie. His father restored a few acres of the farm to prairie and my cousin continues it. There is a growing number of farmers who do this. Even if it is a small patch that may be a bit more difficult for the plow to get to or not necessary for grazing, that small restoration is a huge help for the soil, plant life, and especially insect life. No bison since it is so small but there are enough other smaller critters that can live and thrive there. He occasionally opens it for his Angus cattle to graze and does the controlled burn about every 5 years.
When I was little, we lived up in Buffalo County (N of LaCrosse). This is where the name came from (Wikipedia) - “Buffalo County, founded in 1853, is named for the Buffalo River, which flows from Strum to Alma, where it empties into the Mississippi River. The Buffalo River obtained its name from the French voyager Father Louis Hennepin, who named it Riviere des Boeufs in 1680.” Let’s bring the bison back in that hilly, wooded area!
Oh- I detected a bit of hubris towards the end... Ouch. I mean, yeah... humans do control a lot, but the ultimate controller of the Earth is Gaia. As in Gaia hypothesis. A combination of the biosphere, lithosphere, oceans, and atmosphere. We are but one tiny piece of a much grander puzzle. Sure, our piece is much bigger than most of the other living creatures~ But we are not the ultimate rulers of Earth.
Good news the european bison cousin to Tantanka. or Zubr as it's called to us Polish/Americans is also starting to slowly recover it's territory thanks to the efforts of the Polish and a few other countries.
I remember watching an old Ted talk about restoring grasslands, ecosystems, and preventing grassland desertification by managing cattle and goats in this type of way. If I find it again I’ll post the link here.
I grew up on the western Great Plains in the "short" grass prairies. I find short grass prairie far more beautiful even thought that makes me biased, of course. Regardless, the presence of Bison brings beauty to the Great Plains few people have experienced in its majesty!
About -15 years ago I visited the National Tall Grass Prairie Preserve near Council Grove Kansas. It is one of two remaining fragments of original prairie left. It is managed by the Nature Conservancy ( interesting backstory on this ) but government owned. At the time farmers could rent the privilege for grazing in the summer as there were no bison; however in 2009, nine bison were introduced which have become a herd of 100+ . I was there in early June, so the grass had not reached maximum height. I was also told that in the fall,the grass changes colors like leaves in the northeast. Hope I can get back to see that someday.
@@guarfield2551 horses eveolved in north America, crossed the bering land bridge, then died out in NA before finally being re introduced when they escaped from the spanish and other colonizers through verious means. (Like sinking ships, death of owners while riding, escaping farms, ect). I think we could technically say that horses circumnavigated the earth before us, but that requires some rule bending to permit generational migration in a single direction. Tldr, the evolved in NA but died out and were reintroduced as a feral species. Personally that doesn't make them a native species.
@@guarfield2551 Wild horses do not belong in america. The ecosystem they lived in disappeared more than 10,000 years ago. The predators that inhabited america at that time are gone as well. Mustangs are feral domestic horses, result of selective breeding for speed and strength. Currently they have no natural predators, breed out of control and strip vast areas of vegetation. Very similar to the farm cattle overgrazing mentioned in the video.
Farmers do not make a practice of destroying their land!! If they do so they go out of business. Good farming practice is taking care of the land and it’s what makes sustainability for their own families future. If farmers never tamed the land we would have a hungry world. 🌎
A few years ago I visited Salt lake in Utah. They have a preserve on an island in the middle of the lake with hundreds of bisons. Very nice to watch them roam freely.
That's a bit backwards. The flora evolved in response to the environment, it just so happens that the environment kept getting set on fire (possibly, mostly by humans). Anything that could not find a way to survive the fires; already died off.
@@LENZ5369 Wildfires are not mostly caused by humans historically (today, due to climate change, definitely more and greater ones). Wildfires have always been around, from lightning strikes mostly, and without intervention or from rainfall, they just... keep burning. Over millions of years, most plants have dealt with the existence of fires in one way or another. Trees deal with fire by keeping a lot of water in their central trunk, with hardy bark on the outside, allowing them to recover from their burning as long as they are sufficiently mature. Grasses recover by having strong root systems and tough seed pods, allowing them to germinate strongly after fire in rich, ashy soil. You just need to look at Australia for plants evolving to deal with fire. Most eucalypts even make highly flammable oils in their leaves that encourage fires, because a mature eucalypt will survive a fire, but other low brush wouldn't, increasing the odds of the tree and it's offspring increasing their niche.
