Food For Thought in WI: Restoring prairies, bison, and the people who care for them

This Saturday, Sep. 26, 2009, in Madison, WI, the Food For Thought festival will host Michael Pollan, award-winning author of The Omnivore's Dilemma: A natural history of four meals and In Defense of Food: An eater's manifesto. The emphasis will be on eating food in an ecologically-sustainable way. Some may think that a vegetarian diet is the only ecologically-responsible diet for our planet. However, this view can be short-sighted when it ignores the role that herbivores play in ecosystems.
Just as healthy prairies depend on fire for regeneration, they also depend on the animals that graze them. The dung of bison, elk, and deer fertilize the soil and provide specialized niches for soil-maintaining insects and plant pollinators. Without these plants and insects, no vertebrates would exist.
But today, most of our Midwest prairie has been replaced by human development. In efforts to preserve whole prairie ecosystems, conservationists are advocating the restoration of key herbivores as well as endemic plant species. But where will these expensive animals come from and who will manage their care? The economic costs of ecosystem restoration hit home.
Some Wisconsin farmers are taking an active role in restoration efforts. Instead of selling their valuable land to developers, they are turning it over to herds of bison, elk, and deer. But they do more for the animals than simply give them a place to live. The farmers watch over their animals, supplementing their feed, and providing them with veterinary care.
But these farmers must put food on their own tables. And with this, the rest of us can help. When we choose food to buy, we can choose their venison, and their bison and elk meats. Buying their meat means that native prairie herbivores will continue to roam Wisconsin land.
If you prefer chicken to red meat, then consider buying Wisconsin, free-range chickens. These birds fill the niche vacated by the nearly-extinct prairie chicken. Free-range chickens stir up packed soil, fertilize the soil with their dung, and eat grubs that damage important plants.
We who live in towns and cities help with conservation when we economically sustain the farmers who care for vital herbivores. When we buy from these farmers, we are thinking about all of the different kinds of foods on our plates, not just the vegetables.