Transcript
Speaker: Hi, it's Kate. Welcome back to the Taproot Project.
Speaker: I started the planning for this episode with what I thought was a pretty basic question. What is up with prairies? I've only been in the Midwest a couple of years, but I know from books and movies and folklore that prairies are here, or they were here and now they're not.
Speaker: So two years into my life in Minnesota, and I'm still not sure if I've even seen one. On road trips with born and raised Midwestern friends, I regularly would point out the window and ask, is that a prairie?
Speaker: And i learned that even these friends, after a lifetime in the Midwest, have very little experience with prairies. So prairies have taken on almost a mythical quality to me, which is a wild way to feel about an ecosystem that is hundreds of thousands of years old and the foundation of the food system in much of the Midwest.
Speaker: So here's what I know. The prairie was once the largest ecosystem in North America, stretching from Mexico to Canada and the Rockies to Indiana.
Speaker: It is one of the most diverse and complicated ecosystems in the world, second only to the Brazilian rainforests. And part of the complex web of life that defines prairies are plants with very deep root systems, which break down soil and minerals. And unfortunately, this high-quality soil is exactly why so much of prairie land has been converted to farmland.
Speaker: Another key part of the prairie web of life is their most iconic resident.
Speaker: The buffalo.
Speaker: Everywhere I went with my prairie question, i was led back to Buffalo. Well, I think the bison built this land that we got. The reason why we have these beautiful lush pasture or like agricultural areas is because the bison and animals like those grazed on for millions of years to build that soil up.
Speaker: That's David Wise. He and his wife, Petra, run Dancing Crane Ranch on the Fond du Lac Reservation outside of Duluth, Minnesota. Their ranch is focused on education, ecological restoration, and sharing traditional cultural practices.
Speaker: And since 2022, big part of that effort has been centered on their buffalo herd. You'll hear buffalo and bison used interchangeably in this episode. Just know that we are all talking about the same animal.
Speaker: Wow, there's the bison. I've never actually... You can see the baby ones. Oh yeah. There's five baby ones now. I visited David and Petra in the spring to hear more about how and why they became buffalo ranchers and caretakers.
Speaker: So yeah, we're seeing a lot more wildlife come back around here with I think all the bison when they shed this time of year. There's a lot of that stuff out there and I think the birds like it. I've seen a lot more rough grouse around in the pastures I noticed. Wondering how you've seen the land change since you've you've been here.
Speaker: Well, I think it's getting a lot more fertility from you don't having the animals back out there. It was kind of it's kind of just being in hate. it was There was a guy, a local guy that was haying it. but you're taking a lot of the energy and the biomass off when you hay it and when you have animals back on it, then you're you know you're you're building your healthy soils back up. You're building up the whole food web.
Speaker: David makes an important point. The landscape of the Midwest, and actually most of the present-day United States, is inseparable from the buffalo. Buffalo herds originally roamed from Pennsylvania to the Rockies, from Mexico to the Northwest Territories. And wherever they went, they built the land.
Speaker: One of the great things that I try to to educate people as much as possible is that bison also just have a very long history in Minnesota. the Bison have been in Minnesota um for thousands and thousands of years. I don't think many people think of bison in Minnesota.
Speaker: Mary Mallinger is a wildlife conservationist who works on the Bison Conservation Project at the Minnesota Zoo, which means she coordinates with state agencies, tribal nations, and nonprofits across the state to manage Minnesota's buffalo population.
Speaker: Similar to the way prairie ecosystems have been reduced to pockets, Minnesota's buffalo population exists in the remaining pockets of land where they can still roam and graze.
Speaker: The Minnesota Zoo and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources manage this population together, stewarding them as one herd, even though they're spread out on different bits of land throughout the state.
Speaker: So bison have ranged throughout pretty much the entire state of Minnesota historically. And they they're they're a ah ah very adaptable species. So typically we think of bison as being in prairie and on plains, which is true. That's where, you know, they they um often and maybe primarily are. But they're actually, they are, they can be found and they so they still are today and historically would be found in even... Some of the more wooded areas of like northern Minnesota as well.
Speaker: Also, historically, a ah ah large portion of Minnesota was tallgrass prairie. like Beautiful, abundant, very species diverse, you know but biodiverse tallgrass prairie.
