Conservation of American bison
The conservation of bison in North America is an ongoing, diverse effort to bring American bison back from the brink of extinction. Plains bison, a subspecies, are a keystone species in the North American Great Plains. Bison are a species of conservation concern in part because they suffered a severe population bottleneck at the end of the 19th century. The near extinction of the species during the 19th century unraveled fundamental ties between bison, grassland ecosystems, and indigenous peoples’ cultures and livelihoods. English speakers used the word buffalo for this animal when they arrived. Bison was used as the scientific term to distinguish them from the true buffalo. Buffalo is commonly used as it continues to hold cultural significance, particularly for Indigenous people.
Recovery began in the late 19th century with a handful of individuals independently saving the last surviving bison and the government efforts to protect the remnant herd in Yellowstone National Park. Dedicated restoration efforts in the 20th century bolstered bison numbers though they still exist in mostly small and isolated populations. Expansion of the understanding of bison ecology and management is ongoing. The contemporary widespread, collaborative effort includes attention to heritage genetics and minimal cattle introgression.
Context
Bison once roamed across most of North America in numbers that reached into the tens of millions. Before the 19th century, bison were a keystone species for the native shortgrass prairie habitat as their grazing pressure altered the food web and landscapes in ways that improve biodiversity. The expanses of grass sustained migrations of an estimated 30 to 60 million American bison which could be found across much of North America. While they ranged from the eastern seaboard states to southeast Washington, eastern Oregon, and northeastern California, the greatest numbers were found within the great bison belt on the shortgrass plains east of the Rocky Mountains that stretched from Alberta to Texas.The grasslands once included more than 1,500 species of plants, 350 birds, 220 butterflies, and 90 mammals. The bison coexisted with elk, deer, pronghorn, swift fox, black-footed ferrets, black-tailed prairie dogs, white-tailed jackrabbits, bears, wolves, coyotes, and cougars. The bison scoring the trees with their horns kept them from taking over the open grasslands. As bison grazed, they dispersed seeds by excreting them. The heterogeneous or varied landscape created by the roaming bison helps birds of which millions arrive each year. Long-billed curlews are a migratory shorebirds that rely on three types of habitats on the prairie – areas with short grass, long grass and mud – for completing their breeding cycle each year. Mountain plovers use bison wallows as nesting sites. Prairie dogs benefited from the tendency of the bison to graze areas around prairie dog towns. The bison enjoyed the regrowth of plants previously cropped by the rodents which reduced the grass cover, making it easier to spot predators. Bald eagles, ravens, black-billed magpies, swift foxes, golden eagles, grizzly bears, wolves, beetles, and nematodes benefited from bison carcasses.
Such abundance made the bison a critical part of Native American culture for thousands of years: providing food as well as materials for clothing, shelter, tools, and more. In the 19th century, bison became the staple food for early explorers, fur traders, and many European settlers. With the introduction of the horse and the settling of European Americans in the west, a gradual decline of the bison population began. As conflict with settlers developed, the U.S. Army began a campaign to force Native American tribes on the lands allotted to them. Elimination of bison could further the government strategy of turning them into farmers. The country’s highest generals, politicians, and President Ulysses S. Grant saw the taking away their main food source by the destruction of buffalo as the best way to accomplish their removal from the landscape. Hundreds of thousands of bison were killed by U.S. troops and market hunters. The transcontinental railroad was key in facilitating the large-scale hunting of bison along with the development of the repeating rifle. The rapid slaughter of bison also surged when a tanning method was developed that allowed the soft hide to be made into tougher, more desirable leather that was sent to an international market.
