How would a natural resource science develop if it weren\u00b9t able to experience and observe the natural environment? \u00a0Not very well! \u00a0This science is called Range Management. \u00a0This discipline was formed during the 1930\u00b9s, with the advent of the Dust Bowl. \u00a0The odd thing is that naturally functioning grassland and savannah ecosystems stopped occurring in the 1870\u00b9s on the Great Plains and 1820\u00b9s in California. \u00a0Those are the decades when massive migrations of ungulates and associated predators were eliminated almost to extinction.\u00a0 Ungulates are animals with multiple stomachs, and capable of breaking down the lignin in grasses.\u00a0 Lignin provides plants with structure and is difficult to breakdown in arid climates.\u00a0 Examples of ungulates that can breakdown lignin are American Bison, Tule Elk, Big Horn Sheep, wildebeest, antelope, domestic cattle, and domestic sheep.<\/p>\n
The American Bison of the Great Plains and the Tule Elk of the California central region were annihilated and replaced with cattle and sheep that generally remained on pastures in smaller numbers for extended times. \u00a0Without the predators, there was no need for these new ungulates to move away from water. \u00a0The advent of barb wire exacerbated this situation.\u00a0 After numerous decades of this kind of animal behavior, range science emerged. \u00a0What did they study? \u00a0The grasslands of the United States, without the migratory animals!<\/p>\n
What were the behaviors of the animals of the pre-ungulate annihilation days? \u00a0John Audubon, in his diary, writes that the buffalo along the Missouri River were so numerous that he considered it unsafe for a man to ride through the herd on horseback. \u00a0He says that the riparian areas were devastated with the impact of the huge herds, with their hair caught in the brush along the riverbanks. \u00a0Today, we wonder why the bosque of the Rio Grande is collapsing ecologically. \u00a0The bosque is a Spanish term for the wooded area around streams and rivers of the Southwestern United States.\u00a0 The collapsing ecologically is visible in the lack of cottonwood regeneration, so there are old trees and no young trees to replace them.\u00a0 There are significant dying grass plants underneath the cottonwood woodlands and vast areas of bare ground.\u00a0 One has to ask themselves why are the cottonwoods not regenerating, grasses dying, and areas of bare ground increasing when water is merely two to three feet below the surface, year-round.\u00a0 Yes, the annual flooding has stopped.\u00a0 So has the massive migrations of ungulates like antelope, often believed to be in excess of herds of the tens of thousands. \u00a0The Russians in the 1700\u00b9s wrote of the hills along central California literally being black with the shimmering herds of Tule elk and deer. \u00a0Other explorers in the 1800\u00b9s described the Central Valley of California as having as many numbers of ungulates as the plains of Africa.<\/p>\n
The dilemma for modern American range science is that they never had the luxury to study a healthy functioning grass and savannah ecosystem.\u00a0 Consequently, all there was to study was the impacts of overgrazing caused by ungulates that didn\u00b9t migrate and the effect of rest on lands that pre-historically were subject to massive disturbance, as John Audubon points out. \u00a0Unfortunately, other reductionist disciplines such as botany and wildlife biology also didn\u00b9t learn about the impact of migratory ungulates on the grass and savannah lands of the North American continent, so they also misunderstand the needs for a healthy ecosystem. \u00a0Instead of learning from the wildebeest and pack hunting predators of Africa, our sciences have tried to impose the current scientific paradigms to the African continent.\u00a0 The results have been devastating to the landscape and the people.<\/p>\n
When will we learn about history, and pre-history, as a species? \u00a0The saying goes that if you don\u00b9t learn from history, you will repeat it.\u00a0 Recommendations continually get made from universities, natural resource government agencies, and environmental communities that lead to the desertification of continents of the earth. \u00a0This impact is having massive devastating effects on the ecology and financial resources of communities and nations. \u00a0This impact continues to harm people, resulting in poverty, hunger, human migrations away from the rural land to the cities. \u00a0Species are disappearing, water tables are dropping, and our sacred soil is washing and blowing away.<\/p>\n
Is it possible for modern science to think about how plants, microbes, soils, and animals really developed together for thousands of years? \u00a0Is it possible for us to save ourselves by managing these lands the way they evolved so that we can bring water back into the soil, stabilize species diversity, and restore carbon as humus in the soil? \u00a0How can we learn this lesson, fast, in time to help save our species?\u00a0 As Aldo Leopold once noted, the same tools that are destroying our lands, can be the same tools to heal our earth.\u00a0 The role of the migratory ungulate can become the salvation of two-thirds of the earth\u2019s surface, if fit back into the design of ecological processes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How would a natural resource science develop if it weren\u00b9t able to experience and observe the natural environment? \u00a0Not very well! \u00a0This science is called Range Management. \u00a0This discipline was formed during the 1930\u00b9s, with the advent of the Dust … Continue reading