Speaker: And bison would have roamed on that as well. So um unfortunately, we've lost the majority of our prairie in Minnesota. We have one, maybe 2% of that prairie left. So very, very small portion. and And when you say lost, that's because of urban development, because of agricultural development. What's exactly? Yep. Yep, to primarily to agriculture and to to development, exactly, human development. So those those two things have caused, um have have resulted in Minnesota losing almost all of its prairie. So that' there's not a lot of prairie habitat left. And that's why earlier when I was mentioning, we don't have
Speaker: large chunks of land really where bison can roam in the, you know, thousands, like in some of the Western states we do, which is really wonderful and amazing. But that doesn't mean we need to like give up on having bison here. That doesn't mean we can't have a home for bison. We can't reintroduce them to land that is available, which we are actively doing. And so, yeah, it's, it's um something I'm very passionate about is kind of trying to remind people that bison and Minnesota are historically and and currently, but very connected. um And yeah, they definitely had a place and still do have a place in in the state.
Speaker: Yeah. what um What does it mean for bison to be a keystone species in in Minnesota? Like what? Yeah, I'm looking for some like specifics about how they were just like really a part of the land here.
Speaker: Bison are, as you said, they are definitely a keystone species, which means they they have an outsized role on the landscape that they're a part of. They really shape the the landscape. So if we take prairie, for example, and and bison,
Speaker: Prairie, and and this is you know kind of in a um in a sort of traditional sense, obviously in some in some instances nowadays, its a it looks a little different because of you know habitat loss and things like that. But when you think about a prairie ecosystem, it really has to have bison to fully function to be its kind of best self, so to speak. So bison shaped the landscape in some really interesting ways. They're obviously huge animals. So when they, um, they graze, they graze pretty much all day long on grass and, and other plants as well, but primarily grass. And so what's one of the interesting things about it though, is that the way they, the way that they browse or the way they graze and, um,
Speaker: other aspects of their presence on the landscape actually leads to an increase in plant species biodiversity, not a decrease. So you might think like, oh, they're just going to eat everything. So if we got rid of bison, you know, more plants will grow. but because they're kind of selective in what they they eat and how they eat, it actually will increase the number of flowering plants, of forbs, of even other grasses. So you get an increase in diversity. Because of that, you get an increase in insects and birds and many other species that then come because there's a rich variety of plants that are present
Speaker: Obviously, their their poop, their bodies when they die, that those are all sources of nutrients on the on the landscape. They also have what's called a wallowing behavior, where they basically create these almost like pits, these like divots in the landscape, where they love to roll in the dust, take a dust bath, essentially. Yeah.
Speaker: And that has a few different functions for them and benefits to them, but it also really does shape the landscape and they will come back to those wallows and they use the same ones year after year. And they can even create like little pools. So then when it rains, you get these almost ephemeral ponds and those can be great breeding grounds for a lot of insects and amphibians, obviously water sources for a lot of other you know birds and small mammals, things like that. um And they're also seed dispersers. So they have these massive, you know, coats, they're big. And as they're walking throughout the landscape, seeds from plants are sticking to them. And so then they're also dispersing that around the landscape as they're moving. So they really have ah an incredible impact on the landscape. And because of that, they are a keystone species, as you said.
Speaker: Mary and David are both part of an extensive network of people, organizations, and agencies trying to restore the buffalo population in the U.S. It's estimated that there were between 30 60 million buffalo in North America pre-colonization.
Speaker: As settlers moved westward, pressure on these animals increased as their grazing lands were fenced in, cattle diseases spread, and more people hunted them. Then, in the 19th century, the U.S. government sponsored a Buffalo Massacre.
Speaker: In 1873, Secretary of Interior Columbus Delano made the following remarks. Quote, the civilization of the Indian is impossible while the buffalo remains upon the plains.
Speaker: I would not seriously regret the total disappearance of the buffalo from our western prairies in its effect upon the Indians, regarding it as a means of hastening their sense of dependence upon the products of the soil and their own labors.
Speaker: the U.S. Army supplied free ammunition to buffalo hunters. Trained passengers were encouraged to shoot buffalo from the newly completed railways crossing the country. And by 1884, it's estimated the buffalo population was under 1,000 animals, as low even as
Speaker: Today, there are around 500,000 buffalo in the U.S., including conservation herds and commercial herds. Even with this population increase, buffalo numbers are still just 1% of the pre-settler population.
Speaker: The amount of remaining prairie land is, similarly, just 1% of what once existed in North America. But the return of the buffalo was because of ranchers and indigenous people. um There's stories of family, you know, this family that had returned to Buffalo, hid some of the buffalo in the northern in Montana and in that that Canadian area that were able to keep some of those buffalo before they were all killed. say A similar story is in the south, too, with the good night herd, where those ranchers saw, hey, if we don't
Speaker: save some of these buffalo, there' there's not not going to be any left, these beautiful, beautiful animals. Dawn Sherman is the executive director of the Tonka Fund, a nonprofit that helps return buffalo to their homelands and indigenous communities. The Tonka Fund provides financial support and technical assistance to the ranchers who want to care for buffalo.
