Crane Trust Bison Herd

[Russ]

All,

I talked to Allen a bit about bison in the context of the Crane Trust project near Grand Island, Nebraska last week, and he said he believes bison can be trained to work in holistic grazing, but most aren’t and won’t be. I see the bison arrived last night and there’s a bit more detail…

http://video.theindependent.com/Bison-herd-arrives-at-the-Crane-Trust-28379748

They have fenced 1000 acres out of the 4600 for bison, and are starting with a herd of 42 and looking to establish a herd of 200. Importantly, I have not detected any words associated ‘holistic’ (or all the variations thereof) and therefore fear that what will happen is what Allen says is most likely… bison can tear the place up faster than cattle.

Realizing that at least in Nebraska this might be a fairly prominent and visible experiment, I wonder if there is any chance we could hook the already ecosystem-aware people managing this program to grassfed exchange members or programs and see if they might be able to actually turn this into a positive demonstration project about the interplay of native bison and native prairies.

Thoughts?

Russ