The American Prairie Foundation Preserve.

[NNadir]

I just watched with my son a Nat Geo documentary on "American's Serengeti."

Here they are trying to re-establish Bison herds, prairie dog colonies, and the nearly extinct (and once thought extinct) predator who depends on prairie dogs, the black-footed ferret.

Help Build America's Serengeti

Imagine... a prairie wildlife reserve of three million acres ... a section of America’s Great Plains restored to the grandeur Lewis & Clark witnessed and ... a national treasure for you, your children and future generations to explore. We invite you to learn more, spread the word, visit and give a gift.

http://www.americanprairie.org/index.php">American Prairie Foundation.


The website says, "tell a friend." Thus for my friends, those who care about the land, here's a telling.

Check it out.

[ClarkUSA]

1. Thanks for the link. I contributed and will pass it on to my address book.

I watched the inspiring program the other evening.

[havocmom]

2. Problem is, there are people living on lands they want to convert to buffalo range

And there are plenty of prairie dogs. Their numbers increase in colonies until they bring about plagues through crowding.

I'm fine with this American Serengeti, SO LONG AS every property owner between here and the Okalhoma/Texas line tears down every fence and road and lets the buffalo and the rest of the Great Plains natives have their FULL RANGE.

Oh, and wolves and grizzly bears go along with all that. They thrived on the prarie before we shot them to near extinction.

Have fun with those gardens. Should be exciting.

[NNadir]

4. They are buying land. I don't personally believe it is wise to make the perfect the enemy of...

...of the good.

[havocmom]

6. It's a bit more complicated than 'they are buying the land' but don't fret

It's OK to make it harder and harder for food producers in America. You'll love having multi-national corporations being in control of everything you need to eat pretty soon.

And buffalo did not stay in one place; they migrated over the better part of the center of what we now call the USA.

I happen to be in a position to see the real tactics being used, and 'buying the land' is just the window dressing. There have been witnesses to some agency personnel moving wolves onto ranch land. Ahem, making it difficult to survive economically makes the 'buying the land' part pretty easy. We are all Indians now.

[NNadir]

8. Well, it's not "my" food. I don't eat the stuff that comes from ranches.

I also am kind of fond of natural habitats.

I guess that makes me "uneconomic."

If I valued "economic issues" above everything else, I would probably seek to join another political party.

But I don't.

There is, of course, a long history of using the absence or presence of buffalo to take other people's land, I guess. (I once amused myself talking about buffalo fun on another website where I used to write: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/1/29/11518/4012">Profile of a "Dangerous Nuclear Waste," Cesium. Part 1.)

There is also a more recent history of people being driven from their land by things like strip mining the soil. I believe that nobody arranged, for instance, the dust bowl, to dispossess farmers -some of whom had parents and grandparents who had done some previous dispossessing - of their land.
They, of course, did not know this, but their own practices dispossessed them of the land only a few generations hence.

Sorry to say, but I don't value the good ole' American hamburger above all other things.

[havocmom]

9. Do you eat good pasta made from good duram wheat? Any barley in your diet?

any vegetable oils? Oats? People who just think it's beef here and are OK with locking up a lot of productive land might get better informed about agriculture.

[havocmom]

13. New Jersey was once 'other peoples' land'

So, sauce for goose.... giving it back to those from whom it was taken, both human and animal?

No, didn't think so.

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[havocmom]

15. Tough scoobies for him then. I get the pleasure of seeing LOTS of wind mil parts go by my house

and they make me smile! Thanks for the rest of the motive ;)

[joshcryer]

21. How far away from you are they?

[havocmom]

24. There are some in several directions but the highway is a stone's throw

and highways are few and far between here, so I get a glimpse of just about everything.

There is a bunch in the Judith Gap area coming out of the mountains south of Lewistown, approaching Harlowton. There were some outside Livingston way back when, but it is actually too windy there. I think they are springing up more and more in little pockets. There is a Hutterite colony further west from Harlowton that has put up several to run pumps for irrigating and lights/heat for hen houses for eggs. Very cool.