Speaker: Today, the Tonka Fund Rancher Partners manage over 2,500 buffalo on over 100,000 acres of land at ranches across the country. Some ranchers harvest the buffalo and sell commercially, and some keep herds for ceremonial or cultural purposes. Whatever the use, Tonka Fund emphasizes the reciprocal relationship between buffalo and the land, where the caretakers take care of the buffalo, and the buffalo contribute to soil health and prairie restoration.
Speaker: ah for the Lakota people, it is part of our creation story. So Buffalo were first, and then when we emerged from the Black Hills, ah we were told to follow the Buffalo and they would provide everything that we needed from, you know, housing to food, to tools, to toys, um everything would be provided for us. Also, they would teach us not just for for providing food, but they also taught us what we should and should not eat. You know, what medicines, what plants, what took care of us, um not just Lakota, but a lot of our tribes
Speaker: and stewards that are part of our network at Tonka Fund um are all of Buffalo culture. So there's similar stories across the nations. There is that connection that it's a sister nation. Those are you know are our grandmas and grandpas out there, our sisters, our aunts, our uncles. um So it's always we try to come from Tonka is to respect and honor that relationship fully. And that's you know always been part of our mission. um So we do have an array and and ranchers that have 40 acres, like I said, so small to you know large so and everything in between. Some are just cultural herds where they're just being harvested for ceremony and certain things within the community.
Speaker: And then the ones, um there's some animals that they're born and they die on that property. And, you know, and that's honoring that animal and making, you know, they're not going into, that's the way they want to run their animals, which is fine because that doesn't go to waste. Like we said, it's just a transfer of energy, but they honor like an old bull, right? He's done his work and everything, and they're going to let him go and be an old old man and, you know, do his thing until he until he passes on, the which is really honoring that. But also it's it's that her development is what it would be called in the colonial world. um But it's those grandmas and grandpas that are teaching the younger ones.
Speaker: You know, this is your home. This is how you act. This is where you eat. This is where you drink water. This is right. the They're, you know, the females and the males are teaching the herd, and basically herd development, you know what it what it means to be part of this family unit. And um so a lot of times in some of those commercials, they're not keeping those older older animals because right it's those perfect two to three-year-olds with the perfect marbling and what the consumer wants to eat and see on the plate and in the grocery stores. right So some of those animals never get an opportunity to be older or to you know learn there because they're being cycled so fast.
Speaker: Buffalo restoration efforts are supported by some groundbreaking partnerships between state agencies, national parks, tribal nations, and nonprofits. In the last few years, the Tonka Fund and the Minnesota Zoo and Department of Natural Resources formed a partnership that allows the zoo to donate animals to Tonka Fund ranchers, which helps Mary manage herd size and genetic diversity, and helps Don reach more ranchers.
Speaker: I got just a glimpse into what actually goes into restoring buffalo populations and returning them to native communities. And my main takeaway is that for anyone that is doing the work of helping buffalo thrive in this world, there is an immense amount of problem solving and advocacy.
Speaker: Because buffalo were actively discounted from social structures as settlers spread across the land, and now the thousands of acres buffalo need to roam are crisscrossed with roads and fences and property lines.
Speaker: In the agricultural world, Buffalo are considered an immutable species. This means that because they are native to this land, they don't receive certain medicines and they're excluded from being treated with hormones that might actually alter their characteristics, which also means they need to be kept separate from other cattle herds that might spread diseases to them. And so they are harvested and sold as livestock, but treated differently.
Speaker: Here's just an example of how caring for buffalo means rewriting social structures. In this case, literally. When the Minnesota Zoo originally arranged to transfer some of the herd to the Tonka Fund, everyone was on board, including the Minnesota governor.
Speaker: But the plan initially fell through because there was no legal way for state property, the Buffalo, to be transferred to a non-profit. The transfer was put on pause until the state statutes could be updated.
Speaker: Finally, in 2024, Buffalo were transported from Minneapolis State Park to Dancing Crane Ranch, where they joined David's Herd. Dancing Crane Ranch is now one of the 28 ranchers supported by the Tonka Fund and the only Tonka rancher partner in Minnesota. I sat down with David and the house he's rebuilt on his great aunt's land.
Speaker: so what's the what's the motivation that brought you through all that hard work? What was your vision for this place? think it was just my tie to the land, you know, the land. i always...
