IDEA / BACK TO NATURE : Plains-to-Grass Plan Raises Dust : The region’s residents are not happy with a proposal for it to become pristine again.

It covers one-fifth of the nation’s land area, but the 10-state region known as the Great Plains has a population less than that of Georgia or Indiana. The Plains have the worst hail storms and blizzards, the fiercest droughts, the hottest summers and coldest winters and, because of all this, the nation’s shortest growing season.

It is a land so desolate, so inhospitable to human life, that without government intervention much of the region would suffer near-total desertion within a generation, says Frank J. Popper, a Rutgers University urban studies professor. And that, according to Popper, is exactly what should happen.

PLAN CREATES STIR: Popper and his wife, Deborah Epstein Popper, have created a stir from Montana to Texas with their advocacy of a plan to allow the Great Plains to revert to their natural “pre-white” condition.

” . . . Tear down the fences, replant the shortgrass, and restock the animals, including the buffalo,” the Poppers urged in a 1987 article in Planning magazine. Since then, they’ve made frequent trips to the Plains states to speak before groups often hostile to the idea of turning the region back over to the buffalo.

“I hope they enjoy it back home in toxic Jersey,” newspaper editor Lauren Donovan said at a forum last November in Bismark, N.D., where she appeared with the Poppers. “Foolishness and Popperscock like this could only have come from a place like that.”

NO FIGHTING CHANCE: Others argue, more rationally, that the Poppers’ approach essentially amounts to writing off a major portion of the country without giving it a fighting chance to survive.

But Frank Popper said he thinks history will prove him right. Some areas of the Great Plains reached their population peak a century ago and have been in decline ever since, he said. It is not uncommon for people in the Plains states to drive 40 miles to a school or movie, a hundred miles to a clothing store or dentist, he said.

Population on the Plains received a big boost from the 1862 Homestead Act, which gave 160 acres to anyone who would settle for five years, and was nurtured by federal agriculture supports and public works projects. Now the expense of intensive farming on the arid land, and the loss of many family farms, is reversing the trend, the Poppers contend.

“We believe that over the next generation the Plains will, as a result of the largest, longest-running agricultural and environmental miscalculation in American history, become almost totally depopulated,” the Poppers write. The cities that remain may actually increase their population, they argue, but they will be urban islands in an ocean of grass.

“Ours is not a strong government intervention approach,” Frank Popper said. “Our approach is simply let natural and economic forces run their course.”

As the Poppers define the Great Plains, the region’s eastern border is the 98th meridian. San Antonio and Denver are on the Plains’ eastern and western edges, respectively. But the largest city actually within the Plains is Lubbock, Tex. (pop., 179,000), the Poppers say.

The Poppers argue that as the depopulation of the Great Plains continues, the U.S. government should step in and buy the land. The government also should help the region’s economic refugees resettle elsewhere.

ULTIMATE NATIONAL PARK: And gradually, they contend, the Great Plains should be turned into a sprawling Buffalo Commons--”the world’s largest historic preservation project, the ultimate national park. Most of the Great Plains will become what all of the United States once was--a vast land mass, largely empty and unexploited.”

“It’s going to be a good 20 years before the rest of the country and the Plains states wake up to what’s happening,” Frank Popper said. “We think a lot of the people in the Plains states already know what is happening but either can’t or won’t admit it.” He thinks that is the reason for the emotional response.