Jarid Manos.
With what environmental organization are you affiliated? What’s your job title?
I am the founder and CEO of Great Plains Restoration Council, based in Fort Worth, Texas;, Wounded Knee, S.D.; and Denver, Colo.
What does your organization do?
Out here in flyover country, our prairies and plains have been so devastated they have been left for dead. Our region was once one of the most profusely abundant, in terms of ecosystem lushness and volume of life, ever to exist on terrestrial earth. Unfortunately, our region’s recent human history has largely been written in bloodshed, suffering, and sorrow.
But out of the ashes, people from all colors, cultures, and communities are now coming together to protect our remaining intact lands and restore and reconnect others. There is too much violence in the world, and the violence people do to the earth mirrors the violence people do to each other. Our inner-city youth and Indian reservation youth share many of the same social challenges, but rarely interact. They understand the similarities between their own social devastation and the ecological devastation of our prairie. By working to heal the earth, they heal themselves, while developing leadership skills and technical expertise needed to survive and thrive in this world and go forward.
Right now, our Great Plains native wildlife still face aerial gunning, spring-loaded cyanide guns, massive prairie dog poisoning campaigns, killing contests, overgrazing, desertification, bulldozing, and more. Grassland bird populations, which need healthy native prairies to nest (and rest during their long to-and-from flights to Central and South America) are crashing. There are no free-roaming buffalo anywhere, including Yellowstone National Park, where the animals are prevented from coming out of the mountains down onto ancestral High Plains terrain. The great prairie dog ecosystem, once 5 billion strong — the coral reef in the sea of grass, and so important to over 160 native animals — has been killed down to less than a scattered 3 percent. Meanwhile, the last vestiges of tallgrass prairie ecosystems are facing the bulldozer or plow.
But GPRC, through its Buffalo Commons movement, has put forth a new ethic of ecological identity and ecological health, where people work to restore the health of themselves, their community, and their natural environment, proudly steeped in returning life to a gasping land.
What are you working on at the moment? Any major projects?
In South Dakota, GPRC operations are run by Oglala Lakota folk who live on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. They are working to make sure the South Unit of Badlands National Park, which is inside the reservation boundaries and about to be transferred back to the tribe, is managed and protected as tribal wilderness. Currently, it is used for cattle grazing, and there is also a lot of theft and damage of paleontological, archaeological, cultural, and sacred sites and unmarked graves (from officially undocumented massacres back in the late 1800s). Please contact Badlands National Park and express support for “alternative Z,” which was written with input from Oglala Lakota citizens who live there and approved by traditional tribal elders.
We are also advocating for the upgrading of Buffalo Gap National Grassland, directly north of the reservation, into a Northern Plains unit of a proposed, first-ever Great Plains National Park. Right now, it is the site of the most successful endangered black-footed ferret reintroduction, and the U.S. Forest Service, which “manages” this national grassland for cattle grazing, wants to poison the prairie dog town upon which the black-footed ferret absolutely depends. According to the Native American Times, “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and partners have spent millions of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars in recovery efforts for the black-footed ferrets. Grazing records indicate that the public lands in Conata Basin feed the equivalent of 700 head of cattle per year — even in non-drought years. At an estimated profit margin of $27 per head of livestock, millions of dollars spent on black-footed ferret recovery would be sacrificed for $19,000 of private profit per year. … The public has [until July 23] to comment on the poisoning plan before the Forest Service issues its final Environmental Impact Statement.”
Home on the range.
In Colorado, we are beginning work on the 55,000-acre Soapstone project, north of Fort Collins, where on this new open space that connects the mountains to the plains we are seeking to have bison restored. There is a 12,000-year-old human history on the land with the buffalo, and we need to continue that into the modern era while providing open space, a true wilderness experience, and multicultural youth education and leadership development programs for Colorado (and other) residents.
In Texas, we are in a pitched battle to save the 2,000-acre Fort Worth Prairie Park area, which is slated for bulldozing, and contains perhaps the richest diversity left in the endangered Fort Worth Prairie ecosystem. I have been all over the Great Plains and have never seen such a lush, beautiful prairie; its nearly 2,400 tallgrass native plant species mirror the richness of tropical rainforests. Our Black community has proudly taken an especially strong lead here and needs to be commended.
Out in West Texas, we also have a new 12,000-acre restoration project coming into the pipeline that needs a lot of work, but which we are very excited about. We plan to leverage this into providing good jobs for both local people, whose economy and population are declining dramatically, as well as ex-offenders statewide trying to stay out of the prison system, through a new “Restoration Not Incarceration” program.
