Muse Ecology

  Wild Idea Buffalo Company is a bison ranching business that exists to conserve and restore the prairie ecosystem of the northern Great Plains. With no roundup, and an innovative field harvesting method, they care for the well-being of the bison, and as much as possible allow them to express their co-evolved behaviours. You can follow their blog and order their bison meat at Michael DiGiorgio recorded the banjo-bird jams I'm using in the intro and ending. You can find his amazing nature art at . Mike says that if you'd like to buy the album of his nature-banjo jams, you can find his email on his website and he can mail you a CD. You can support the production of Muse Ecology at .  

In this episode, we continue our investigation of the Great Plains Bison with a visit to 777 Bison Ranch near Rapid City, South Dakota.  Owner Mimi Hilenbrandt and fellow operations manager Moritz Espy gave us a tour of the pastures and corrals.  Along the way, we discussed differences and similarities between bison and cattle, the possibility of a buffalo commons, their business model and how it affects the bison, and how their decades of Holistic Management and bison grazing have led to regeneration of the prairie landscape.  We also discussed a few of the complex questions the bison forces us to wrestle with. You can find them at In the episode I refer to a book about restoration bison ranching.  It's called A Wild Idea, by Dan O'brien of Wild Idea Buffalo Company, whom you'll hear from next episode. Michael DiGiorgio recorded the banjo-bird jams I'm using in the intro and ending. You can find his amazing nature art at . Mike says that if you'd like to buy the album of his nature-banjo jams, you can find

In our visit with Mark Tilsen in the Black Hills for Episode 5 about Tanka Bar, our interview happened to take place right before a prayer walk to a proposed gold mining site up the creek from Mark's place.  As I began to include this synchronous content in the Tanka Bar episode, I realized that it lit up a section of the rabbit hole that needed it's own episode for a proper introduction, so I created this bonus episode to explore some of the complexities that emerged while looking at gold mining in the Black Hills.  It includes another historical introduction, audio from the prayer walk, and recordings from phone conversations with Mark Tilsen and Cheryl Rowe of Dakota Rural Action. Here's a photo of the Homestake Mine site, photo credit to Rachel Harris: Links: Tanka Bar: Dakota Rural Action:  Mineral Mountain Resources:  U.N. Special Report on Indigenous Peoples in the U.S.: You can find the album, Under a Buffalo Sun, containing John Trudell's Buffalo Wild poem, and another album of Mignon and Good S

In this episode, the second of four in this series on the bison in the Great Plains, we visit the lands of the Oglala Lakota in the Black Hills of Western South Dakota, where we met with Mark Tilsen, cofounder of Tanka Bar.   Tanka Bar, a company owned and operated by the Oglala Lakota of the Pine Ridge Reservation, created the first commercial bison meat and fruit bar based on one of their sacred foods, called wasna.  The mission of Tanka Bar is to restore the Pine Ridge landscape and economy by bringing back the buffalo.  Before the interview with Mark, I also share a bit more history of the time of the buffalo slaughter.  I feel it's useful to have some understanding of the creation of the wounds that Tanka Bar is working to help heal. There's also a bonus episode that wove with the buffalo investigation in the Black Hills, that will be released days after this one. We'll look at historic and and current natural resource struggles in lands granted to the Oglala Lakota in 1868.  It's much the same story as

This episode of Muse Ecology is the first in this four part series beginning to explore humankind's relation to the bison in the Great Plains of North America. This buffalo series features diverse voices of folks involved in the bison's return that Alison and I met on our buffalo investigation journey in February 2018. While the next three episodes feature entrepreneurs and ranchers who are working to restore bison to the landscape, this first episode features voices of wildlife advocates who see the buffalo as a wild elder whose right to roam long precedes our recent human constructs.   The first visit on our buffalo journey was with the Buffalo Field Campaign, a volunteer-run organization that exists to defend the dignity and freedom of the last continuously wild herd of buffalo in North America, in Yellowstone National Park. Founded over 20 years ago by Lakota Grandmother Rosalie Littlethunder and videographer Mike Mease, through documentation and advocacy, the BFC seeks to promote awareness of the story a

Episode 3 closes out Muse Ecology's inaugural series recorded in December 2017, about ecosystem restoration and the work of John D. Liu. In this episode, John and I have a conversation on the way to the airport that weaves through many topics currently affecting our global situation, and we discuss how a large scale shift to focusing on ecosystem restoration addresses the roots of all of them. John D. Liu is Ecosystem Ambassador for Commonland Foundation and Visiting Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He also catalyzed the Ecosystem Restoration Camps movement.  You can find his films and research papers at  One of the topics we discuss is how water vapor is more of a greenhouse gas than carbon emissions, and how ecosystem destruction has disrupted the water cycle and led to increase of uncondensated (not formed into clouds) atmospheric water vapor.  The source John was referring to for his greenhouse gas numbers can be found at the following lin

