The Role Of Overgrazing In The Great Plains

The millions of American Bison thriving in the Great Plains were exterminated in under two decades. Five main factors contributed to this massive eradication. These factors are: technology, economics, demographics, changing boundaries and the role of government. Each of these led to the slaughter of the bison in the Great Plains and each work together in a very simple order. The most important factor that led to the extermination of the bison on the Great Plains was the role of government. It was the factor that preceded all of the other factors. If the government had not gotten the territory or enforced laws in the land to combat the killing of the bison, there would not have been such a depopulation of the bison. Each of the factors led directly and indirectly to the extermination of the American Bison which all started with the government’s role - both having land for the citizens to settle and kill bison and the government’s indifference to the killing of the

Living on the Great Plains was not an easy task to accomplish for homesteaders who want to settle there. You had to worry about the extreme temperature and weather, the lack of water, and the lack of building materials. For me, the most difficult thing to deal with for homesteaders on the Great Plains was the lack of water.

There are many major events that happened in the Great Plains. One major event is that in Spain returned Missouri River to France. The Louisiana purchase transferred from France to United States. This event happened during the year 1801. Furthermore, This is one of the major historical event that made the Plains a popular place.

The environmental issue in the Interior Plains is lumber/timber harvesting. Forest workers are cutting down trees to turn tree parts into lumber and timber.

Have you ever been in a place of green with forests and animals everywhere? Well, where some of the Native Americans lived, there were such things. Native American tribes such as the Crow lived in the Great Plains. The Crow tribe of the Great Plains were nomadic and followed the buffalo migrations which provided their food. This tribe spent a good part of the year living in camps that could easily be dismantled and moved to follow the buffalo migrations. Other tribes of the plains were more sedentary. These tribes lived in permanent villages year round.

One of the basic arguments for the restoration of bison back onto the prairies involves the economic benefits. Five of the nations ten poorest counties are located on Indian reservations (Manning, WWW). With decreasing beef prices and increasing land values, the margin of profit continues to narrow. A majority of the cattle industry that once was present in the midwest have sought greener pastures east in states such as Florida, Tennessee, and Kentucky (Popper, D). Another possible opponent, the Forest Service also no longer seems to focus on maximizing their timber yields in the midwest, but rather in northern California, Oregon, and Washington (Popper, D). Bison offer a plausible solution due to their low cost (about half as much as cattle). Bison are also better adapted to the environment and produce the same amount of meat which is higher in protein, lower in cholesterol and fat, compared to cattle. In terms of land usage, bison graze and then move while cattle remain where they are thus damaging the soil. Bison also eat a greater variety of grasses, something which lacks with cattle. A proposal made by conservationists suggest that, "Ranchers can easily switch to buffalo and sell hunting rights, meats, hides, horns, and skulls at healthy prices (Popper DE, 1994)." Care of bison is also simple because unlike cattle, bison can withstand plains' winters. Land value also increases when it offers game

1 The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has stepped in to provide restorative practices upon 500,000 acres of heavily degraded public grasslands. This land is suffering from severe soil erosion as well as degradation due to overgrazing. The suppression of natural fires has caused shrubs and invasive weeds to encroach upon the grasslands. A full scale assessment will take place on this land before restoration efforts begin. The first thing that would need to be assessed is the soil, for it is eroding and holding little nutrient value. Samples would be taken of this soil from various parts of the grasslands including the eroded gullies. Each soil sample would be taken from at least 1 foot below the surface, to test for carbon richness below the topsoil. These would then be tested for texture, density, water retention, and chemical composition. Typically, powerful, healthy soil will contain amounts of both Nitrogen and Phosphorous, which are essential nutrients in sustainable plant growth. These samples would also be tested for any build-up of salts, something known as soil salinization. Unhealthy, salinized soil is created over years of over-hydrating and deep plowing. Excess water will suffocate root systems of once-healthy crops, and salinized soils will reduce crop output up to 20% (Withgott &Brennan, 2011). The next assessment would be in the shrubs and invasive weed species on the land. Knowing the volume and location of these plants gives way to a better understanding of

I care deeply about the planet Earth, the home humans originate from, so it pains me to watch “modern” society devastate natural life across the board. I feel personally connected to the issue of how we use our land. Having lived in the Lee County area since birth, I have noticed just in our own little part of the world how much “development” can change things. There used to be so much more plant life: trees, grasses, flowers and a myriad of other greenery. What was once considered “empty” lots, by some, have been adapted to suit human desires be it additional roads, restaurants, shopping malls, and a continuing spread of “chain” corporate industries. Beyond human structures, huge amounts of land also are cultivated for industrial farming

