We won! US! We did it! And now?

 Our email inbox right now is full of messages that say things like "Biden has won. Now it's up to us." "Together, we fought the good fight, ..." At our house, and many others, Thanksgiving this year will be far more hopeful than the past four have been. And yet, for almost half of US, there will be more than the usual grieving and grumbling. We have many challenges facing us and learning, or relearning, tolerance, civility and boundaries are high on that list.

until recently, a commercial herd lived not too far away

Photo by J. Harrington

It's fitting that, to borrow a phrase, the worst of "our long national nightmare is over" during Native American Heritage month, specifically on National Bison Day. No bull (sorry, couldn't resist). Until this morning we didn't even know there is a National Bison Day. Here are some links that provide more information about it and its significance and bison herds in Minnesota.

• Significance of Tataŋka (Bison)
• National Bison Day
• National Bison Association
• Belwin Conservancy Bison Herd
• Minnesota State Parks with Bison

May we be equally successful restoring democracy and bison to their original range. It seems the least we can do to celebrate today.

Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve

Anne Boyer

 

The coven of bison
          brought here as wishes
                    bore 80 million calves
                              in a year

                              This was the epicenter of the nursery
                              of the palace of the monument
                              of the battlefield
of the resurrection of the biome—

170 million acres aggressively
                                      self-returfing &
            a new state slogan:

                        AD ASTRA
                        THE TALL GRASS
                                 PER ASPERA
                                 ITS REVENGE

The public-private partnership¹
          was lesser prairie chickens & very large cats.

Even the sky could hear the wolves returning.
The grasshoppers were strategists. 
The Koch brothers melted plows.

 

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¹ After decades of contention between park advocates and local agribusiness activists, in 1996 a unique public-private partnership was formed to create a tallgrass prairie preserve in Kansas on one of the few undisturbed patches of tallgrass prairie left in North America. In less than a decade, the park fell onto hard times as the private wing of the mostly private public-private partnership could no longer financially sustain it. The preserve looked like it was going to have to be sold. Then the Nature Conservatory, led by a former managing director of Goldman Sachs and assisted by a $1 million dollar gift from Wichita's Koch brothers, took over. They introduced thirteen bison to the Kansas prairie to unexpected results. The bison quickly returned to their pre-Columbian population. After a controlled burn of the entire great plains in the spring of 2019, the tall grass prairie ecosystem of the U.S. restored itself from tap roots that had lain dormant at the earth’s core since John Deere invented the steel plow in 1838. The interior U.S. radically depopulated as prairie dog colonies caused irreparable damage to the infrastructure of its cities and towns.

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