Times have changed -- and attitudes, economies and outlooks -- since the Poppers rocked the Plains from Canada to Texas, including western Oklahoma. Just how much might be gauged Wednesday when the Poppers return to Oklahoma to update the situation and their thinking.
Frank Popper, a land-use planner at Rutgers University, and Deborah, his wife and a geographer at the City University of New York's College of Staten Island, will present a public lecture and question-and-answer period starting at 4 p.m. Wednesday at the National Weather Center at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.
A reception will follow from 5 to 6 p.m. Wednesday. The center is at 120 David L Boren Blvd., at the corner of Jenkins Avenue and State Highway 9.
The lecture title: "The Buffalo Commons in the Twenty-First Century."
The Poppers will talk about "how the Great Plains, including Oklahoma, is in environmental crisis," according to a press release from OU's College of Atmospheric Geographic Sciences, which is playing host. "They hope to stimulate discussions on how to radically change land-use practices now and for future generations."
The Poppers were met with ridicule and hostility after an academic paper they coauthored in 1987 became news -- and the talk of farmers coops, coffee shops and opinion columns across the Plains states. The article, "The Great Plains: From Dust to Dust," appeared in the December 1987 issue of Planning magazine. The subtitle: "A daring proposal for dealing with an inevitable disaster."
The Poppers proposed that policy-makers work with landowners and conservationists to reclaim the Great Plains and create a "Buffalo Commons" -- an open range in the public domain harking to the days before white settlement, when Indian tribes did hold land in common.
The Poppers lectured in Oklahoma City and Norman in 1990.
"We're looking forward to coming back. In 1990 everyone in Oklahoma was very polite about our work, but clearly pained and annoyed about it too," Frank Popper said Friday. "In the last 10 years or so, attitudes elsewhere have softened a bit after the continuing census results, groundwater losses, rising farm subsidies, possibilities of climate change, not much of an acknowledged factor in 1990.
"People recognize a kernel of truth in what we are saying, but they don't necessarily agree that the Buffalo Commons or some version of it is the solution. Over the years the Buffalo Commons has been interpreted in an extraordinary number of ways. Sometimes they see that Deborah and I have put our finger on a problem, but have a way out that is wildly different from any possible interpretation of the Buffalo Commons. But we're really curious about what the Oklahoma reactions will be. And no matter what they are, we are hoping for and anticipating a vigorous discussion all around."
For more information on the lecture, please contact Fred Shelley, professor and chairman of the Department of Geography at OU, at 325-5325.
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