In Rewilding the West, Montana journalist and environmental author Richard Manning provides an account of the great ecological trauma suffered by the temperate grassland landscape of the northern Great Plains and provides a forceful ecological and economical argument for restoration of this prairie landscape through the creation of an American Prairie Preserve.
Rewilding the West begins by describing a grand vision of restoring the prairie. Manning explains that not so long ago the plains were not as empty as they are now. The plains supported a substantial amount of wildlife including herds of large mammals such as buffalo, elk, antelope and deer; as well as the predators that feed on them: wolves and bears. What would it take to restore the prairie landscape so that it could support these mammals again?
Manning describes the efforts of a group of biologists and ecologists who use Montanan Bill Haskins’ GIS mapping technology to identify a suitable area to preserve the prairie, this "least protected of landscapes."
The group "asked question of the landscape: Where were the largest chunks of undisturbed prairie? Where were the best habitat, the most endangered species, the biggest chunks of public land: And, especially, where was ranching in the worst financial trouble?"
In a research publication titled Ocean of Grass, the group identified several possible locations for a prairie preserve, most promisingly Eastern Montana ’s Missouri Breaks region. Manning imagines and argues that a 3.5-million acre American Prairie Preserve be centered in this same Missouri Breaks region.
After setting forth this vision for an American Prairie Preserve, Manning thoroughly explores the often-botched history of humans and their relationship to the land in the Missouri Breaks region.
Of the northern Great Plains, Manning says that “[e]very square inch of them is covered with evidence of human habitation and folly….” Manning describes how Plains Indians, European traders, trophy hunters, Eastern elites, homesteaders, the railroads, farmers, ranchers, conservatives and progressives have added to the destruction of the prairie landscape.
Manning argues that the progressive agricultural and land management policies put into motion by President Theodore Roosevelt and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt should receive most of the blame for the great harm inflicted on the plains ecosystem.
He argues that theses policies, which encouraged settlement and farming and later ranching in a prairie landscape not suited for such activity, resulted in a persistent welfare state in the Plains region.
Plains farmers and ranchers are dependent on federal subsidies to support their cattle and grain operations. These operations in turn, destroy critical plains riparian and grassland areas. With these subsidies, the farmers and ranchers can barely make ends meet. Without them they would surely fail, the landscape not suitable for profitable agriculture. This economic fact is crucial to Manning’s argument. The reasons for restoring the prairie landscape in the Missouri Breaks are not just ecologically but also economically desirable.
Along with historical accounts of Theodore Roosevelt and his young cousin Franklin Delano Roosevelt and their administrations, Manning’s narrative provides anecdotes about lesser-known figures who have shaped or recorded the history of the landscape in the northern Great Plains including: artist George Catlin; biologist George Bird Grinnell; merchant, miner and cattleman Granville Stuart; government scientist and visionary John Wesley Powell; film star Wallace Coburn; railroad baron James J. Hill; Communist Party-member and former State Representative Charles E. Taylor; and Phillips County Montana Extension Agent Henry Lantz.
The character-driven anecdotes in Manning’s work make his work accessible, propelling the reader through what might otherwise be considered dull and dry subject matter.
Rewilding the West succeeds on two fronts. First, it provides an enthralling though unromantic historical account of human history on the plains. Manning’s account lacks the starry-eyed view of celebrated figures like Teddy Roosevelt and Granville Stuart that is found elsewhere.
Second, Rewilding the West provides compelling and well-reasoned arguments for the need to create a prairie preserve. This reader looks forward to the return of the buffalo and the wolf to the northern Great Plains.
Eamon Fahey manages and is a buyer for Fact & Fiction, part of the Bookstore at the University of Montana.
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