The tallgrass prairie is the most endangered ecosystem on the planet—it is also one of the most important. Iowa used to be almost completely grassland and oak savanna, but it is now mostly bare fields. The topsoil of the tallgrass prairie is some of the richest on the planet, but it is very quickly disappearing and draining down the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico.
We need to encourage farmers to keep a permanent percentage of their fields as native prairie. Bison, being so well adapted to it, could be grazed on it for their meat and other products and a very simple, beneficial, and cheap way to feed our country could be achieved as well.
For the past 5 years, I have seen farmers actively spraying trees on creek and river banks, killing off the trees to clear their pastures. Seasonally, they light up their fields and burn them from one end to the other. The tall grass ranchers want their properties as bald as the moon. I have seen black angus laying in the field dead from the droughts and heat over the past 3 years. Most of these farmers around the tall grass plains are very lazy and don’t tend their cattle well. Their fences are stretched and worn, still hanging on hedge posts from 50 years ago – their cattle wandering all over the backroads. There is no sun shelter because they sprayed all the trees – cattle with black coats boiling the dizzying summer heat with no shade. Their drinking ponds are dangerously low or totally evaporated, while the cattle hang around the entry gate, like standing death, waiting on someone to come – real sick s#it.
Fact is, these idiots around here wear hats and boots, but don’t have a clue about raising cattle. They simply do it because the job was left to them by their ancestors. Something really needs to be done to preserve the prairie — these S#its in ten gallon hats aren’t doing it. The prairie is floating down the river because these idiots are not properly caring for their properties. Simply put. I have spent 5 years looking at everything these rancher idiots are (and ARE NOT) doing. My two cents.