Hope is a bison

The virtually inconceivable decimation of the North American bison (Bison bison) from tens of millions of free-roaming animals to fewer than one thousand by the beginning of the 20th century was a tragedy, a failure, and a confirmation of the rapacious nature of humankind. In the next act of the bison story, the species was saved from extinction, restored in limited numbers to some public lands, and emerged simultaneously as an icon of societal strength and durability and a viable domesticated agricultural commodity. This is usually where the bison's story ends, but yet another act is unfolding. In this century, important initial steps have been made toward achieving a 100-year vision for full ecological restoration of North American bison. In this vision, success will have been achieved when “… multiple large herds move freely across extensive landscapes interacting in ecologically significant ways with the fullest possible set of other native species and inspiring, sustaining and connecting human cultures” (Sanderson et al. 2008). This vision was created as part of a broad-based effort, led by the American Bison Society and the Wildlife Conservation Society, with a wide array of partners, to champion the restoration of the bison's ecological role in human society. Bison restoration has become a message of hope that has inspired action by many groups from children to tribal elders to politicians. In the past decade alone, people have seized the initiative and acted with a purpose to restore bison as wildlife in northern Mexico, parts of the U.S. Rocky Mountains, Utah, and Alaska, and plans exist for restoration of bison in Canada and other locations throughout North America. Some of these new restoration initiatives have grown from significant cultural and social action. For example, the Blackfoot Confederacy of North America held a series of transboundary dialogues that brought together elders and tribal members to create a grassroots restoration project termed the Iinnii (bison in Blackfeet) Initiative. In March 2016, this initiative will return 90 bison calves from Elk Island to their native homeland. This introduction will provide multiple benefits, including restoration of the full faunal assemblage, reestablishment of critical ecological interactions, reconnection of the Blackfoot people with a living symbol of their ancient culture, and the basis for nature-based business development. Other bison-restoration initiatives are based on restoring ecological integrity on public lands for all people to enjoy. For example, the U.S. Department of Interior released a status report that lays out a coordinated vision for shared stewardship through collaboration among tribes, states, landowners, conservation groups, commercial bison producers, agricultural sectors, and others interested in bison (DOI 2014). At the federal level, campaigning is well under way to declare the bison the national mammal of the United States (WCS 2016) with the intention of broadening support for the conservation of this long beleaguered wildlife species. In the last century, in response to acts such as the decimation of bison, the modern conservation movement was framed as a crisis discipline, resulting in a focus on what Michael Soulé—one of the discipline's founders—describes as a culture of minimalism: minimum areas and minimum population sizes (Soulé et al. 2003). This focus on minimalism and loss has been emphasized in one of the standard lines used by the conservation community: humans are responsible for the unfolding Sixth Extinction. Chronicling the destruction of the natural world is a major responsibility of the field. To help in this endeavor, conservationists developed an official International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List for species that focuses only on detailing how bad the condition of a species is, considering species that are anything less than in trouble to be “of least concern.” Conservation's culture of loss has not only been institutionalized, but it has also been memorialized. The Mass Extinction Monitoring Observatory (MEMO) is being built on the Jurassic Coast of the United Kingdom out of fossil-bearing rock and will contain sculptures of extinct species (MEMO 2016). Mass Extinction Monitoring Observatory will feature a bell cast from a mold from the same fossil-rich rock that will be rung each time a species goes extinct (Martin 2012)—a mourners’ approach to the challenges of extinction. A second memorial is the Asahi Glass Environmental Doomsday Clock. Its face is starkly marked in quadrats labeled “barely concerned,” “slightly concerned,” “fairly concerned,” and “extremely concerned.” The hands of the clock are placed in the quadrat based on results from a survey of “the sense of crisis felt by respondents about the continuance of the human race as the global environment continues to deteriorate …” (AF 2016). It seems there may be no room for feeling good about how things are going––the clock has apparently run out of that time. It is no wonder that some experts have diagnosed conservation biologists as suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (Fraser et al. 2013). We are not the first to lobby for the conservation community to reverse its position on hopelessness (Beever 2000; Redford & Sanjayan 2003; Swaisgood & Sheppard 2010; Garnett & Lindenmayer 2011; Balmford 2012; Knight 2013), and some action has been taken such as the IUCN's Green List for well-managed protected areas and the anticipated decision by the Species Survival Commission to establish a green list to balance its Red List of Threatened Species. Good things are happening: Anadromous fish are returning to the rivers of eastern North America after dam removal (Waldman 2013), some species once at risk of extinction are recovered sufficiently to no longer warrant federal protection, the first U.S. national migration corridor was established for the American pronghorn (Antilocapra americana), and citizen science is mobilizing in support of local, regional, and national conservation efforts. Notwithstanding these examples, broad-scale societal actions to reverse the admittedly dire losses of the natural world have not been forthcoming—despite conservation jeremiads. We must learn from our colleagues fighting climate-change communication battles and those studying their efforts. Psychologists working in this arena know that “fear appeals or images of overwhelmingly big problems without effective ways to counter them frequently result in denial, numbing, and apathy …” (Moser & Dilling 2011: 165). Despite this knowledge, the conservation community continues its litany of emails and mailings documenting the latest severe problems and attempting to stir people to action. These negative outreach methods run the risk of creating emotional contagion through which emotional states can be transferred broadly and quickly among individuals through email and social media (Kramer et al. 2014)—a contagion of loss and inaction. We are not Polyannas blinded to the terrible things happening to the natural world so many of us treasure. But, we are realists who have seen decades of failure in getting the world to change its priorities, and we believe it is past time for a change in the tenor of our efforts. We endorse a new path based on Orr's vision of hope: “hope requires the courage to reach farther, dig deeper, confront our limits and those of nature, work harder, and dream dreams … hope has to hustle, scheme, make deals and strategize” (Orr 2011). Hope can lead to action—a key message for those seeking to inspire humankind to save the natural world by, for example, restoring North American bison so that they once again become significant ecological actors. Pandora's story, like that of the bison, is not fully remembered. When Pandora opened the box she was given by Zeus, she released into the world all the evils currently facing humans. This is the story most people tell, but it is incomplete. The one thing left in the box when Pandora closed the lid was hope (Hesiod 700 BC, translated by H.G. Evelyn-White 1914). To achieve our broad goals, we in the conservation community must reopen the box and release its final occupant, hope. So, remember the avarice, desperation, and stupidity that led to the slaughter of tens of millions of bison. Then, imagine the North American prairies and woodlands painted with bison thriving under shared stewardship—hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of them—grazing, wallowing, nourishing people and predators, and sustaining the belief that we can work together to fix what we have broken. Hope is in the now. Hope is in the future. Hope is a bison.

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