Grazing, grassland and history


When Louis and Clark traveled up the Missouri River, they described stopping for hours to wait for a large herd of buffalo to cross the river. It is hard for me to imagine a herd of this magnitude. When Julia and I move our 600 goats around, we get many incredulous looks. Most people have never seen such a large herd of goats, and possibly not a herd of any ruminant (cow, sheep, bison ect.) so big and concentrated. These two observations give me perspective on the effect of humans on the land between the Mississippi and the Rockies in the last 200 years. Perhaps no difference is more fundamental than the way that we relate to our grasslands and the animals that graze them.

Large herds have a rejuvenating effect on grasslands. With electric fences and dogs, we simulate the effect of a large herd. Hooves of the animals push grass seeds into the soil and trample old brittle grass. They graze off the top part of the grass, turning the mature leaves into fertilizer for the root systems. In arid, brittle environments, these manure pies serve as biological refuges for microorganisms that cannot survive in the dry soil. Grasses depend on the disturbance of grazing animals to stimulate new growth, and to protect and feed them.

Grazing animals, however, are not conscious of the important role they play in these ecosystems. They do this by simply protecting themselves, and sating their voracious appetites. Without predators to keep the herds together and moving, our grasslands would not be the same

When Lewis and Clark traveled along the Missouri they found mostly healthy grasslands. They found, besides millions of bison; wolves, coyotes, and Native Americans that all depended upon the health of the grass and the ruminant animals. White settlement changed these patterns drastically. First, hunters killed buffalo for their tongues and winter hides, leaving the whole carcass to rot. Then, urged by a new technology in leather tanning that gave value to hairless summer hides, the killing was wholesale, virtually eliminating the bison in a period of less than 15 years, ending in 1883. In the next 20 to 30 years cattle ranchers moved up from Texas. In the areas with especially rich, deep topsoil, the plows sunk into the ground to grow wheat. Small pox and genocide eliminated most of the native tribes, and the wolves were successfully hunted out of existence (the state of Montana had a $15 dollar a head bounty on wolves in 1915). In 100 years these plains changed from a grassland ecosystem with millions of bison, Indians, and predatory animals, to small groups of Eurasian cattle, barbed wire and cowboys.

With our small herd we can imitate the effect of millions of bison that came before them: our herding dogs are our wolves. Bailey and Kodi know how to keep the herd bunched together. They provide the steering for our mass of goat hooves and mouths.

Lewis and Clark would be shocked if they tried to travel up the Missouri today. They would both be pleased with the modern improvements that we have made, like the ease of attaining food, clean water, and the effortlessness of transport. But Lewis, the trained naturalist who surveyed the grasslands and recorded and named many of the species found in the northern plains, would be sad to see our losses in diversity. He would probably lament the acres of land degraded by erosion, overgrazing and invasive weeds. The land, if one knows where to look, tells the story of our success and failure. Fortunately, history is not static, and we do not have to live with the results of our failures. We can, with good grazing management and knowledge of the mechanisms of our grassland, bring back some of the ecological vibrance of the past.