The documentary, Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s by Donald Worster paints a surreal mosaic of life on the Great Plains during the dirty thirties. He does this by illustrating various causations and correlations as well as specific rural towns in the Dust Bowl that exhibit them, and public institutions whose objective was the restoration of the Great Plains to a fertile state as before the coming of the Capitalistic agriculturist that wreaked havoc on the ecosystem. Worster then uses the above as a fulcrum to his main argument, “…there was in fact a close link between the Dust Bowl and the Depression – that the same society produced them both, and for similar reasons. (p.5) He further goes on to explain that the crisis in the Great Plains was primarily caused by man and not nature (Worster, p.13). This was primarily due to the fact that man had never truly lived in equilibrium with the land on the high plains; they exploited the prairies to produce beyond their capacity, thus causing severe environmental breakdown. The fault was not all the agriculturists of course, part of the blame, as Worster points out, is rooted culturally in our capitalistic, industrialized values and ideals. One spokesman stated, “We are producing a product to sell, and that profitability of that product depended on pushing the land as far as it could go.” (Worster, p.57) To fully illuminate the problems at hand, he uses Cimarron County in the Oklahoma panhandle, and Haskell County,

On the Plains the dust could get so thick you couldn’t see one foot in front of you. These clouds could darken the skies for days, making it very hard to escape the dust completely. This was just the start to the storms. Every year the number of dust storms increased, making it almost impossible to farm in those areas. By the end of the 1930’s blew more than 75% of the topsoil was blowy away, and land deprivation varied extensively.

“Much of the Roaring '20s was a continual cycle of debt for the American farmer, stemming from falling farm prices and the need to purchase expensive machinery.” (“The Farming Problem”). Tractors had just graced the U.S. markets which boosted the production of goods greatly. Most would think this was good, but it was more of a problem, the farmers would overproduce goods without enough people to buy them all which made the goods almost worthless. The farmers had to borrow money to pay for their tractors, assuming they would be able to pay back the debt with the money that the tractor made, but when they found they could not it set them up having no money and a debt with no way to pay it back. “When the stock market crashed in 1929 sending prices in an even more downward cycle, many American farmers wondered if their hardscrabble lives would ever improve.” (“The Farming Problem”). The stock market crashing made the stocks the farmers though they would be able to get some money from virtually worthless.

The Dust Bowl was a tragedy in America in which millions of acres of semi-arid plains were reduced to nothing but a cloud of dust. Due largely to massive amounts of dry farming and overgrazing of cattle the grasslands slowly withered away. With the drought of 1930 the grasslands blew in the wind, covering houses and forced almost four hundred thousand people out of their homes.(“:The Dust Bowl”LOC). Nineteen states at the heart of the United States were part of the massive dust bowl.

In 1862 the Homestead Act was passed. The government was offering 160 acres in the plains, for very little money. Many farmers in the east could not afford land to farm in their area so they took the deal. This deal meant that if the farmers could successfully farm their land in the plains for 5 years, that farmer would own it. Many couldn’t pass it up and moved their families to the Great Plains area. They built homes and began their new lives. Some lives in wooden shack like houses while others lived in what were called dugouts. These were literally homes dug into the land. Within 50 years approximately 300,000 people populated the Great Plains.

Iowa has changed rapidly from the vast prairie lands it used to be, but many of these lands are being slowly reclaimed and restored to their once natural splendor. The most rapid change in Iowa’s landscape occurred during the Industrial Revolution, and when large scale farming became a possibility. This has left serious consequences on Iowa’s landscape with erosion, but is being combatted by more productive farming practices. Iowa as the “middle lands” is continuously changing, for the better or the worse, alongside the people who call it

As the twentieth century approached, America was experiencing a time of considerable expansion. All eyes were looking for ways to make the United States a larger, more powerful, and more efficient country. Because of this wave in American society, there was no movement given more devotion than the settling of the West. The range-cattle industry in its various aspects, and in its importance to the United States and particularly to the Great Plains, has been a subject of focus to Americans since its origin in the mid 1800's. This industry was rendered possible by such factors as vast sections of fertile land, the rise of heavy industry involving the great demand for beef, and