Drive on MT 12 is pretty amazing, actually

I like it that land owners can get lease payments for letting power companies place them on lands and the land owner can still produce on the land.

[OnlinePoker]

3. When my wife and I went to Yellowstone in '06...

...we got to see a pack of wolves take down an elk on a valley floor below us. As they say, they went after the one that was weak and hobbling. I hate to see anything die, but this is the natural order. Meanwhile, any of the pack that happens to stray outside the park boundaries are summarily shot on sight so the precious cattle industry can protect a head or two that might get taken down. I know there was talk of culling the Wood Buffalo herd because they have a form of bovine tuberculosis that could infect neighboring cattle ranches, but I don't know what the status is on that.

We keep trying to manage wildlife to death instead of letting it carry on naturally, killing other predators so that man can have his trophies. Meanwhile, deer populations are sky-rocketing because there aren't as many hunters as there once were, but the predators are still taken out as a threat.

[NNadir]

5. Well, as a resident of New Jersey, I know something about deer populations.

Personally, I favor restoration of wolves and Pumas here, but I'm afraid my ideas on that score are none too popular.

I, by the way, had no idea that we once had Pumas here, until I learned of it at the Philadelphia Zoo on a recent trip with my boys.

[newfie11]

7. Anyone one want prairie dogs? I would be delight to send them

We have about 500 nest farm over and now they are coming into our farm. I am talking a section and half (1000 acres including now our farm) entirely covered with prairie dog holes. No grass as they have killed that and the whole area stinks. Imagine 500 rats and they are not that appealing.

[havocmom]

10. LOL, yep. It all sounds like such a grand idea,

from far away. ;)

[joshcryer]

16. Are they feeding on the agriculture?

[newfie11]

23. They eat anything green.

They eat pasture grass and will eventually kill it, corn, wheat, small tree seedlings are chewed off. They are rodents. Yes very cute ones but they do the same, if not worse, damage as rats.

[joshcryer]

26. Do you think their numbers would be as large if they didn't have access to agricrops?

Crops grown by use of natural gas derived fertilizers and chemical pesticides?

[newfie11]

32. oh yeah

I remember trail riding in Medora ND. We hauled our horses up, camped for a week and rode in very desolate country. This in the middle of no where with no chemicals, only buffalo herds and the prairie dog towns were huge. They multiply like rats.

[jpak]

11. It would be a great place for a uranium enrichment or nuclear power plant

they are so clean and green - the bison and prairie doggies would snuggle right up to them!

:rofl:

[havocmom]

12. Oh, I thought you were gonna say New Jersey

;)

[Systematic Chaos]

17. You both need to go out and play in traffic.

:)

[jpak]

18. Darers go first!

:hi:

[havocmom]

20. not me. Too busy taking rides on big ol windmills, scoutin fer buffalo

[NNadir]

19. I actually think New Jersey would be an excellent place for nuclear facilities.

Of course, unlike the anti-nukes, I know all about nuclear science, the science of Fermi, Seaborg, Bethe and Weinberg.

Since I know what I'm talking about, I am unafraid of it.

Have a nice flying metal day, and do let us know how all those tranmission lines are way more valuable than the last black footed ferret on the face of the planet.

[jpak]

22. Please please take all the spent fuel left over from Maine Yankee - take it all to NJ

please please please!!!

:rofl:

[havocmom]

25. Yeah, cuz I have the ferrets lined out and they ain't lettin no spent fuel rest in the west

;(

[NNadir]

27. Please take all the dangerous natural gas and wood soot that Maine has dumped in

Earth's atmosphere since anti-science anti-nukes closed Maine's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free energy, and replaced by dangerous natural gas.

Let's see how much dangerous fossil fuel waste and carcinogenic wood soot that might be:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/st_profiles/sept04me.xls">Maine, the gas hole.

In fact, unremarked by anti-nuke geniuses, all of Maine Yankee's used nuclear fuel could easily be transported to New Jersey in a few trucks, and do exactly what it did in Maine: Injure no one.

On the other hand, even if New Jersey wanted to prevent Maine's dangerous fossil fuel wastes from coming here, we would have no choice.