This is the fifth and final part of episode 2 at the Global Landscapes Forum in Bonn, Germany with John D. Liu.  In this part we hear two conversations about the important but historically ignored voices from indigenous nations, including their long history of oppression by globalizing civilization, the distinct worldviews inherent in the global economy and indigenous cultures, and the importance of bridging these differences and working together to protect and restore the Earth. John D. Liu is Ecosystem Ambassador for Commonland Foundation and Visiting Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He also catalyzed the Ecosystem Restoration Camps movement.  You can find his films and research papers at  We will first hear John Liu speak with Leo van der Vlist, who works for the Netherlands Centre for Indigenous Peoples and the Embassy for the Earth, and is a member of the international Forest Stewardship Council.  For over 25 years, Leo has been working w

While largely unfamiliar to many, peatlands perform crucial funcions in Earth's carbon and water cycles.  For many centuries we have been draining peatlands to free up land for commodity agriculture, destroying these important living systems.  We now are growing aware of the effects of draining peatlands, and some folks are exploring ways to preserve and restore these wet ecologies while still being able to produce and harvest biomass and other crops from these areas.  This sort of peatland agriculture is called paludiculture. In part 4 of this 5 part series at the Global Landscapes Forum in Bonn, Germany, we will hear John D. Liu interview 3 individuals who are working to change agriculture, finance, and policy so that they work to restore, rather than drain peatlands. John D. Liu is Ecosystem Ambassador for Commonland Foundation and Visiting Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He also catalyzed the Ecosystem Restoration Camps movement.  You can

In Part 3 of this episode at the Global Landscapes Forum in Bonn, Germany, we will hear conversations between John Liu and folks who are working to restore degraded forest lands around the world through research, international business, and volunteer initiatives. John D. Liu is Ecosystem Ambassador for Commonland Foundation and Visiting Research Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences.  He also catalyzed the Ecosystem Restoration Camps movement.  You can find his films and research papers at  Patrick Worms is President of the European Agroforestry Federation and Senior Science Advisor for the World Agroforestry Centre, a research organization that studies the benefits of trees in agicultural systems and helps farmers to implement their findings. Pieter van Midwoud is the Tree Planting Officer for Ecosia, the search engine that plants trees.  As people use the search engine, their counter shows how many trees they are responsible for purchasing, and Pieter is

In Part 2 of Episode 2, we hear some voices of folks who are working to bridge the world of global finance with the preservation and restoration of ecological function.   Caroline van Leenders is the Senior Policy Advisor of Greening Finance at the Netherlands Enterprise Agency.  She facilttes community of practice groups for investors to help them move their money to more benficial projects.  She is also a writer and advocate of regenerative economic system change.   Nanno Kleiterp is chair of the &Green Fund, which funds projects that show how highly productive commodity agriculture can be done in a way that protects ad restores forests, peatlands, and human livelihoods.   Jan Willem den Besten is the Senior Expert of Ecosystems and Climate for the Dutch national committee of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the world's largest environmental organization.  Its vision is a just world that values and conserves nature.   Michael DiGiorgio recorded the banjo-bird jams I'm using in

Episode 2 consists of some fascinating interviews conducted by John Liu at the Global Landscapes Forum in Bonn, Germany.  I've arranged them into five parts. Part 1 focuses on Commonland Foundation, an organization that catalyzes regenerative projects around the word.  We heard of Commonland in Episode 1 at the ecosystem restoration camp in Spain, and how it had played a crucial role in the context that facilitated that project.  We hear from Willem Ferwerda, founder and CEO of Commonland Foundation.  I found his words to be clear and insightful, as John Liu's questions ranged from advice to youth seeking to enter the emerging regenerative economy to the relation between ecosystem health and social stability.  Willem and the Commonland Foundation have done much to facilitate better relations between economy and ecology, and to restore ecosystem function in degraded landscapes. We also hear from Eva Rood, Director of the Positive Change Initiative at Rotterdam school of Management, Erasmus University and proj

The Ecosystem Restoration Camps movement has begun with the pilot camp in the Altiplano of southern Spain.  In this episode I visit the camp to hear from the resident restoration volunteers and the land owner, Alfonso Chico de Guzman, cofounder of the Alvelal initiative. Links: Find out more and become a supporting member of the Ecosystem Restoration Camps at   You can find scholarly work and films of John Liu at  Find out more about the AlVeLal Association at At you can set up Ecosia as your search engine where your searches pay for trees for restoration projects around the world. The banjo bird jam in the intro and outro was recorded in the woods by nature artist Michael DiGiorgio.  If you'd like to order a CD of this album he says to email him at the contact on his website,  You can find more of Jo's acoustic music at You can find more of Ides' experimental electronic music at Resident volunteers in a phone meeting with an expert consultant   Alfonso showing me on of the many construction projects o