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Rosebud Sioux endorse massive effort to bring back buffalo
ROSEBUD, S.D. (AP) - A plan to reintroduce buffalo to the Great Plains on a
mammoth tract of protected land got an endorsement Saturday from the Rosebud
Sioux Tribe in south central South Dakota. It's the first American Indian tribe
to embrace the Million Acre Project.
The Great Plains Restoration Council, a Denver-based nonprofit advocacy group,
is developing the project as a land base for an even larger "Buffalo Commons."
Frank and Deborah Popper, two New Jersey university professors, coined the
phrase Buffalo Commons in 1987 in a scholarly article looking at population
decline on the Plains. The Poppers suggested the federal government acquire
abandoned lands for a national buffalo preserve.
Frank Popper is now on the board of the restoration council. It wants to create
the Buffalo Commons using a more incremental approach that would include both
private and public lands.
"Since the early 1990s, it's been clear that this was probably going to happen
on a private, local and state level," Popper said Saturday.
The council is raising money to buy land, but it also will work with private
landowners, Indian tribes and local governments to patch together the
contiguous 1 million acres.
The council's seven-member board met Saturday afternoon in Rosebud to map out
the first steps toward a Buffalo Commons.
"The tribe's endorsement is very important," Popper said.
Lakota language teacher Rosalie Little Thunder of Rapid City - also a council
board member and member of the tribe - said there is strong grass-roots support
for the plan at Rosebud.
Chuck Bull Bear, director of game, fish and parks for the tribe, said the
project fits with the tribe's plan to expand its own buffalo herd. Bull Bear
said the tribe would provide technical support.
Ethnic studies professor Edward Valandra, another member of the Rosebud tribe
who lives in St. Paul, Minn., also is a member of the board. Valandra wrote his
master's thesis on buffalo restoration. He called the plan a "spiritual and
cultural restoration."
"It goes to the question of land ethics," he said.
The council now must decide where to begin building the preserve. Demographer
Dan Fosha of Colorado Springs, Colo., also a board member, said the group was
focusing on the Dakotas. He and other board members spent the past nine days
scouting locations based on demographic maps Fosha created.
He highlighted four factors:
In general, the council is looking for untilled land as close as possible to
natural short-grass prairie. According to the Poppers' original thesis, the
Buffalo Commons would be a band of "frontier" land from Mexico to Canada. There
would be no fences except around settled areas.
Others groups and individuals also have looked to the Dakotas for buffalo
projects in recent years. Media mogul Ted Turner of Atlanta owns about 172,000
acres in Bennett, Jones and Stanley counties, where he plans to raise buffalo.
The Poppers' thesis was controversial in the early 1990s. Some thought the
professors wanted to remove ranchers and farmers from the Great Plains.
Restoration council Executive Director Jarid Manos of Denver said the Million
Acre Project could not be built by force.
We don't have that power," he said. "This is about people working together."
On the Net:
Great Plains Restoration Council: www.gprc.org.
© Copyright 2001 Karen Chapman All rights reserved Not to be copied, reprinted, reproduced without permission |
