Rewilding the West: Restoration in a Prairie Landscape

by Richard Manning

"The most destructive force in the American West is its commanding views, because they foster the illusion that we command," begins Richard Manning's vivid, anecdotally driven account of the American plains from native occupation through the unraveling of the American enterprise to today. As he tells the story of this once rich, now mostly empty landscape, Manning also describes a grand vision for ecological restoration, currently being set in motion, that would establish a prairie preserve larger than Yellowstone National Park, flush with wild bison, elk, bears, and wolves. Taking us to an isolated stretch of central Montana along the upper Missouri River, Manning peels back the layers of history and discovers how key elements of the American story―conservation, the New Deal, progressivism, the yeoman myth, and the idea of private property―have collided with and shaped this incomparable landscape. An account of great loss, Rewilding the West also holds out the promise of resurrection―but rather than remake the plains once again, Manning proposes that we now find the wisdom to let the prairies remake us.

Genres: Environment, Nature, Science, Natural History, Geography, Nonfiction

238 pages, Paperback

First published May 16, 2009

Reviews

[Eliot Fiend · Rating 4 out of 5]

well, i have to say, i was initially disappointed by this book because of the expectations i held based on the title. for one, "west" refers here to primarily montana, and specifically to an area called the Missouri Breaks in montana, now the site of the charles m. russell national wildlife refuge. it's not about the west coast or the pacific northwest! it's about prairies (as is also indicated in the title.)
secondly, "rewilding," in the broad sweep of mainstream cultural usage, seems to be used sparsely to refer to a number of slightly different movements. my point of reference for this term is "rewilders," folks who are "rewilding" culturally and by tending wild food gardens and replanting native edible and medicinal plants between eastern oregon/washington and the western southwest. in mannings' book, rewilding (although it is not used in the book itself), refers to an ideological, political, and environmental movement to restore wildlife and wildlife habitat for a variety of reasons, many of them economic. ("natural capitalism," he calls it.)

so, with that said, once i got past those clarifications, i immensely enjoyed this book.
unfortunately, the first two chapters, primarily chapter 2, "aboriginal sins," detail a remarkably and sadly racist and somewhat sexist retelling of colonization and eighteenth and nineteeth century history. despite the book's publishing in 2009, manning still insists on referring to the displaced native peoples inhabiting the western plains as "Indians." he draws almost exclusively on colonizers' accounts rather than native peoples'. he additionally frequently writes off living native americans ("the plains tribes survived into the age of photography and recent memory, so our image of them is the clearest.") he casually perpetuates the stories of native americans as primarily horse thieves and embroiled in violent and self-defeating intertribal conflict. he is unduly sympathetic to the US army ("the army's streak of protectiveness toward both Indians and bisons...[became] a potent political force.")

undoubtedly if he had bothered to interview or further research the land-based practices and lifestyles of native tribes pre-colonization (which is to say, prior to the introduction of horses and beginning of the fur trade economy, both of which caused disproportionate overharvesting and damage to the plains ecosystem(s)), he would have found further support for his ultimate argument that the plains ecosystem has co-evolved intelligently to withstand droughts and support some humans and a lot of bison, more effectively than any colonizer-designed agricultural "wildlife farming" plan could ever hope to do. furthermore, manning has failed to take advantage of the resources which offer historical perspectives of native americans and women--resources which help us to see a truer picture of how things happened and to begin to be accountable to and right some of the centuries-old wrongs and continuing violence done to native americans and women in this country.

so, on that front, chapter 2 is a flop.
but following that, manning's research and reading of the prairie landscape shines through powerfully in his account of the history of the region, effects of the New Deal, politics among governmental agencies, and paradoxes plaguing the conservationist movement. he does an amazing job of detailing the personal relationships and experiences of politicians and influential figures in policymaking--from Henry Lantz to Theodore Roosevelt to FDR to Gifford Pinchot to John Muir--and how their relationships to "wilderness" and "wildlife" came about.

i hope to see similarly well-researched books that are as engaging, accessible, and easy to read about other bioregions of the US and further. i'd def recommend it to anyone with relationship to the plains/prairie west, or interest in ranching, the politics of the BLM, history of conservation movement, or the evolution of current tax subsidies (for grazing/corn/wheat). or "sustainable agriculture," which as manning writes, "is an oxymoron."

