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Bunny-stuffed Pumpkin
KyAnn J. (original recipe)
I've been to Wyoming and met some pretty nice people there. Also, Yellowstone is in three states but mostly Wyoming, and there is a lot to love about Yellowstone. Can you believe, the greater Yellowstone ecosystem (the Park and surrounding Forests) is the largest temperate ecosystem in the world? Kind of impressive and kind of sad at the same time. But let's stay positive and mostly be impressed.
In graduate school I read about an area in Wyoming and wrote 100 pages on grassland conservation there and nearby. I would love to visit in person. The area was Thunder Basin, in northeastern Wyoming, between the Big Horn Mountains to the west and the Black Hills of South Dakota to the east. Thunder Basin National Grassland (TBNG) contained therein is one of the last best potential sites for Black-footed ferret reintroduction. The problem is that ranchers and their political allies hate the prairie dogs that ferrets rely on and eradicate them from most of TBNG.
Ferrets depend almost entirely on prairie dogs for food and shelter, and the range across the American grasslands of three species of prairie dogs has declined 97% from its historical area. From 2004 to 2008 one poison retailer, the South Dakota Bait Station, sold enough poison to eradicate every prairie dog in the United States. Eradication campaigns are motivated by the belief that prairie dogs compete with domestic livestock for forage, although at least one recent study concludes that grazing ungulates, whether native bison or the cattle that have largely succeeded them, actually prefer and benefit from the ecological impacts of prairie dog habitation. Another earlier study found that the expense of poisoning outweighed the benefits.
Black-footed ferrets were declared extinct in 1979, only to be discovered two years later in northwestern Wyoming. That population plummeted in the mid-1980s to 18 individuals, who were then all captured to form a captive breeding program. They have since been reintroduced to dozens of sites (with mixed success), including Shirley Basin, Wyoming, the location of an abandoned uranium mine south of Thunder Basin.
The charismatic ferret may be a flagship species (a recognizable indicator of a healthy ecosystem) but the importance of prairie dogs goes beyond the ferret alone. Prairie dogs are keystone species in Great Plains ecosystems, meaning they interact ecologically with many other species in their habitats in ways that are not wholly replicated by another species. When they are gone, the ecosystem suffers.
We need to stop seeing prairie dogs as a pest and learn to live alongside them on different landscape scales. This means non-lethal methods of discouraging their spread from protected areas to adjacent private lands, and probably compensating ranchers who maintain prairie dog colonies on their land, an idea that almost all Wyoming landowners expressed interest in according to a 2012 publication.
Interestingly, Wyoming is ranked 4th most "socialist" U.S. state as measured by government expenditures as a portion of economic activity. Maybe don't tell them this. But the point is, there is a global stake in maintaining biodiversity and a local interest in competing land-uses. Payment for ecosystem services can bridge this divide, and Wyoming is already spending so let's all pitch in and make this happen.
I don't blame Liz Cheney for her dad's horrible judgment. But she is an enemy to prairie dogs and stood in the way of Black-footed Ferret reintroduction in TBNG, so I am not especially a fan, despite your conscientious stand recently (how old were you in 2003?).
Dick Cheney was among the signatories of a letter that was passed across the President's desk during the Clinton Administration, urging him to invade Iraq years before Cheney and the gang later gained control of government and implemented the plan themselves under false pretexts. And he is personally accountable for the terrible death toll because he was a powerful proponent of the "Shock and Awe" doctrine that Wikipedia describes as "a military strategy based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and destroy their will to fight." This is why people my age think of Dick Cheney as a terrorist. I'm not sure I realized before I started this project of how much trauma I carry from living through what our country did twenty years ago. No wonder the kids today protest the War in Gaza! This is the price of empathy.
During the Presidential Debate, I wrote in my notes: So to be clear, I would decline an endorsement from Dickhead Cheney. I would disavow it. You can vote for me, Dickhead, but it makes me scratch my head and makes me hope I'm not doing something horribly wrong. I would have a conversation with you about the Iraq war. That is my price for voting for me.
It's a little sad that Wyoming would send Dick Cheney to Washington as their sole Representative in the House (obviously prior to his war crimes in the Middle East), but then again, my district is currently represented by a Republican so weird outcomes happen. I guess I can't win with everyone, so maybe my intended audience is Wyoming's liberal minority which really exists, I know, I've met her (at a hotel bar in Cody, WY). I wonder if she cries about the Iraq War.
This recipe seems promising but a little simple, especially considering the swap of TVP for ground
turkey. I was listening to a cooking show on the radio and they suggested adding miso which I thought was a pretty
nice idea. Miso typically doesn't stand up well to heat but in this case I think it's worth trying.
Ingredients
- 1 sm. Pumpkin (or Delicata squash)
- 1/4 cube No-chicken bouillon
- 1/4 cu. Wheat crackers, crumbled
- 2 sprinkles Nutritional yeast
Preparation
By now, you know what to do! Allow TVP to hydrate in boiling water, soy sauce, and
no-chicken bouillon for 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, cut pumpkin/squash in half and scrape out seeds along
with any stringy pulp. Combine TVP with all other ingredients except nutritional yeast, mix well, and distribute
between pumpkin/squash halves. Bake 1 hour at 350 degrees, then sprinkle with nutritional yeast to taste.
Discussion
**WARNING** I have not yet made this recipe and so I can't vouch for the results.
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