Episode 6: Territory Folks Should All Be Pals
Episode Length: 28:57
Focus
This episode is about the conflict over different ways of managing animals, and why elk are allowed to roam free despite similar fears of disease transmission.
Keywords
wilderness, grasslands, American Prairie Reserve, ranchers, land management, cattle, elk, disease, history, bison
Episode Outline
These outlines are intended to help you locate ideas and topics more easily, but these are narrative episodes with many interlocking themes and ideas, so you may want to share segments that cross multiple points in the outline.
MINUTES: 00:00 - 02:25
Resonance of a song from the musical Oklahoma to the conflict playing out over bison.
02:55 - 06:09
Wilderness is generally associated with vertical places but flat places, particularly grasslands, are wilderness too, and critically endangered.
06:10 - 10:09
American Prairie Reserve is an effort to buy and lease public and private land to create grassland at a scale for healthy bison herd.
10:10 - 14:29
Opposition to American Prairie Reserve from nearby ranchers who have another plan for conservation.
14:30 - 18:38
Cultural clash between American Prairie Reserve leadership and ranchers.
BREAK
19:05 - 25:29
Cultural, historical, and economic reasons that elk, who’ve been exposed to brucellosis and given it to cattle, are allowed to roam free.
25:30 - 28:57
Many stories of the West start in the late 1800s when bison were nearly wiped out, in contrast to the thousands of years that bison were all over North America.
Video Excerpt
How the musical Oklahoma relates to the way groups of people fight over different ways of managing animals on the land. Who is welcome at this dance and who is not?
Visual
“The Farmer and the Cowman” from the 1955 musical film