Lastly, our Plains Youth Inter-ACTION program operates in all three states, bringing inner-city youth together with Indian youth to assess and address environmental and health issues and become new leaders in their own lives and for tomorrow’s society. We make sure to always allow youth from HIV/AIDS-affected families access into our youth program’s limited slots.
One last thing: healthy, biodiverse native grasslands function very well as carbon sinks, and research is showing that if the native grasses are kept alive and the roots in the ground, they can hold carbon for up to 8,000 years.
What long and winding road led you to your current position?
In one way or another, the world has always seemed a war zone, full of hatred, ugliness, violence, defeat, and devastation. I reacted in turn, until I saw that my own backlash anger and hate made me little different from the Hate People. I am repulsed by the ongoing violence against the earth, animals, and disadvantaged people. Out here on the Great Plains, my experiences of the violence and danger in the outback made my inner-city hood life look safe. So my life’s work is about creating safe places: for wildlife, for young people, and for anybody who is tired of all the hatred and ugliness and wants our civilization to grow up, live in balance, and build a truly healthy, sustainable future.
My book Ghetto Plainsman, coming out very soon, tells it all.
What has been the worst moment in your professional life to date?
Spirit is the ultimate wilderness — so the worst moments were where even my spirit was tested to the breaking point. But don’t worry; nothing is going to stop me now.
What’s been the best?
The incredible blooming of our youth leaders.
What environmental offense has infuriated you the most?
Prairie dog killing contests.
Who is your environmental hero?
Tecumseh, vegan Coretta Scott King, Khalil Gibran, Esteban the Moor, President Gore, Wangari Maathai, all the children in our Plains Youth Inter-ACTION program, and Malaya, the prairie dog who was blinded in a poison gas attack, was rescued, and lived on for years to bring fierce inspiration to many people.
What’s your environmental vice?
Sometimes I take too-long showers.
How do you spend your free time (if you have any)? Read any good books lately?
Free time?! I look forward to reading Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man once my book finally is done in the next few weeks.
What’s your favorite meal?
I’m on the board of directors for the Black Vegetarian Society of Texas, where I met renowned artist (and GPRC board member) Evita Tezeno. She cooks all the time for me now. Her vegan meal of barbecued tofu, spicy collard greens, and vegan mac-n-cheez or jalapeno-blueberry cornbread will knock you off your chair (and keeps this vegan athlete healthy and strong enough to fight another day).
Which stereotype about environmentalists most fits you?
Ha ha ha. None.
What’s your favorite place or ecosystem?
The Fort Worth prairie — our nation’s “prairie rainforest”!
Who was your favorite musical artist when you were 18? How about now?
When I was 18, none. Now, Nas.
What’s your favorite TV show? Movie?
I don’t watch or own a TV. The world is my TV. My favorite movie would be Beloved, or The Big Blue.
If you could have every InterActivist reader do one thing, what would it be?
Become a GPRC member; support the rebirth of America’s heartbroken Great Plains.
Prairie Godfather
How do you think agriculture and prairie restoration should be managed? — Sarah Wassberg, Fargo, N.D.
Jarid Manos, CEO of the Great Plains Restoration Council.
Unfortunately, most of the land plowed is used to grow heavily industrialized crops to feed massively suffering, massively confined livestock in massive, polluting feedlots, hog farms, etc., while tens of thousands of people starve to death each day.
I do believe there is a place for agriculture (notice I did not say agribusiness) on portions of the prairies and plains, but it would need to be based on a new model of sustainability — an organic culture of raising food for people carefully in places where it can better fit into the natural cycle of ecosystem processes. Wes Jackson and the Land Institute in Salina, Kan., have some good ideas. But the western regions beyond the 98th meridian, the “dry line,” were never suited for the plow — hence the reason U.S. Naval ships 200 miles out in the Atlantic were blinded by Oklahoma dust during the apocalyptic Dust Bowl as the ancient topsoil was blown out.
Our society has not yet learned to be at home on this land. Native landscapes need to be allowed to prosper within and alongside our civilization. America has sat itself down on top of an indescribably complex set of interconnected ecosystems, as if we were the only ones here, with complete disregard for wildlife, waters, Native people, etc. When we learn to become a part of those interworking relationships and seek to heal the earth and ourselves through measurable, practical implementation of visionary ideas, especially propagating a new culture of caring based on human decency, consideration, personal responsibility, and consequence of actions, I think we might finally be able to say we’re evolving out of our societal immaturity and me-me-me fixations.
