Intervention still unlikely

Dear Editor,

We were glad to see your April 25 editorial ("Poppers back, with a new slant") showing concern about the continued long-term depopulation decline in western Nebraska and much of the rural Great Plains. We believe that a large part of the region's prospects lies in an environmentally sustainable future we call the Buffalo Commons.

So we applaud events like McCook's annual Buffalo Commons Storytelling Festival that foster a sense of place in western Nebraska and the Plains. Such occasions can only help the region. We have great memories of our 1990 visit to McCook and the people we met there. We appreciate the contributions of the festival, now in its fifteenth year.

But your editorial could leave the impression that our April 13 speech in Sioux City, Iowa, at Briar Cliff University's Center for Prairie Studies suggested a larger role for the federal government in creating the Buffalo Commons.

That is not what we said. We have been saying since 1991 that our original 1987 article in Planning erred in giving government the central role in devising the Buffalo Commons.

Instead the people inventing the Buffalo Commons on the ground are, as your editorial says, "some farmers and ranchers, Native Americans, non-profits and folks like Ted Turner."

The federal government is no more likely to act today than it was twenty-some years ago. Its current budget problems, nowhere near as clear a generation ago, will sideline it for years to come. No one, and certainly neither of us, is talking about the editorial's "ominous idea of Washington imposing a lifestyle on flyover red states." Short of a Dust Bowl-scale disaster, it is unlikely to intervene in the Plains.

The 2010 Census results and those going back to 1940 point to the difficulties facing ever-resilient Plainspeople. We agree with the editorial that the region badly needs "viable alternatives for shaping the future." We think the Buffalo Commons offers one.

Sincerely,

Deborah E. Popper

Frank J. Popper

Highland Park,

New Jersey