Should part of Montana revert to prairie as its people leave or die?
The American Prairie Foundation has a plan
to create a reserve the size of Connecticut in this stretch of Montana—an expansive savannah that looks like parts of Africa and is capable of supporting many thousands of bison. The core of this proposed range is an area twice the size of Seattle where the APF's starter herd now resides. The foundation's strategy is to buy up local ranches in order to gain control over associated grazing leases on vast expanses of public land, with the goal of returning a wide area of Montana to something resembling its pre-European state at an estimated cost of $450 million.Preposterous, you say? It seems romantic but looks entirely plausible when you consider that many counties in the Great Plains have seen population declines between 1950 and 2007, with 69 of those counties losing over half their (human) population.
Go read.
Posted by Linkmeister at April 4, 2011 12:08 PM | TrackBackMy mom is from South Dakota, and this describes the area where she grew up. I remember hearing that agricultural settlement of the Great Plains was a 100 year experiment that failed.
Posted by: Juli Thompson at April 7, 2011 05:05 PM