[Hatuxka · Rating 1 out of 5]

Manning blithely and in passing makes the racist claim, only marginally pertinent to an argument he was making, that native americans are genetically predisposed to alcoholism and a few lines later makes the preposterous assertion that some U.S. Army generals he names who were ruthless Indian fighters were actually protectors of Indians and the reservations were actually created to protect natives, a gross and silly oversimplification. He sources some of what he says on other topics, but these statements go unsourced. He also claims, based on an observation from a white artist-Catlin (known for over romantic and generally distorted portrayals of what he saw on his trips to the great plains) that native women were slaves to the men. Wow, and that was in the space of about five pages in the first or second chapter. What idealist wouldn't like this idea of buying up the midrivers area of Montana and making it a buffalo range? It is right up there with restoring the Hetch Hetchy Valley. A glorious dream, actually realisable. But such an advocate! one star for the idea, 4 star deductions for having Richard Manning advance the idea.

[Richard Reese · Rating 5 out of 5]

Richard Manning is a visionary thinker and writer who lives in Montana, and I am especially fond of his work. His book Rewilding the West contemplates the notion of removing the fences, cattle, and sheep from western ranching regions, and allowing the original wild ecosystem to recover — buffalo, wolves, prairie dogs, and every other wild critter native to the land.

Wild salmon used to feed many cultures around the world. The seas produced abundant fish, with no human management whatsoever. On the other hand, farmed salmon are a disaster. Nature does an excellent job of raising fish, but aquaculture corporations do not. In a similar vein, nature’s design for producing wild buffalo was brilliant. But the imported and artificial system of raising domesticated cattle and sheep on the western plains is dysfunctional and destructive.

Long ago, the artist George Catlin spent time among the buffalo-hunting Indian tribes. He reported that they were very healthy, long-lived, and happy people. He repeatedly commented on how tall they were. The Indians enjoyed a way of life that was in balance with nature, until they acquired domesticated horses. Mounted hunters were able to kill more buffalo, and they did, which brought an end to sustainable living — even before the robe trade business began, which greatly increased the slaughter.

Once the buffalo were exterminated, in came the ranchers. Cattle evolved to thrive in the milder and wetter ecosystems of Europe. In the West, they did OK in moist years, but died like flies during droughts and extreme winters. Cattle grazed more intensively than the native buffalo, causing serious damage to the grasslands.

Garrett Hardin is famous for his essay The Tragedy of the Commons, which argued that people take better care of privately-owned lands than they do of commons, because of rational self-interest, and the ability to control access. But this was not true in buffalo country, where the grasses thrived under occasional grazing, but got thrashed under repetitive grazing, when the cattle and fences arrived.

In the West, private property does not work. Agriculture in Montana is heavily dependent on life support from government subsidies, whilst the political climate is tilted toward a flag-waving anti-government conservatism that cries for smaller government, lower taxes, and a never-ending stream of generous subsidy checks. Manning concludes: “The American West is a welfare state. We privatize profits and socialize risks. We are parasites.”

In the good old days of sustainability, 30 million wild buffalo thrived on the grasslands in a state of relative balance. Today, they have been replaced with 30 million cattle, which depend on huge subsidies of corn, grown on subsidized farms in the Midwest, which are destroying precious topsoil, and poisoning precious aquatic ecosystems with their chemical runoffs.

In Manning’s opinion, “agriculture is by far our most destructive activity, because agriculture is fundamentally unsustainable.” Hunting and fishing can be absolutely sustainable if it is restricted by a system of rules and regulations (or rational self-control). But no rules can make agriculture sustainable.

Having set the stage, Manning now directs us to contemplate a far more intelligent alternative. “So what would happen if you gave those ranchers the right to sell that wild protein, first by charging sport hunters, but second by market hunting to cull the does and smaller deer the sport hunters don't take? What if wildlife became more lucrative than cows? What if ranching had every financial incentive to restore habitat, remove cows, and live among wildlife?”

The vision is to create a prairie preserve larger than Yellowstone Park, a home where wild bison, elk, bears, and wolves can run free — the American Prairie Reserve, located in north central Montana, in the region of the Missouri Breaks, beside the Missouri River ("Breaks” means the edge of the plains). The project was launched in 2005, on a small scale, with big dreams for the future.