Speaker: loved this area i mean we um you know we would come we would be invited over here for us they cut old um roadie called it a steam bath or a sauna you know and that was every week we'd come over and and my mom would bring some kind of food or whatever and roadie would be cooking and and uh so i just have all those old memories of the place and then all the camaraderie of hunting and gathering wild rice and picking the blueberries and so just a lot of good memories and wanting this land to be healthy again. And how how did the bison fit into that? Like how are they a part of the history of this this land in the future I guess? Well you know this was the overlap area for bison so the wood the wood bison
Speaker: would have been just north of here to this area. And then the Plains Bison, if you look at historical maps from archeological records and stuff, they would have come right to here. And then the moose, they would have been a little bit more east up the North Shore, but over here, a lot of different animals would have overlapped right here. Because we're on the transition between the boreal forest and the northern hardwoods. And if you go a little bit to the west of here, you're into the oak savanna.
Speaker: And right here where we're at, we're in the Lake Superior watershed. But if you go about three miles west of here, you're in the Mississippi watershed. then you can follow that.
Speaker: So this area is a very... Big confluence. Yep, and it's a spiritual area for us because... This was the last stopping place on our journey where the food grows on the water.
Speaker: So the wild rice. So when we got here, this was the area, this was ah this was ah the confluence of the highways back then, if you would. How's the community at large responded to having bison back in the area? oh man, everyone just loves it.
Speaker: the you know they call me the bison guy kind of or whatever now. So we, lot of people just showing up. Yeah. We got people showing up and that's fine too. Um, we kind of like it like to know it was coming, but it's fine.
Speaker: Um, but yeah, we, we got, youth groups come out for the horse back riding and learn about, learn about, um, you know, taking care of the horses and, and learn about bison ecology. And then,
Speaker: Then we have like just general people that are customers or whatever and they want to come out. And so it's it's really cool. I love the excitement that that people see when they see them out there and they're grazing on their natural environment. And right now we don't harvest a lot from our herd. We're just kind of building the herd and we're trying to make sure that we have good genetic diversity.
Speaker: and then we do harvest a few of the bulls every year and then we're part of a co-op so part of our food product that that we supply to the community in different places we send some of our animals to the co-op but then we can also purchase animals from the co-op to to supply the meat because you know we we're not just about the meat we're about making sure that the herd is sustainable and that we have good genetics in the future yeah we're not about so much about the high productivity right here on this ranch we want it to be more of an educational ranch here too so yeah you've got a a baby right one year old uh she's only 10 weeks oh my god 10 weeks a super super tiny baby yeah yeah i heard her um in the background i was talking to patreon on the phone and I was thinking since then about how your baby is never going to know a land that didn't have bison on it and just like how beautiful that kind of story of restoration is too. Yeah. Our other kids were really little when we first got them, you know, and there's a picture of me and Liza and she's standing on the gate looking at them and now she's already like way taller and bigger and but she remembers, you know when they first came and stuff. so yeah it's it's kind of cool and that's really what i want to do is like keep the land and the family and keep it healthy and you know like maybe it could spawn some more interest in having like a sustainable agriculture type thing you know because i think with our um
Speaker: economy and especially like with i really noticed it when we had the big pandemic going on and that's kind of like right when our business was starting and it's like man local stuff is really important because those big box stores were drying up for food and nobody could get a lot of different supplies so it's nice to have options and the local stuff is so much um smarter in my mind because you don't have all the transport, you know what you're eating, you know, a lot of those things are seasonal too. And that's the way Ojibwe people used to eat was we ate seasonally different things, you know, different plants, different animals were more available.
Speaker: Um, sugar, for instance, we didn't eat sugar year round. We only eat a lot, probably too much in the spring when we're tapping the maple trees, but, um, you know, and all those things,
Speaker: makes sense because that's the animals are too, really. They eat seasonally, you know. And I think that the more we can grow our own foods, the more food sovereign we're all going to be, whether we're natives or not or whatever. I mean, everyone needs to be able to eat and work together and keep our planet healthier. You know, I think it just makes sense overall.
Speaker: Yeah, i'm wondering if you have... advice for folks who might be like really interested in you know pairing their agriculture with ecosystem restoration? Yeah, I think just starting out doing something and bringing awareness, you know if you can, and and getting getting the community involved.
Speaker: like even with wild racing and stuff like that some people are like well we don't you know we want this to be our rice and but i always like to educate people because the more people we have that have an interest in it the more they're going to want to protect it and and keep it there i mean if you never tried real wild rice and all you rate was patty rice you might not be that excited about saving it but if you eat real fresh hand parched wild rice then you know like how cool it is and how important it is you know people don't realize but you can actually make um probably not a big budget you know like lifestyle off it but you could supplement your income plus you could um maybe like um
Speaker: bringing awareness to things and there probably could be little businesses made off of different things one of the things we're doing right now because we want to use the entire bison is we're trying to make some different products from the tallow that's a lot of times the weight you know doesn't all get used because a lot of people like to eat a real lean product in their burger or whatever so there's extra tallow a lot of that the the animal eats all those healing plants And a lot of those good things, just like if an animal eats bad things, bad things can build up in their fat and whatever. Well, the good things build up.
