NewWesterners: INTERVIEW 'ACTION' JACKSON, Part II

Bob Jackson on “Bison Culture” And Traditional Ag

By Todd Wilkinson, 9-20-07

ABOVE: Bob Jackson at his bison ranch on Iowa's tallgrass prairie.

MIDDLE: Jackson says it has taken 15 years and four bison generations to reach the point where Bison Culture is yielding ecological and economic efficiency at his ranch in Iowa.

BOTTOM: Bison in Yellowstone's Hayden Valley come to the edge of the Yellowstone River to drink. Jackson claims that only one of the national park's bison herds, the Mirror Plateau-Pelican Creek herd, maintains an ancient Bison Culture that is in imminent peril of dissolving and further threatened by calls to depopulate Yellowstone of its bison in order to eradicate the disease brucellosis, regarded as a threat to the cattle industry outside the park.

Photos courtesy of Bob Jackson

Do wild animal populations have their own “culture”?  In the first part of NewWest.Net’s interview with Bob Jackson, the former Yellowstone ranger turned private bison rancher said there is far more to an animal’s relationship with the landscape than meets the human eye.  Look closer at bison, he suggests, and one not only sees culture, but matriarchal and patriarchal roles, not unlike those which existed among native American tribes on the western plains.  In this, the second part of a continuing conversation with Jackson, the blunt-talking former civil servant suggests that wildlife biologists, including those working in Yellowstone, need to broaden their perspective and let go of biases, instilled in their thinking by academics, about how wildlife herds actually live.  When Jackson suggests that among bison family groups there are grandpa and grandmas, parents and subadults, mentors and students, all carrying out specific functions, is he guilty of anthropomorphising? -Todd Wilkinson

NEW WEST: Bob, you mention seeing certain things in Yellowstone bison herds and also in your own herd which you raise for profit, to achieve a healthy landscape, and promote better health for human meat eaters.  When did you first start noticing “Bison Culture”?  How did you identify it and study it and then apply what you learned to your own ranch?  I know you realize that many of these things are difficult for scientists, old guard cattle ranchers and even your colleagues in the bison industry to believe.  Your critics say that you are eccentric and that’s a nice way of putting it.

BOB JACKSON: Noticing Bison Culture, or any animal culture, started with my own attitude adjustment. I had to respect them—bison as creatures of higher being—before I could “see” it.

Working and living in natural surroundings, in a life where I roamed the Yellowstone backcountry for five months each year with minimal human contact, allowed me to start interacting with my surroundings. I had the Park Service’s infrastructure and support system to keep me sane. But I could also become a part of my environment, not just look at or conquer it.

It always took a minimum of three weeks in the Thorofare at the beginning of the season to get into this groove.  [NOTE TO READERS:  The Thorofare district in the southeast corner of Yellowstone National Park is considered one of the remotest places in the Lower 48 states].  I was lousy at catching the poachers who were professional hunters, outfitters and guides until I was in this frame of mind. It was the same for studying animals.

I also had a lot of bias to overcome to finally see all life on this earth as equal to mine. My brothers and I grew up as big game hunters in the Midwest. Looking back, the way we hunted was an embryonic child-arrested attempt to connect with that world. We all got degrees in fish & wildlife biology and wanted to “manage” wildlife.

My religious background also confirmed the same thing my science professors implied, which was that:  “We have dominion over everything in this world”.  In hindsight, it was an elitist attitude that didn’t allow me to see that we humans’ ability as omnivores to eat both plants and animals doesn’t mean we have superiority over them. Every one of those plants and animals will do the same to me after I die.

Earlier, I said “allowed to interact” because being surrounded by nature did not mean I had the inside track to attain knowledge about nature. At each gradual step away from a superior attitude, new worlds were opening up. I soon realized most agricultural and biological science, as I knew it, was a product of our country’s exploitive and abusive past. That is why those who should see it could not see what was before their eyes. Even biologists in Yellowstone, those who were “closest to nature”, were speaking of “population densities” and “herds” in vague terms. They didn’t and still don’t know what makes components in any herd tick. If they did, the brucellosis problem would have been solved before it even became an issue.

Lastly, I wanted very badly to find out how herd animals lived if I was to “raise” them on my own private land. I wanted true sustainability, not the kind of “sustainability” that is considered hip today. The old notion of sustainability is how my dad farmed 50 years ago. It wasn’t sustainable then and it isn’t today. His world just had fewer chemicals while he mined the soil.  Iowa State University’s Tilth Lab states Iowa soils, once some of the most fertile on the planet, have lost 40 percent of their productive capacity since white man started farming its soil.

