The Lewis & Clark journals tell an impressive story about the productivity of the prairie. When they traveled along the Missouri River through what are now the Dakotas, they lived well on a high protein diet of deer, antelope, elk and buffalo. They didn’t feel hunger until they entered the mountains of Montana. Such is the bounty of the prairie, an ecosystem surpassed only by salt marshes. But today, only remnants of the prairie that originally greeted the first wave of homesteaders remain.
In his epic, “Grasslands,” Richard Manning provided the clearest account of what has changed on the Dakota prairies since that historic journey. Northern Europeans homesteaded here, and little by little, they broke the prairie, creating a mosaic of acres of row crops interspersed with occasional strips of grass. Today, tractors that cost several hundred thousand dollars have replaced teams of oxen, and they do the job more quickly and efficiently. Each time they work, more prairie vanishes. Ironically, some say, it’s only grazing land, implying it has little worth because it is not in production in the manner desired by the gigantic agri-business industry. The tall grass prairies of Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota are gone, our only memory of them living in small parcels such as the Sheyenne National Grasslands in southeastern North Dakota. The legacy we have left for our children is the clearcutting of the prairie.
But in doing so, those teams of oxen and the tractors and plows that followed them, have succeeded in growing only row crops, while creating a whole new set of problems. The crops do a poor job of holding topsoil in place, and much of it ends up in our rivers, wetlands and lakes. And it no longer provides a home for a whole host of wildlife species that evolved with grass, at least in the numbers recorded by Lewis & Clark.
There have been temporary reprieves, notably the Soil Bank program of the 60’s, and most recently the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). Each restored millions of acres of grass, but even with the CRP program and the grass it gave us, the acreage that has gone under the plow, has exceeded the CRP gains. For that, we can thank the constructors of the Farm Bill; who have done more to represent the giant conglomerates than they have Dakota farmers.
And even now, grasslands, which have provided us with the best pheasant and duck hunting of recent history, face another threat. The US Senate Ag Committee recently voted 11-9 along party lines to drastically trim CRP funding while seriously crippling two other key conservation components of the Farm Bill; the Conservation Security Program (CSP), and the wildly popular EQUIP program. The measure now goes to the US House Ag Committee, where, we are told; House Republicans favor more cuts.
Again, we look at history for some answers.
Prior to the last election, President Bush traveled to southern Minnesota where in an audience comprised of conservation leaders, he promised more CRP. Sadly, members of his own party ignored his promise. Sportsmen who unanimously voted for Republicans in that election did so mostly on the issue of gun control, not realizing that many of these same elected officials would later vote to strip the Dakotas of the grass that has provided great hunting in recent years. While Sen. Conrad was on the right side of this issue, his North Dakota colleague, Sen. Dorgan, was undercutting sportsmen on another, but we’ll get to that momentarily.
“If we lose CRP, we will lose our pheasants and it will negatively impact duck nesting success,” said John Cooper, Secretary of the SD Game, Fish & Parks Department. That’s important because pheasant hunting is a $100 million industry in South Dakota. But denuding the prairie also hurts grouse and every specie of ground nesting birds.
Unfortunately, Secretary Cooper might even be understating the damage of the loss of CRP. Less grass also means reduced water quality, and that leads to damaged fisheries.
I recently perused a North Dakota website, and was astonished to see duck hunters, who should be at the forefront of conservation, expressing glee over the potential loss of CRP, all because a few years of poor duck hunting might reduce the number of Minnesotans who flock to North Dakota each fall to shoot a few ducks. Forgive them, for when they view the world through such a thin straw, they know not what they do.
We can be thankful we have some prairie, known as the National Grasslands that has the capability of providing a bounty of resources. But the truth is as long as our public lands are managed first for cows and sheep, they will never reach their wildlife potential. Unfortunately, only one tract of public land, the Fort Pierre National Grasslands in central South Dakota, is managed with a wildlife priority, and there, visiting and local grouse hunters provide more economic bounce to the local economies than does grazing.
However, I am less than excited when I learn Sen. Byron Dorgan is calling for hearings to review grazing policies on the National Grasslands. Such action places the Senator in the position of playing politics with our heritage. He is working closely with an Interior official named Mark Rey, best known for lobbying on behalf of the timber industry, and Rey has made a career of favoring extractive public land users over the public. I predict any such hearings will be stacked against management that calls for careful grazing practices. Worse, though most Americans will not even know of the existence of such hearings dealing with their lands, the probable result is more damage (and lower wildlife populations) to America’s public lands. By now, hunters should have learned to recognize politicians who come home every few years, don camo and try to tell us they are one of us.
But this is the problem. Most hunters don’t see the connections between well-managed grasslands and wildlife. However, for that matter, neither do most anglers have a grasp on what land stripped of its grass does to their fishing.
To understand what we have here, try this exercise.
Lay out a map of the United States and start at North Platte, NE, drawing a line west to the Colorado and Wyoming borders, then north into the southern portions of the Prairie Provinces, then east to Winnipeg, south through the Coteau Hills of South Dakota and the Sand hills of Nebraska, ending back at North Platte. Within that rough square, you will find the finest bird hunting on the continent, the most important duck breeding areas, and some of the best fishing. It is not a coincidence that great outdoor recreation takes place within a lightly populated area. Nor is it a coincidence that within this area, we have much of what remains of America’s Great Plains.
Making a living in the Dakotas has always been a balancing act, and I know the pain of seeing your children leave what we’ve known. I have four who have done so, and it’s doubtful any will return to their homeland. To survive, we accept lower wages, or take a risk and create a job that pays better. But not all people are born with an entrepaneurial spirit, and the only other way to live at a high economic level is to inherit it.