Speaker: if they're eating the native plants, and those things are excellent for healing your skin and things like that. Right, it's like a pre-made sow. Yep, yep. and ah And my brother would always say, even when we're cutting deer and stuff, and you get that on your hands, it makes your hands so nice and soft. And, you know, the eating that gets gets on your lips, your lips don't get chapped, you know. It's like, and people are so scared of fat, you know, like, oh, everything's got to be low fat. But actually, those good fats are amazing for you. People are finding out, you know. Yeah.
Speaker: And especially if the animal's eating all those native plants. So, yeah. We're bringing back like those sedges and stuff. Those are medicine plants. So, I mean, those those animals are getting all those medicines and then you're eating the animal or getting using the fat. So, i mean, it's a part of the cycle. yeah And someday i would like to see the bison roam wild again around here.
Speaker: Yeah. But i I think that might be a little white ways off. But maybe we can convince people eventually that they're not that scary and you just need to watch out for them. You can't go up and try to take pictures too close, but you can see them from a distance, you know?
Speaker: Yeah, i think you're really planting some seeds here. Yeah, I would love to see them back on the landscape again, along with elk and all the different animals. This past summer, new fencing was put in on Dancing Crane Ranch.
Speaker: Petra sent me a video of the buffalo returning to their pastures. I'll play the audio from that in a second. In the video, Petra and her family sit in a truck. The camera is pointed out the window towards a wide path through the trees. About 20 or 30 bison come thundering down the path, past the truck, and spread out across the new pasture.
Speaker: Hi girls! Oh
Speaker: my gosh! We did it! They're in! New home! New home, yay!
Speaker: There's birdies right here! Freedom! Freedom! Freedom! Look at them go!
Speaker: I'm pretty new to the to the Midwest. I've been in Minnesota for less than two years now. And um welcome. Thank you. I still don't know if I've actually been in a prairie in like a pocket of a prairie. oh um yeah. Could you could you describe a prairie?
Speaker: I'd love to.
Speaker: So you can still find prairie in Minnesota, which is wonderful. And I highly encourage all listeners to go stand in some prairie because it really is more than I think initially meets the eye.
Speaker: So it's going to be dominated, as I mentioned, by grasses. There are going to be very few, if any, trees. So very open, ah lots of sky visible.
Speaker: Some of the prairie that I've into for my work is just like breathtaking and it's kind of the rolling hills when the wind sweeps over it you just you you literally see the wind move through as it as it kind of waves the grasses around you know when they change color as they're waving in the sun it's really spectacular
Speaker: in ah In a healthy prairie, there would be a variety of flowering plants as well. So again, not just grasses, but there's going to be quite a few flowers that are going to be just all different colors. I mean, some of my favorites, you know, you've got just like beautiful yellows and purples and reds.
Speaker: Sometimes it can be very dry. Sometimes it's pretty lush and green, actually.
Speaker: The tall grass prairie of North America, the the grasses actually can get really tall, like upwards of six feet. And so you can, you know, get get kind of lost in it. And bison could actually even sometimes kind of like hide in it. It would get so tall and you would maybe just see the grasses moving in the distance as they wandered through.
Speaker: um And there's, you know, also a variety of wildlife, really. It's very alive. And that's one of the things that I love about it. The the sounds. Oh, I mean, the insect sounds are just so beautiful and peaceful. And the birds, you know, you get quite a variety of birds and they are not silent by any means.
Speaker: As always, immense appreciation to our guests for their time with me and for their work in the world. Thank you to David and Petra, thank you to Mary, and thank you Dawn and the rest of the TonkaFun team for coordinating with me.
Speaker: You can learn about all of their work at the links in the show notes. The Taproot Project is hosted and produced by me, Kate Cowie Haskell. The music in this episode is Chasin' It by Jason Shaw, Ghost Solos by Lucas Gonza, I Want to Destroy Something Beautiful by Josh Woodward, and Upbeat Ukulele by YuraScoop.
Speaker: All from the Free Music Archive. Bison and Prairie Sounds came from freesound.org. The Taproot Project is an initiative of the Midwest Transition to Organic Partnership Program, a project funded by the USDA National Organic Program to support transitioning and organic producers with mentorship and technical assistance and to grow the greater organic community.
Speaker: Learn more at organictransition.org.