Specifically, we need to begin rebuilding a network of core wildland reserves and biological corridors wherever we live, and over the coming decades push to restore and reconnect the living landscape in order for life processes, wildlife, water, and ourselves to be able to weather the coming challenges that our changing world has in store. This will be much like the interstate highway system connecting large cities and smaller towns. Across the country, we need an ecological “highway” system of core reserves and networks connecting landscape-level, restored, and protected wildland ecosystems. This new restoration economy can be leveraged to provide invaluable wealth, prosperity, health, and peace to society, not just through the ecological services provided by high-functioning native landscapes, but by many, many new jobs, youth education programs, open space, community interaction, propagation of new ideas, super-clean technologies, and so much more.
We are faced with a huge challenge as our world begins to enter multisystem failure: Throw our hands up and squeak, or roll up our sleeves, let our eyes shine, seek commonality with each other and our battered ecosystems, and get to work.
This is so doable. The rebirth of the Great Plains can be a model and metaphor for people and ecosystems everywhere.
How do you go about the very tough challenge of getting people who have no idea of the negative ecological impacts they impose on the earth to become aware of environmental health and its close relationship to their health — as an outsider, especially? — Christina Roach, Sunrise, Fla.
No matter where we live, whether in a suburb, inner-city ‘hood, rural outback town, or glass-and-steel metrosexual high-rise, we all still live within a specific ecosystem — even if it has been changed by humans. And the earth is a very small, closed planet, so I don’t really believe there are any true outsiders.
The first step is to become conscious of where you’re at and work to belong to your ecological identity. Then, take personal responsibility for the specific consequences your actions have on others (people and animals) and always seek to cause less impact. True health is a three-legged stool of self, community, and the natural world. Pull any one leg out and the stool collapses. Great Plains Restoration Council calls this process “becoming an ecological participant.” Ecological participants become walking role models by their actions.
And as far as confronting the violence that may be occurring in another region, where you may feel an outsider, it’s good to care about what goes on elsewhere, while working on specific chosen battles. I am devastated by the catastrophic destruction of millions of acres of Indonesian rainforest, which is releasing extremely dangerous loads of carbon while pushing the orangutan and many other species to extinction, all to produce palm oil [PDF] (extreme greenwashing alert!) for “carbon-free” biofuels. But I can’t fight that one; I can just pass on the word, and mention it in the larger discussion when alerting people to lies and realness when it comes to our critical energy transition process.
Specifically, if you want to help out on the Great Plains, get involved in helping stop the prairie-dog poisoning campaigns on our national grasslands, support the Great Plains National Park effort, advocate for new protected wildlands, alert everybody you know to what really is going on out West, and also seek defunding of Wildlife Services (formerly Animal Damage Control) aerial gunning, trapping, propane bombing, cyanide poisoning, etc. ad nauseam, of native wildlife. These are all things you are being forced to support. You are paying for them with your tax dollars.
Ecology is the final and greatest social struggle because it demands the interconnectedness of all living beings, and that includes us humans.
I’ve come to realize that many ranchers are just making ends meet even with access to national grasslands for grazing. Yet my sympathy is completely with the prairie dog and the prairie biodiversity it represents. How do you reconcile these economic realities for people with few other options with the need to preserve and extend biodiverse prairie lands? — Julia Erickson, Maplewood, N.J.
As I mentioned, I used to react to the violence and hatred that I’ve experienced out in the backcountry with a backlash of much of the same destructive human impulses. But I’ve had a growth process. We even have some ranchers as members now. People who want to come together, share new ideas, and create new ecological opportunities for long-term sustainable health of self, community, and environment will reap unprecedented economic gain and stability.
GPRC has never advocated for the return of the whole Great Plains to wilderness. It is true that tens of thousands of square miles of backcountry have reverted back to “frontier conditions” of less than six people per square mile on their own. But we’re only talking about a small portion of the original 400 million acres.
A series of protected ecological reserves, connected where possible through biological corridors, that allow the buffalo, prairie dog, antelope, elk, wolf, grassland birds, and all the others to have a small portion of their homeland and freedom back will jumpstart a lucrative restoration economy for remaining rural residents, while also offering a bridge of understanding and partnership with urban people of all races, colors, and communities so that we all may grow in a serious way as a society.
Many West Texas towns in the old Rolling Plains counties, where the land is damaged, tired, and overgrown with mesquite, are losing 5 percent of their population every four or so years. Numbers like this are true of many western plains towns.
