I began writing this monthly musing about Sir Nicholas Stern's report on the economic impact of global warming but I couldn't do it. The subject, and the report, is just too hard. I couldn't read the entire report because it is 700 pages long and because what I did read was as cold and inhuman as, well, an economic report. I ended up Googling (or should I say that I got on The Google and found) "Sir Nicolas Stern on global warming". After reading this Cliff notes version, the Earth shaking economic report on the cost of global warming came a lot more clear to this none-economic -type. Stern is not a crack-pot, sentimental environmentalist. He is a past chief economist for the World Bank. That is why a lot off cornucopians are taking what he said seriously and probably why his report was un-readable for me. The Google search did a much better job of making Stern's report real to me than almost anything I could have tried.

What the search told me was what most of us suspected: global warming is going to cost us a lot of money. A LOT OF MONEY.(Up to 20% of World Gross Domestic Product, trillions - whatever that is.) While the entire report was just too much literature for me, reading the Google-lite version of Stern's report left me feeling cheated in a literary way. I mean, even thought they are bulleted, shouldn't there be, at least, an exclamation mark after phrases like:

• Wildlife will be harmed; at worst up to 40% of species could become extinct
• Droughts may create tens or even hundreds of millions of "climate refugees"

It is a puzzle to me how we could loose 40% of species without loosing the rest. I mean, what are the rest of us 60%'s going to eat? Can you remove all the spades and most of the hearts from a house of cards? And as far as the possible hundreds of millions of "climate refugees" are concerned, I suppose it makes a lot of difference if you are one of those refugees or you are not one of those refugees. It also makes a lot of difference if you are almost one of those refugees. Even if you escape refugee-hood and manage to hang onto the family artichoke farm, you might not like your new calling as nomadic shepherd.

Farther down the Google listings I found the reaction to Stern's report. Most of it was pretty sane, political stuff about the challenge and how it must and will be met. Most of the comments focused on Europe and very few concerned the places that are currently creating most of the greenhouse gasses that cause global warming. And almost none of the comments mentioned places that are currently trying as hard as possible to become contributors to global warming. There were a bunch of comments about what this statistic meant and how that percentage shoul like me - guys that didn't read the report.

My Google search was four days ago and today I noticed that little more has been said about the "story". I have the sinking feeling that this "story" might go the way of the now forgotten "story" about catching all the fish on the Great Banks! That exclamation mark is mine.



by Gervase Hittle

Two years ago Nancy Anderson, Director of the Leslie Powell Art Gallery in Lawton, OK invited me to speak at their Lunch Bag Lecture series. We finally were able to schedule a date; so on October 19 of this year I was there to talk about "Great Plains, Buffalo, Restoration, and Other Stuff." The audience was at least nominally familiar with the American Bison because of Lawton's proximity to the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge, which has held a herd of buffalo since 1907 and today has a herd of about 550 animals, which also is one of the major attractions for anyone who has family visitors or house guests. The refuge is Lawton's answer to Mt. Rushmore, the Liberty Bell, Niagara Falls, the Royal Gorge, or Old Faithful.

Much of my talk dealt with the practical concerns of how a private ranch can implement practices that can contribute to the restoration of both the Great Plains and the buffalo, and to do so I often used examples from this ranch and the things we have done here to expedite some of our restoration efforts. These examples included details: of fence removal and construction, of conversion of a ranch from cattle to buffalo, of grazing on public lands, of harvesting and marketing--which is a lot to cover in a short lunch hour.

The real glitch to restoration is probably three-fold. A) What was once open range has become a crazy quilt of closed ranges, a hodge podge of deeded and public lands where everything is fenced off, thus preventing natural migration. B) Bison survival, when extermination was imminent, depended almost exclusively on ownership by private individuals or government agencies. Ownership hold the animal to be, if not an asset, a liability. Unmanaged buffalo on closed ranges can devastate a range and reach a point of die off, which in an ownership configuration is not acceptable. To prevent such an occurrence the Wichita Mountain Wildlife Refuge, like Custer State Park, has an annual roundup and auction. C) Climate goes a very long way in controlling water availability and grass production. Animals on a closed range that has insufficient water must rely on artificial water production, ie., wells, stock dams, dugouts, or hauled water. With insufficient grass the rancher must feed hay or transport the herd to less or unaffected areas.

The trick in all of this is a balancing act. Times of plenty are easy, tending to lull the owner into a sense of security, which he or she has no right to have. Times of dearth are anything but easy, tending to create a sense of panic, which, again the rancher has no right to have. In times of the old, open range the roller coaster of plenty and dearth must have been an excruciatingly slow and horrific movement between heaven and hell; climate managed everything good or bad. In these times of closed ranges, human beings try to alance on the tight wire of management stretched between the high points of the roller coaster ride, staying alert in times of plenty, being creative in times of dearth.

The management of this ranch has a three-fold responsibility also: to our range, to our animals and to our customers, a responsibility to balance on the scale of producing high quality meat--no matter what the climate may bring to us and to maintain our herd in balance with our necessarily closed range.