@@TheCheese1988 Urgg...the native Americans used fire for hunting and to alter the area to support more of their prey. It was intentional 'environmental engineering'....I'm not even American and I knew that...
@@Gibbons3457 "indigenous hunters on the Great Plains once burned patches of grassland to stimulate new growth. This created a tempting feast for bison herds, which the hunters then used to lure the bison in for the kill. And that, archaeologists say, means that even relatively small, mobile groups of hunter-gatherers can have a bigger environmental impact than they’ve been given credit for." arstechnica.com/science/2018/07/native-americans-managed-the-prairie-for-better-bison-hunts/ "This is an important point. European settlers in the prairie did see fires coming. In fact, the prairie must have always gone up in flames on a regular basis, because without fire, there wouldn't even be a prairie here." www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/04/28/306227655/fire-setting-ranchers-have-burning-desire-to-save-tallgrass-prairie "Research findings of anthropologists, ecologists, soil scientists, and palynologists point to the cessation of Native American burning as one of the major factors connected with the decline of prairies throughout the West" www.jstor.org/stable/43442712?seq=1 "Some fires were caused by lightning strikes, while many more were started by Native Americans who burned to clear the land for agriculture, improve grazing and forage for game species, direct game migration and clear brush to ease travel or prevent hostile forces from approaching unnoticed." www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/united-states/minnesota/stories-in-minnesota/restoring-fire-to-native-grasslands/
When RU-vid is full of videos of “Walmart Idiots” and “Karen’s”, it’s so refreshing to come across a video that shows thoughtful, intelligent Americans doing wonderful work to help save the planet. It’s a beautifully presented video with a calm narrator giving us the facts. Keep up the good work. We need videos like this to give us hope when everything around seem to be all doom and gloom.
We need many more bison around the U.S. There are numerous places in Nevada that could sustain a herd, especially Elko County about 15 miles East of Wildhorse reservoir. There exists a large, secluded area there, void of humans that could and should sustain a buffalo herd.
@@sendmorerum8241 Before the White Man arrived, the Injuns were the only people eating prairie Buffalo. It was part of their native diet. What is your problem with that?
@@tooleyheadbang4239 Talking about them as if they were starving and lost, because "Omg, no bisons, what do we eat now?!" They are normal people who can adapt. Also, "injuns"?
I've started a bucket list. On this list I've put seeing a herd of wild horses galloping across the land. Now I've added seeing a herd of galloping bison. Until I see these creatures for myself I won't feel like I've seen freedom of life.
For a short while, I lived with two wildlife experts that observe bison in Montana. The love Pam & Craig have for the American bison is limitless. And yet, so many farmers dislike the animal.
I don’t know any ranchers who dislike Buffalo, just dislike how destructive they can be. All the ranchers I know would trade their cattle in for bison if they were as docile as cattle
@@skylerspringsteen5730 well, they sure taste better! I simply cannot understand why ranchers continue to insist on raising beef cattle. This, coming from a cattle rancher’s daughter.
Love this, three thoughts: 1) why don't we employ Native Americans to manage the bison and prairie? (If they want to, has anyone asked them?) 2) Are there areas, like around the Mississippi and the Delta, where employing this method of land management would be most effective and help control flooding and other disasters? I would be interested in hearing more about where and how this method can be introduced to the greatest benefit to the land, the animals, and people. 3) Would it be wise to be eating more bison as opposed to cow? Would that bring more people to this form of land management?