Almost every city in America is chasing the “economic development” dream: more houses, more people, more cars, and more money. In light of that, how likely are they to be willing to “landbank” ground that could be covered with tax behemoths like Starbucks and Wal-Mart? — Phyllis Allen, Fort Worth, Texas
Conversely to the situation in the outback, some areas, like Fort Worth, Texas, are experiencing mega-growth. Our endangered tallgrass Fort Worth prairie ecosystem is not only one of the most beautiful, lush places on Earth, not only shelters Western Hemisphere-migrating wildlife and globally imperiled plant biodiversity, but offers — if we protect what’s left — an opportunity of green open space, childhood interaction with wild nature, outdoor physical recreation, and countless other positive human values for weary people.
Some politicians and developers would like to change Fort Worth from “Where the West Begins” to “Where the Concrete Never Ends.” But many others are coming together to save our “prairie rainforest” as the hidden crown jewel it is. Just in the last few months, Vision North Texas, Texas Prairie Coalition, and a regional greenprinting initiative led by our partner Trust for Public Land have come into being, and I am part of all three.
Serving our youth and protecting our prairie are based in strong values and a determination for a healthy, sustainable future that showcases how we can still grab the wheel and change course before we are driven 90 mph into a brick wall.
Corporations are made up of people too, and some of them certainly must care about their children, the air they breathe, etc. People who make their money from the prairie, like gas drillers and developers, should especially give back. Many kids who have so little give so much, yet many who have so much give so little.
I see major opportunities here. If we move forward utilizing the state-of-the-art conservation design and conservation biology principles that exist now, blended into our brand-new ecological health movement, Texas for once can lead the nation instead of following or being dead last. We’re on our way, and the fact that this is a multiracial effort in a newly minority-majority state is something hot to watch and get involved in!
How cooperative have various government departments been with GPRC? — B. Fearn, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
GPRC is only working with people who are excited about health, cooperation, and the future. We work in carefully chosen areas. We diligently work to avoid getting dragged down into politics or ugliness. That is so wearying. And we don’t have time for pettiness or BS or hate. Our work is a living art project.
Right now, our new 12,000-acre project in West Texas, in a very rural, predominantly Anglo community, has got us all jazzed because the people are so friendly and enthusiastic to create a restored wilderness economy. Some of my friends, when they heard me recounting my first visit and planning meeting out there, joked that I must have gone into the Twilight Zone. But everything was and is for real. People were honestly friendly, and very enthusiastic. They even took this ol’ ‘hood rat to meet the bank president and one of the county commissioners. I had never even been into a friendly non-Black or non-Indian rural community before.
What a contrast to, say, Logan County, Kan., which is trying to force itself onto the private property of a rancher who actually wants to protect prairie dogs, and poison his prairie-dog ecosystem which he wants to serve as a safe haven and reintroduction site for endangered black-footed ferrets. (Black-footed ferrets are so rare they were thought extinct until some were found a couple decades ago in Wyoming. Ferrets depend on prairie dogs for survival, and because of the great poisoning of the continental prairie-dog ecosystem last century, they crashed.)
I do see hope as more citizens get involved and lead. Here in Fort Worth, the Tarrant County Commissioners Court passed a beautiful resolution in unanimous support of the Fort Worth Prairie Park. But certain members of the Fort Worth City Council worked hard against protection, even though it will be a huge economic boon and civic prestige. I scratch my head sometimes why some people would work so hard to commit such acts of violence.
Like the old inner-city urban garden mural I saw long ago, all I can say is: The Struggle Continues. La Lucha Continua.
Can you tell us more about the connection between meat-based diets and the wars waged on our wildlife (i.e., myths perpetrated by ranchers and animal agribusiness)? — Christopher R. Jones, Boulder, Colo.
Yes. A plant-based diet is healthiest for our planet, for wildlife, and ourselves. The amount of killing of wildlife to wipe the West clean for cows is repulsive and unconscionable. Some of it borders on hysteria, such as the killings of prairie dogs and magpies, birds that weigh less than a pound which are accused of attacking 1,000-pound cows. I was having a conversation with a woman in Mexico the other day, and she was remarking on the difference in the rural American West and that of Mexico. She always feels she has to steel herself to come up here because, while there is ecological damage to the land down there, it’s often based on economics. She doesn’t see the knee-jerk hatred toward native wildlife that she sees up here.
The things that bother me about meat-based diets concern not only the killing of wildlife, but the pollution, the environmental racism of meat-packing and rendering plants, worker maimings, the massive amounts of water needed to produce one pound of flesh protein vs. one pound of plant protein, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico from all the waste runoff, the strange, fearsome new diseases and terrible old diseases like diabetes and colon cancer, and the confinement cruelty to domestic animals as they are moved into feedlots and then to the hellhole of the slaughterhouse, where they often “die piece by piece,” as an immigrant ex-worker told The Washington Post.
