Ashley DiMarco Ph.D.

I.

I started where I always start when trying to learn something new. Researching each component part, before building it back up into a larger picture. This time, I would be studying the American Bison and its place in Central Texas.

Before my assignment, I researched a bit about bison evolution—where they came from and what made them unique. I learned that there are only two living species of bison: the European Bison and the American Bison. I learned that, despite people’s insistence on calling them American Buffalo, American Bison are only distantly related to any kind of buffalo. One give away between the two is that bison have a giant hump on their necks and upper backs. Buffalo do not. This hump is made of elongated vertebrae which are covered in powerful neck muscles. This allows American Bison to use their heads as a snowplow in the winter—pushing back layers of snow and revealing nutrient rich grasses.

In my research, I also discovered that bison are incredible eaters. Over the course of the year, wild bison will shift the types of plants they eat based on what has the highest energy content at the time. This could be the reason why bison meat is lower in fat, and higher in protein, than cattle beef or fancy grass-fed burger meat at Whole Foods.

So, now I had a handle on all the parts: the evolution, the anatomy, the diet, and the nutrition of the meat. I felt I was prepared for my visit to Roam Ranch to see how the bison are raised and witness the harvesting of one. I was very wrong.

II.

I was wrong, because I am a scientist and this is how scientists are taught to think. In fact, if you don’t “think like a scientist” in Western culture, you are considered dumb or irrational. Scientists break down complex systems into their component parts, and then reconstruct those parts like a puzzle. The result is never as neat as we’d like. Yet, we’ve named this reconstructed puzzle–progress.

When you isolate a single variable, say the diet of the American Bison, then you can learn all there is to know about that one variable. You do this with the hope of understanding the animal and how it fits into the food chain. And then you can even optimize that variable. Just think about the primary way we raise cattle in this country. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations or CAFOs are industrial livestock production farms that confine animals together, usually indoors, and feed them a solely corn or soy-based diet. This fattens them up with ruthless efficiency, before they’re ready for slaughter and packaging.

But here’s the thing—when you only understand how to optimize the diet of cattle, you miss the larger picture. You don’t see how raising cattle in this way contributes to pollution, climate change, and negatively affects the health of the humans who eat them.

And of course, it makes sense why we do this. There have been serious advancements in our understanding of biology by breaking down complex systems and focusing on one component at a time. The reason we have life-saving drugs for certain types of cancer, for example, is because scientists studied a single molecular pathway and learned everything they could about it. They identified a single target for a drug and tested it in grossly oversimplified models, before trying in humans. And sometimes, this frankensteined approach actually worked.

In my own doctoral training, I was taught how to break down very complicated processes in cancer cells. My advisor suggested I conduct my studies in two separate biological contexts, with the hope of putting it all together in the end. I thought, with this knowledge, I could help cancer patients one day.

In one context, I studied cancer over a very long period of time, in the absence of an immune system. In the other context, I studied the cancer over a short period of time with a completely intact immune response. But the reality is both scenarios were unrealistic. People always have immune systems and cancer develops over the course of years, not weeks. Neither study could accurately paint a picture of how cancer evolves in the human body. Which means, more concretely, our way of understanding complex biological systems is fundamentally broken.

III.

When I arrived at Roam Ranch on the morning of the bison harvest, I was shocked to learn how bison fit into their ecosystem. The ranchers explained that bison contribute directly to the ecology by improving soil health. Not only with their manure, but with their spade-shaped hooves. These are excellent tools for breaking up hard-packed soil, allowing for the scarce rain water of Central Texas to soak into the ground and introducing insects and microorganisms that help regenerate nutrients in the soil.

And Roam Ranch is not only a home for free grazing bison. They also raise turkeys, chickens, and ducks. They’re home to a dozen varieties of native Texas grasses. They cultivate orchards of fruiting trees, and welcome a multitude of wild visitors. Visitors like the great horned owls that have developed a reputation for hunting the turkeys that live on the property, for sport. When I asked the ranchers about the loss to their flock, they told me they’re happy to share with nature– because they’re a part of nature.

Roam Ranch brought life back to a system that science had killed.

When the owners of the ranch purchased their parcel, it was nine hundred acres of industrially farmed, drained, and desolate land. After just eight years under their stewardship, the ranch is unrecognizable, and now functions as a fully integrated ecosystem. They took a hands off approach, not seeking to optimize each individual variable, but rather provide the land with the natural ingredients it needed to heal itself.

IV.

When it was finally time for the harvest, we rode in a trailer out to the pasture and witnessed a herd of fifty bison. They looked at us with curiosity, and then indifference– grunting, eating, pooping, and playing in a habitat they were perfectly designed for.

Something I didn’t expect during the harvest was when the shot of the rifle rang out—a precise, immediate and humane euthanasia—the rest of the herd did not scramble or disperse. The herd did not run away. They encircled the fallen bull lying on the ground, and mourned as a community. The ranchers told us this was how the herd processes the sacrifice of their brother without fear. They were not afraid because they did not evolve in tandem with humans and guns, and therefore perceived no threat.

The entire herd was a part of the harvest that day, and so were we. We became part of a system. One composed of a billion living breathing parts that cannot be separated, or studied, or understood in isolation. We participated as predators, but even predators are connected to their prey and the land, and the soil, and the bugs, and the wild grasses, and the sky. For a brief moment, we were not idle observers, isolating and studying. We were not separate. Perhaps this is what a truer version of understanding biological systems looks like. Comprehensive, collaborative, connected.