Hi Heather! Grrreat inquiries! Katie Hawk here at The Nature Conservancy of Oklahoma. There are a number of conservation efforts going on that are in alignment with what you just referenced, however I can only speak for the ones I know of through The Nature Conservancy's work. 1 - Yes, many native communities in the U.S. are doing this! For example, the Osage Nation in Oklahoma which is where this Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is located has a 42k acre ranch which they are managing with bison. Here's more about that specific operation: osagenews.org/en/article/2018/11/06/osage-nation-receives-second-shipment-bison-bluestem-ranch/ 2 - TNC has a number of projects around the Mississippi and the Delta. Here is a link to learn more about our projects specific to that area: www.nature.org/en-us/about-us/where-we-work/priority-landscapes/mississippi-river-basin/mississippi-river-flood-solutions/ 3 - Prairie restoration can also be achieved utilizing cattle in conjunction with a sustainable grazing management plan (i.e. low stocking rate, rotational grazing, prescribed burns, etc.). There are a number of programs that aim to generate more use of these types of practices. One of those primary entities being the NRCS. Whether it's bison or cattle, the important thing is having sustainable grazing practices in place. Hope this info is of help! Thanks for posing these questions and tuning in to the video. If you'd like to learn more about our work specific to this project visit: nature.org/okbison
@@natureok Thank you! I appreciate the information and the work being done by you and the other agencies/organizations. And thank you for taking the time to respond with further information and insights. I hope more videos about these efforts will be made!
There are advocates here in Illinois and Iowa border about turning a old bridge and making it a place for bison to cross over the Mississippi River as a way to help the environment and to boost tourism by creating a new national park it sounds cool. Save the Bisons and the Manatees
It's also been shown to work in other parts of the world as well with people using cattle, sheep, or even goats to graze and do the same thing and areas that were experiencing desertification are coming back lush and green. Even dried up river beds starting flowing again. So it's not just in the US that it can work but all around the world in certain areas if done right.
, if I can see just one migration of the big Bison from Oklahoma to upper Canada in My life, Youall would make the legacy of man Good for the Earth, God bless.
Anyone else play Oregon Trail and waste all their ammo on the bison stampede and only carry out 200 out of 20K lbs of meat 😂😂😂😂 great teaching moment there
Lol... I was just thinking that this video makes me want to go play 'Oregon Trail' again. Did you know the game has a tabletop card version, a free Java version(Google it to find the webpage), and a miniature videogame version that looks like an old Apple II? 😁
@@megamanx466 no I didn’t, I played the windows 98 version. Never actually beat the game as a kid, I got as far as the pass too late and died during the winter. Maybe I’ll try the online version and redeem my young self 😂😂
Another thing we lost was millions of acres of flood plains. Thanks to the corp of engineers the mighty mississippi is contained within huge deltas to dump all that new top soil into the gulf of mexico. Without petroleum fertilizers much of our fertile land would be barren.
Learn from Greg Judy, he doesn't compact the soil with many trucks, he just opens up a new pasture and the cows just follow him and willingly go there.
Four million years ago, North American grasslands were home to numerous species of megafauna. From giant ground sloths to mammoths, horses, and giant camels. There was even another species of bison that grew larger than their modern relatives. Large dire wolves, short faced bears, smilodon, and American lions roamed alongside them. These ecosystems were so diverse, they rivaled Africa in terms of megafaunal diversity. Europe used to be much the same way, but sadly, the last remaining ancient megafaunal ecosystem resides in Africa. At least some of these animals, like American and European bison still survive, serving as a reminder of our not so ancient past.
One thing the global conservation industry is accused of to this day is leaving out the last bit. Aside from being a basic human rights issue native peoples around the world have generally being living in their area so long that their way of life actually sustains the ecosystem but organisations like WWF are known to frequently drive native people from their homes when creating national parks. And then there's the US National Parks that a lot of people forget were created partly by driving native Americans off their land.
@@greomgh I've known Natives as friends before and therefore been on Native Nations' Land. Not all Natives are respectful to their environment anymore, HOWEVER I think it'd be great if perhaps a preference were given to Natives to manage, propagate, maintain, and otherwise nearly restore Nation Park land back to it's pristine state before 500 years ago... that would be a beautiful thing. Traditional Shinto culture(not necessarily just about shrines) could perhaps be a decent inspirational point to that effect. Natives in the National Park areas could be a new designation of land holders and subcontract management perhaps to the Native American peoples. 🤔😅
@@megamanx466 Yes, very much agree with prioritisation on land management and conservation posts being given to native peoples, as well as support to develop their own environmental education and conservation programmes, run by Natives, using traditional knowledge, integrated with Western scientific approaches, ideally delivered in Native languages, of which there are hundreds, and most in very frightening declines.
