Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s

Abstract

In mid 1930s, North America's Great Plains faced one of worst man-made environmental disasters in world history. Donald Worster's classic chronicle of devastating years between 1929 and 1939 tells story of Dust Bowl in ecological as well as human terms. Now, twenty-five years after his book helped to define new field of environmental history, Worster shares his more recent thoughts on subject of land and how humans interact with it. In a new afterword, he links Dust Bowl to current political, economic and ecological issues-including American livestock industry's exploitation of Great Plains, and on-going problem of desertification, which has now become a global phenomenon. He reflects on state of plains today and threat of a new dustbowl. He outlines some solutions that have been proposed, such as the Buffalo Commons, where deer, antelope, bison and elk would once more roam freely, and suggests that we may yet witness a Great Plains where native flora and fauna flourish while applied ecologists show farmers how to raise food on land modeled after natural prairies that once existed.