The Great Buffalo Herd Monument is extinct – at least
on public land. The brainchild of a New York artist, the Mt.
Rushmore-type monument would have placed 1,000 copper, moving,
moaning bison on a high sage- and pine-covered plateau called the
Beaver Rim south of Lander, Wyo. But when the agency which manages
the land, the Bureau of Land Management, went to the public for
comment on the project, they were stampeded with a herd of letters
and negative response. Some 1,800 people responded to the idea,
with 97 percent “intensely opposed,” reports Bill Bartlett with the
BLM. The hail of noes was the largest response to a proposal of any
kind in the Lander BLM’s history, including the disposal of
low-level nuclear waste.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline No home on the range.
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