Are you aware of any research that demonstrates a prairie’s ability to sequester carbon? — Tim Hammond, Grinnell, Iowa
The Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory at Colorado State University in Fort Collins seems to be taking the lead on this.
GPRC’s own website is currently undergoing a complete upgrading, and we will be placing an energy section there to help further and disseminate this work. For grassland enthusiasts, the exciting research that appears to be arising is that highly biodiverse native prairies do very well in the overall carbon-sequestration process. We know forests are good carbon sinks, but unlike temperate forests, grasslands don’t hold heat, so some research is looking into the possibility that native prairies might perform equal or even better in the overall equation. I will be posting some photos on my blog (I don’t get to it that much, but hope to do better) of a cutbank in the Fort Worth prairie where it’s almost shocking how much carbon you can see in the soil exactly down to the line where the native grass roots end. The dark and light contrast is really profound.
In any case, GPRC looks forward to participating in the upcoming carbon-sequestration and offset programs, and certainly the nation should get behind efforts to create another set of lungs in the Western Hemisphere. For those looking for carbon offsets, they can help us create a few million acres of peace on the Great Plains and good health and help for the earth’s atmosphere.
Do you think Evita Tezeno would be willing to share her recipes for the “vegan meal of barbecued tofu, spicy collard greens, and vegan mac-n-cheez [and] jalapeno-blueberry cornbread”? — Suzanne Roselius, Alameda, Calif.
Yes. Go to her website and contact her from there. Her soul vegan cooking is the best in the world, and I’m not the only mug saying that.
Are there any practical steps that can be taken to preserve and restore the keystone counterpart of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain West — the prairie dogs? — Paula Martin, Denver, Colo.
Yes, the loss of our wildlife and prairie has led a lot of people into grief as well as into action. But the key thing for people who care about wildlife like prairie dogs is to work cohesively to create large, functioning ecosystems. Nearly all of our remaining prairie-dog areas are mere fragments of former great extant areas. These are not sustainable for the long term.
Often, people who fight colony by colony are so overwhelmed because it’s only a matter of time before another “baby is thrown into the river,” and it becomes an endless cycle of trying to save individuals. Yes, saving the individuals is very important; but why not go upstream to stop the problem at the source for larger effect? I argue that this effort needs to be tied to coordinated, positive, measurable efforts by neighbors, communities, cities, and counties to rebuild and connect larger prairie-dog towns, so that not only the perritos can survive long term, but also all the native wildlife, birds, etc. that depend on their towns.
Just like a coral reef attracts much more marine wildlife than the surrounding ocean, so does the prairie-dog colony. The prairie-dog ecosystem is the coral reef in the sea of grass, and both have been shattered, bringing a whole million-year-old way of life closer into the extinction spiral. We must focus and coordinate to create and build larger reserves, rather than just constantly reacting. We and the perritos will always be kept down until then.
You see that I am constantly stressing the need to establish core reserves and biological connectors in the landscape. Just like the ocean would stagnate and die if you walled it off with concrete into 160-acre sections, so too the prairie ocean.
The prairie earth is gasping; she needs to breathe again, and she needs all of our help!
Do you, in the course of your work, promote a meatless diet? And, if so, how? — Marylou Noble, Portland, Ore.
I simply would not be alive, let alone a healthy athlete, let alone able to handle all the chaos and stress and work hours of running a nonprofit, if I weren’t vegan. When people want to learn more, I point them to Black Vegetarian Society of Texas, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, GoVeg.com, or Spiral Diner.
I like to make sure people have open access to information so they can make their own informed decisions. I also do not preach. I let the facts speak for themselves. And I offer that being a vegetarian is so much a reward, rather than a punishment. Life, the pure sensory experience of life itself, is so much more pronounced within a clean body. I don’t have to eat sludge, I don’t have to eat suffering or factory farming or aerial gunning, I don’t have to eat weird antibiotics and growth hormones and confinement-fostered diseases.
And for people seeking to recover from illness, I see quantum leaps with healthy vegetarian diets over the standard American diet. I know many people have started adding meatless meals to their week; hey, even a flexitarian decreases her or his impact, and anything we can do to lessen our impact is a celebration. It’s all good. I strangely have hope for the future.
As with all of the questions above, and the whole movement for true wellness, health, and sustainability in this critical moment in time, knowledge coupled with incisive action is our crucible and salvation.
Thanks to everybody for caring.