@@dreamer2260 I also love linguistics and if I had a "inherent" language of my ancestors other than English, then I'd be enthused to learn it and use it. Alas I don't so I just occasionally research a little of all them. 😅
Grazing + Fire is the recipe described here, and it'd work for cattle too. On most Federal permits it's not allowed, or if it is, it's in very limited experiments. For most permits on USFS & BLM, the grazing is permitted, but controlled burns aren't allowed due to inter-agency bickering and skepticism of private cattle owners. The resulting pasture predominates in species unpalatable to the grazers that would not have been favored in the post-fire environment. Flowering thistles take root on graze-only pasture, for example, since grazers avoid them, and faster growing perennial grasses would out-grow them after a burn. "Last man off the mountain, burn the meadows" is an old cattleman's expression that describes a practice outlawed by modern fire suppression policy.
Ranching bison is very difficult. They are unpredictable and dangerous, and you can’t just let them roam free across the countryside as if it’s the 1800s. The fences and corrals needed to contain and handle bison must be built much taller and stronger than for cattle. I’m not entirely against ranching bison but it is somewhat counter productive.
most cities seem to have enacted uniform ordinances against weeds over 1 foot. so you cannot make your yard into tall grass prairie. *those wheeled fossil fuel trucks are bad for soil compaction and the climate. with horses, we might make this into a sustainable meat source.
Thank you for that. I wrote a comment addressing it as well. They look like spoiled boys zooming around for fun. And since when do bison need medical checkups, if they evolved here for so many years?
I’m a huge advocate for soil science and learning about the biology and root networks inside the soil. I know a lot is happening beneath my feet and wish I could do more to help it. If only more public parks saw the benefit of rewilding with succession and native planting and becoming a nature reserve and not just a regular park, with fire regulation of course, goat style is better than burning the thicket of shrubs for public parks. And maintaining a little walking trail in the public park, planting native oaks and keep the big non native tree’s because their roots still hold value and will help the small tree’s grow taller before cutting them all down.
"Europeans came with their guns and ploughs", don't blame it on us!!!!!!! America was founded in 1776, pre 1800 there was a estimated 60 million bison, but by 1900 there was a estimated 300 left, the American government in order to sabotage the central resource of some American Indian Nations, systematically slaughtered the bison in their millions, not to mention the professional hunters. The picture in the video was taken in 1892, America was a independent country by then. But to be honest, the majority of Americans in this period where basically Europeans, only because you change the name of a country, that doesn't change your ancestors and DNA.
All you need to do to expand Bison herds is put Bison steak on menus and if it tastes better than angus beef, then many ranchers would raise more Bison and they expand the herds. Maybe 5 Bison get used for steak and 100 get bid real high at an auction so it becomes a trend in ranching. Herd just grows and grows as more rangeland gets designated for Bison. 2000 can grow to 40,000 if the demand for the animals is there.
And the original inhabitants almost disseminated too and pushed to the sides and violated until the present day. Story of any other nation outside Europe!!!
actually the story of all nations inside of europe once upon a time too.... it's a white thing. And we see how well that's been working out lately... lol
THANKS FOR PUTTING BISON BACK WHERE THEY BELONG...DOING WHAT GOD/ CREATION/ MOTHER EARTH INTENDED BISON TO DO...KEEP THE PRAIRIE INTACT, & FULL FILLING THE SYMBIOTIC CYCLE OF LIFE!! WELL DONE...I THINK YOU ALL ARE HELPING THE EARTH SURVIVE...US!! THANKS AGAIN FOR YOUR EFFORTS TO UNDO ONE OF OUR MISTAKES...♡☆♡☆♡☆♡
A very interesting program for me as someone who is fascinated by restoration of habitats. What impressive creatures bison are, and I think maybe it's our duty to help restore this ecosystem as some sort of justice for the damage we have done. There is a rewilding process taking place at an estate in southern england called Knepp in Sussex. They are using an old breed of longhorn cattle to manage habitat and create biodiversity, albeit on a smaller scale. Are there conservation organisations in the US who are buying farmland with a view to expand the amount of prairie? Best Wishes from the UK.