I had to relearn that if I was to raise bison, the function of a natural system was not only efficient environmentally but economically. I found out it all hinges on herd animals’ need for social order and infrastructure.

Culture is an outcome of long term social infrastructure.  My herd, after 30 years of social order development, as well as Yellowstone’s introduced Plains bison into the Hayden and Lamar herds, is still embryonic compared to what you find in Yellowstone’s Mirror Plateau-Pelican bison herd. This herd has been there for thousands of years—uninterrupted.  Family members of that herd have passed on behavioral knowledge, enriching each generation until the behaviors were hard wired and distinct to the herd.

I knew early on in my Yellowstone career as a ranger, contrary to what scientists wrote and said, that bison lived as families. I could readily see the matriarchal part on the female side. It was a no brainer. But it took me years to see the patriarchal side.

Every male, whether he was young or old, whether he stayed with the herd or not, was an important part of that principal or extended family infrastructure. In the end, I found a pure system based on equality of the sexes and ages. Cow herds would visit the grandfathers and fathers who could no longer keep up with them. Young bulls had an emotionally perplexing time of deciding whether they should stay primarily with daddy or momma. If I startled them while they were with their new found bull heroes, they would often run a mile or more back to mamma and her herd.

Ultimately, my study of bison was the study of indigenous peoples. There was little for me in the biological science, range science or ag books. All they studied were symptoms. And even those few researchers willing to stick their necks out and write in vague acknowledgement of social structure, knew nothing of what it meant. If I wanted to know how spin-off satellite herds started, I’d read how Native American tribes spun-off, pre-white man. Then the next year, in the park I’d look for smaller groups of buffalo anywhere in the vicinity of larger groups. I soon realized the groups I originally thought were separate herds (up to two miles away) were actually dependent spin-off groups.

They followed the core group. If they just recently formed up, they came back for extended visits. If they were close to achieving the infrastructure necessary for independence, the spin-off group would graze near and then bed down close to the main power group. A few grandmas and grandpas then would leave their own “herd” to lay down with them (visit) for a couple of hours. Once the visit was over the spin-off group would take off at a brisk trot and the elders would walk the quarter mile to rejoin the core group. Soon I could predict most actions and movements depending on the situation. The makeup of these satellite groups was the same, down to the “T” as the spin-off Native American satellite groups I read about. All I had to do was take out superior “science” and put in the emotion of individuals and groups. This was the vitally and life of nature and what also made my herd so different than other private producers.

We started our Tall Grass Bison herd with three dysfunctional baby bison. We knew enough to not start out with more and older animals from dysfunctional herds. Mature screwed up animals don’t make for good parents. My college psychology professor’s statement, that families need three to four generations to obtain loving and caring families after they recognized abuse as a problem, came to mind. There was no way to acquire Yellowstone family groups and everything else out there was based on individuals.

Bison refuges and parks, the ones we would think have natural wild herds, were and are managed as multiples of individuals rather than families. It shows in their auctions. Sale bills look just like the original slave auction sale bills, with listings as numbers of individuals, by their sex and ages, without consideration to their familial ties.

Our management at Tall Grass Bison, the ranch I own, consists of improving the blood infrastructure for roles needed in our herd. We sell spin-off families. We also give no thought of the number of bulls per breeding cows, nor selection for fast growth to get animals to butchering age faster as other private producers do. They may be able to have faster return on their investment but the quality of product, both live animals and meat, is greatly diminished. Of course without family order they have no option for butchering mature animals. They have to strive for fast growth because young animals have less time to build up the stress so prevalent in dysfunctional herds. Chronic stress means tough meat.

Our economic savings is based on things we don’t have to do. In our herd bison relatives take care of last year’s calf and dependents while mommy concentrates her attention on her new born baby. She gets more time to eat, can better feed her baby, is in better shape to conceive again and her dependents don’t get all stressed out with mommy gone. This means naturally weaned offspring don’t have to be given shots and creep-fed like those in dysfunctional herds.

It took us four generations and 15 years to get basic family structure. It may seem like a long time but in reality it is no longer than it takes a pure bred beef producer to establish his specific line of herd identity. Each year our herd improves its culture and has the advantage over dysfunctional herds of not only learning things passed down from their immediate family, but also from all the other members of that herd and their ancestors. They learn what species of plants they can eat and when. By putting this knowledge literally on the ground, social order herds knock the socks off of dysfunctional animals in grazing efficiency.

However as proud we are of what our herd has done, it is nothing compared to the thousands of years Yellowstone’s bison have learned from their ancestors.

Stay tuned here to NewWest.Net for the third dialogue between Todd Wilkinson and Bob Jackson.

NEXT:  Jackson takes on the questions of some of his skeptics.

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