[Curtis Anthony Bozif · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is heavy on the history of federal land policy involving homesteaders, yeoman farmers, and ranchers in the West, specifically an area in Montana called the Missouri Breaks, in and around the Upper Missouri River Breaks National Monument. With this history as a backdrop, Manning argues for buying out existing ranches, reintroducing native grasses and bison, and eventually returning these lands to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

If you've read his other books, this one will make a lot of sense. I'd suggest readers start with Grassland and then read Against the Grain before diving into this book.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just love everything of Richard Manning's that I've ever read, and I would read pretty much anything he thought was worth writing about (though that's not to say I've read all of his books yet). That Rewilding the West concerns an issue I've been thinking a lot about for the past year only added to its attraction.

This book feels like the same book Manning wrote twice before: like Grassland and One Round River, Rewilding the West is a wide-ranging environmental history of a Montanan grassland ecosystem, with a focus on the culture and the economy that broke it. This time the focus is the site of the American Prairie Reserve, a section of the Missouri River watershed earmarked for the most ambitious prairie restoration project to date. But while Manning tells the story of that area, known as the Missouri Breaks, he also tells the story of national conservation policy. The two stories are so closely woven together, with so many moments when the converge on a single event near the Breaks, that the book feels like one of those double picture optical illusions. It's a neat trick, though it does get a bit confusing at times.

I was surprised about how much material there was that I wasn't already familiar with. In broad strokes, it seems to tell the same story that I learned in American environmental history, not to mention all of the other Manning books: Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, ranching, wheat, the Dust Bowl, soil conservation, etc. What I hadn't realized were the roles that water conservation and the New Deal played in establishing modern conservation policy. Apparently much of the original U.S. Forest Service land was set aside primarily to ensure water flow downstream; its management for timber and wilderness came later, through the influence of Pinchot, and, crucially, the timber industry.

The new scientific agriculture tried to advise settlers on how best to grow crops in the drylands of Montana, and failed miserably, resulting in huge swaths of desertified land and a terribly poor citizenry. New Deal reformers took this opportunity to buy back lands deeded as farmsteads in the Homestead Act and its followers and resettle people in the moister valleys, while at the same time turning old farmsteads into publicly owned rangeland under the BLM (child of the merger of the Grazing Office and General Land Office). A number of "improvements" like dams, ponds, and wells were constructed to help irrigate floodplain farms and water range cattle. These modifications to the hydrology of the land contributed to its gradual degradation.

The point Manning makes here is that, in ironic contrast to Montana's conservative zeitgeist, rich in antigovernment sentiment and independence narratives, the ranching economy that dominates Montana today would never have been economical were it not for tremendous investments in infrastructure along with free access to huge plots of land provided by the BLM. Both were provided at low to no cost by the government because industry groups gained primary control of the BLM itself.

Surprisingly, most of the cattle raised in Montana are sold as calves to feedlots in Iowa and elsewhere, and this is a factor Manning doesn't seem to account for in his assessment, which is focused on the state itself. Regardless, his conclusion is that the land can raise far more protein at much lower cost than ranching if it is allowed to regenerate native prairie.

In addition to cattle ranching culture, the biggest obstacle to the development of a wild game economy in Montana is a conservation movement itself. Since early conservationists were concerned with perpetuating activities like logging and especially big-game hunting, there is a legacy of the conservation movement that encourages us to to see commercial hunting as a threat to both recreational hunting and animal populations. Today, ranchers already feel that wild animals like elk and pronghorn are competing with their cattle for good forage, and encourage recreational hunters to thin the herds from their land.

If a paradigm shift in regulation and public opinion could be achieved, it seems realistic to imagine ranchers replacing their income from cattle with income from wild harvested ungulates (which are currently illegal to sell). Removing cattle and reducing the amount of land and water use to grow hay would go a long way towards allowing these herbivores to direct natural recovery of the prairie. Manning of course approves of the effort that the American Prairie Reserve will make, but the book raises broader questions about our economies interact with the land, questions that could theoretically generate positive impacts over a much broader area, and begin to relax the harmful dichotomies we create between land set aside for conservation and land used for food production.

[timv · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think Richard Manning is one of those authors you either like or dislike. He certainly is opinionated and his writing -- but I like/agree with most of his opinions....... it's nice to read somebody applying investigative journalism techniques.... I rate this as a quintessential, must read, "Western America" book. Up there with "Cadillac Desert"....