Seems a better use of our energies “You don’t get a lot of chances to correct history’s mistakes. You get a few. And when you get them, you damn sure better take advantage of them,” said environmental historian Dan Flores. He wasn’t talking about consigning the MAGA movement to the ash heap of history. He was talking about efforts to restore bison herds on the Great Plains: In 1805, when the Lewis and Clark expedition reached the border of what is now North Dakota and Montana, they found herds of American buffalo so numerous, “the whole face of the country was covered” by them, Meriwether Lewis wrote. Less than a century later, in 1889, the nation’s most majestic animal (whose scientific name is Bison bison) had been reduced from practically uncountable numbers to an easily countable 541, and the species teetered on the edge of extinction. Today their numbers stand at about 350,000, most raised as livestock. Only 20,000 of them are protected in federal and state preserves in what are called conservation herds. Meanwhile, some ranchers and nonprofit environmental organizations are trying to provide buffalo with something closer to the habitats they once knew: more room to roam and native grasses to eat. Under those conditions, the bison can reclaim their former role as the “keystone” species of the prairies, improving conditions for all other species to thrive. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, herself a Native American, has a $25 million initiative to “combine bison restoration with grassland restoration, making large…