That's because Maine can't contain it's dangerous fossil fuel wastes because of the laws of something called "physics."

I implore all of our very uneducated anti-nuke atmosphere dump boys to have a nice denialist evening expressing complete ignorance of the laws of statistical mechanics, and every other law of science.

[jpak]

31. please please take all coal and gas used by New Jeresy and dump it in New Jersey

or

whatever

:rofl:

Oh yeah - Maine generates more electrcity from wood and hydo than from natural gas - which is exported from the state.

yup!

:rofl:

[Kolesar]

28. Ya' want Piketon?

Can you move it to New Jersey?

[NNadir]

34. In fact, because I happen to know science, I understand quite readily that

enrichment plants are not, in fact, necessary.

That said, I happen to live on a uranium formation. It's um, natural. You see, if instead of having lazy fantasies about the dangerous fossil fuel industry being - how do dumb people like Amory Lovins put their coal green washing - "transitional" until some future nirvana, I happen to know that uranium is a naturally occurring element in the periodic table, with several billion tons being present in earth's crust and oceans.

I live on one such formation, the Reading Prong.

http://www.hydrotechno.com/docs/doc8.html

The presence of radon in indoor air or drinking water is derived from naturally occurring uranium in rocks and soil. Indoor radon problems and problems related to radon in drinking-water supplies are generally restricted to the Reading Prong area of northern New Jersey. The Reading Prong is a thin belt of igneous and metamorphic rocks, composed predominantly of granites and gneisses. Igneous rocks are initially derived from a melt, while metamorphic rocks were deformed under high levels of temperature and pressure.

Based on research completed by the New Jersey Geological Survey (NJGS) and the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS), it is known that hornblende granite, a formation which extends through much of northern New Jersey and parts of southeastern Pennsylvania, contains uranium-238 concentrations of up to 20 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg) or "parts per million".

The only technological approach to destroying uranium is to fission it. By fissioning it, one eliminates the uranium decay series which consists of the following radioactive elements (for U-238) Thorium (two different isotopes, 234 and 230), radium (226), radon (220) polonium (216 and 212), lead (212), and bismuth (212).

By contrast with the natural state of affairs, most fission decay series occur rapidly under controlled conditions, generally fewer than 4 or 5 decays, the vast majority of which take place in a matter of a few days.

This is why it is understood - again by people who know science - that in a continuous actinide program, the total radioactivity of the planet would actually decrease in about 1000 years. Most people don't recognize this, because most people, including 100% of the anti-nukes here, get their science educations in comic books.

The uranium tailings are actually less radioactive than natural uranium because the most radioactive isotope, U-235, is depleted and then destroyed by fissioning it. This results in the formation of lighter elements, including many, like Molybdenum, neodymium, and praseodymium, and many others that are not radioactive past a few days.

They are nonetheless extremely valuable when converted into plutonium, but since anti-nukes hate the science they are not competent to understand, there's no explaining to them how this works.

It would be fine with me if this took place in New Jersey, because I know what I am talking about.

I favor a phase out of enrichment facilities and their replacement by a mixed uranium, thorium and plutonium cycle, since I know as a matter of course, the eta values for every fissionable nuclide in the Table of Nuclides. I favor advanced uranium vectors and plutonium vectors.

Anti-nukes, by contrast, don't even know what the fucking table of nuclides is. As is predictable, they are completely clueless about what a plutonium vector is, because the object to a topic they know nothing about.

But then again, I'm not a lightweight blogger with no science education.

If the anti-nuke brats object to uranium, why don't they spend an evening planning blocking the next radiation flux from the next supernova in yet another paroxysm of stupidity?

Have a nice day complaining about the contents of earth's crust. Try not to get hit in the head with a neutrino.

[Dogmudgeon]

29. Anti-nukes even spammed THIS article. Amazing.

Hey, Skinner!

When do we get a :facepalm: smiley?!?

--d!

[grasswire]

30. thank you for that link

...it leads to many other items of interest to me, as I am learning more about homesteading on the Great Prairie in the early twentieth century. Fascinating. Thanks.

[TwilightGardener]

33. Kick--especially love the gallery on the APF website.