It’s fine to look east to Minnesota and Iowa and say, you duck hunters wouldn’t come here if you’d just taken care of your grass and wetlands, but the truth is, those were economic decisions driven more by land values than a desire to ruin things. Even so, some are doing their best to turn the Dakotas into a Minnesota-Iowa look-alike in the name of economic progress. The rest, including hunters and anglers, tend to look away. However, before you do, you owe it to your kids to drive across both areas to see what we’ll look like if we continue on our way. Here’s the connection…if drainage and prairie plowing continues in the Dakotas, your kids will become those dreaded non-residents when they go to the southern prairie provinces to hunt and fish.
We have choices, and history tells us what they are.
Fight for a wildlife-priority management system on all public lands. The Fort Pierre National Grasslands provides ample proof that your kids will be the benefactors of your efforts. On the second day of the season, our party saw more than 300 grouse, most of them prairie chickens, and we covered just two sections of grassland. Hunting pressure was heavy for nearly a month, and why not? That’s where the birds were. Bruce “Wickerbill” Crist put it in perspective when he recalled hunting the Ft Pierre grasslands back in the early 80’s, “when you could throw a golf ball anywhere and still be able to see it. You can’t do that with the tall grass we have out there now.”
We also need to oppose wetland drainage and sod busting, practices that benefit no one except for the drainage contractor and the individual landowner. When a wetland drains, the water flows downhill, carrying with it a heavy load of nitrates, which end up in your fisheries. Sod busting robs the prairie of more grass, and for ranchers the price of hay goes up. For hunters it means less nesting cover with the obvious connection being fewer ducks and ground nesting game birds. Fishermen see lower water quality, and fishing deteriorates.
Finally, give some thought to throwing some of the rascals out. Politicians who call for haying or mowing CRP at the first hint of wet or dry periods are playing political games. They could care less about fishing and hunting because they know you won’t do anything about it.
There’s one other proposal, this one in South Dakota, which deserves the support of sportsmen. The biggest problem facing hunting in America is access to good hunting land. I think of the days I have spent in the Cave Hills in northwestern South Dakota. I’d arrive for deer hunting a day or two ahead of time to do some serious scouting. I’d glass everywhere, especially during low light periods, to determine when deer were moving and where they were going. All that extra effort would go out the window when on opening morning, an assemblage of 4wd trucks and ATV’s would be crawling all of the roads, ostensibly “deer hunting.” The deer wise up quick, desert their regular haunts and go who knows where?
It taught me a valuable lesson, one that Dan Nelson alluded to in a recent column when he talked about hunting those areas far from the roads where few hunters would bother to go. The best hunting, and sometimes fishing, is always farthest from the nearest road. Hunting has a proud heritage but I fear we risk tarnishing it when we insist on being able to drive to our quarry. Dan and I aren’t the only ones saying it. Trout Unlimited did a major study a year or so ago, that showed wilderness areas consistently produced the best trophy game animals and that fishing always seemed better the farther one travels from a road.
A few years back, Mike Dombeck, then Chief of the US Forest Service, took a giant step toward creating quality hunting and fishing on Forest Service lands when he instituted a roadless policy. He had other reasons. The Forest Service didn’t have enough money to even maintain the existing network of roads, much less fund new ones. In addition, strong evidence exists that many of the roads were built at public expense to aid private companies interested in logging the backcountry.
We now have a chance to right some wrongs.
There is no grassland wilderness in America, but we have a chance to change that. President Bush has proposed the creation of the 71,381-acre Cheyenne River River Valley Grassland, which makes up just 0.15 percent of South Dakota…and this land is already in public ownership. It includes cedar ridges, incredible vistas, rugged badlands country and excellent big game herds. The beauty is haunting, and to see it is to say, “Let’s save this…one of the last great places.” Some say this isn’t the time to create wilderness. I say it is the best time because it is still wild country.
But its fate depends on South Dakota’s congressional representatives; Senator’s Tim Johnson and John Thune, and Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth. To date, Johnson and Herseth have stepped forward to say we’ll embrace this. Thune has not, and the reason is what it’s always been…politics and elections. The usual opposition of public land grazers and a few county commissioners, who combine to make noise beyond their numbers, always strikes fear into the hearts of elected officials. Perhaps that’s why Teddy Roosevelt is my favorite President. He was a fearless leader, one who stood for conservation. Sadly, both of our political parties have degenerated into those who preface their votes by sticking a wet finger into the wind.
One of the major problems is the usual knee-jerk reaction from the ranching community, even though this proposal allows them to continue to ranch on public land in the manner in which they’ve always done. Nor have they figured out how to counter the fact that the three largest ranches in the proposed wilderness area; ranches owned by Dan O'Brien, Alvine Zeitlow and Sam Hurst, favor the wilderness designation.
What it will give hunters is a fairly large area where they can recreate America’s hunting tradition in the manner in which their forefathers did. And they’ll enjoy superb hunting, because they won’t see the parade of 4wd trucks and ATV’s that interfere with a quality hunt.
Some have already complained about how it will affect elderly hunters who can no longer walk the way they once did. To which I reply, I’m now 65 years old, and it isn’t likely I’ll be able to take advantage of this opportunity.
But this isn’t about me or others my age and older.
It’s about the chance to right some of the things we’ve done wrong. It’s about reading history and realizing how far we’ve strayed from the correct paths. It’s about the legacy we leave our children.