Early efforts
In the late 1860s, private citizens independently began to capture and shelter bison. In 1874, both houses of Congress passed H.R. 921, To prevent the useless slaughter of buffaloes within the territories of the United States, but President Ulysses S. Grant did not sign it, resulting in a pocket veto. By the late 1880s, the great herds of bison that once dominated the landscape were nearly gone. As they suffered a severe population bottleneck, bison became a species of conservation concern and various efforts to preserve the species through protection and stewardship began. The near decimation of the species unraveled fundamental ties between bison, grassland ecosystems, and Plains Indians’ cultures and livelihoods. As hunting ceased and private citizens provided grazing land, the ability of bison to increase their numbers was evident. As ranchers began to raise bison as livestock, they bred some of them with cattle. These bison-cattle hybridization experiments failed and were not repeated. Most of the bison available to establish conservation herds were from private herds resulting in cattle gene introgression being present in today's herds. Bison were for all practical purposes ecologically extinct across its former range, with multiple consequences for grassland biodiversity.Oral accounts of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes recall a man of the Pend d’Oreille tribe named Atatice who knew something needed to be done as the buffalo disappeared. Atatice’s son Latati, or Little Peregrine Falcon, eventually led six orphan bison west to the Flathead Reservation. His stepfather, Samuel Walking Coyote, sold them to horse traders Michel Pablo and Charles Allard in 1884. The Pablo-Allard herd grew until 1896 when Allard died and his half of the herd was dispersed as it was sold to ranchers. Pablo’s herd continued to grow and range wild along the Flathead River. By the early 1900s, the Pablo-Allard herd was said to be the largest collection of the bison remaining in the U.S. Pablo was notified in 1904 that the government was opening up the Flathead Reservation for settlement by selling off parcels of land. After failed negotiations with the U.S. government, Pablo sold the herd to the Canadian government in 1907. The transfer took until 1912, as the bison were captured and shipped by train from Ravalli, Montana, to Elk Island to establish a conservation herd.
File:Gibbon River at Madison in Yellowstone-750px.JPG|300px|right|thumb|Bison grazing near Gibbon River at Madison in Yellowstone National Park.
Yellowstone National Park was established on March 1, 1872 where poaching of bison continued despite the presence of the First U.S. Cavalry soldiers at Fort Yellowstone to, in part, protect wildlife. Bison dwindled to about two dozen animals that spent winter in Pelican Valley. In May 1894, Congress passed the Act to Protect the Birds and Animals in Yellowstone National Park, and to Punish Crimes in Said Park. Known as the Lacey Act of 1894, the law provided punishment for poaching on public lands, resolved jurisdictional issues and helped Yellowstone's managers to start recovering the bison population. In 1902, they purchased 21 bison from private owners and raised them in Mammoth and then at the Lamar Buffalo Ranch. This increased the genetic diversity of the Yellowstone bison herd but is also likely one of the sources of domestic cattle genes in the Yellowstone population.
Several bison first lived on the National Mall in a pen behind the Smithsonian Castle from 1888 until they were moved to the National Zoological Park that was established in 1891. Taxidermist William Temple Hornaday brought them back after he was sent out to collect bison specimens for the Smithsonian Museum in 1886. When he saw that bison were on the verge of extinction, his mission changed from hunting bison for display to preserving them in the wild. The American Bison Society was formed in 1905 with Hornaday as its president to support bison recovery efforts. Theodore Roosevelt, named honorary president of the society, used his position as U.S. President to help the New York Zoological Society and the American Bison Society secure land, procure buffalo from ranchers and promote bison reintroduction projects. One of the first three bison restoration projects supported by Roosevelt and the ABS was the National Bison Range which returned some of the Allard herd to the Flathead Valley. The other two were the Wichita Mountains Reserve and Wind Cave National Park. On October 11, 1907, six bulls and nine cows were shipped by rail from the New York Zoological Park to the Wichita National Forest and Game Preserve in Oklahoma. Comanche Chief Quanah Parker came to the train station in Cache where the crates were transferred to horse-drawn wagons and hauled to the preserve. The children, waiting in the groups of Comanche families, had never seen a bison. In 1913, ABS sent 14 bison from the New York Zoological Gardens to Wind Cave National Park which had been created on January 3, 1903 by legislation signed by Roosevelt. An additional six bison were sent to the park in 1916 from Yellowstone National Park. Congress was also compelled to establish public bison herds at Sully’s Hill National Game Preserve and Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge.
The bison at Lamar Buffalo Ranch eventually began to mix with the free-roaming population in Yellowstone Park and by 1954, their numbers had grown to roughly 1,300 animals. Bison reproduce and survive at relatively high rates compared to many other large, wild mammals, so even as the population recovered Yellowstone managers limited its growth with frequent culling. A moratorium on culling, that began in 1969, resulted in the bison population increasing dramatically. Removals began again in 1991 and averaged 233 bison per year from 1991 through 2017 as wildlife officials tried to curb some of that rapid growth of 10 to 17 percent every year. Yearly guidelines were issued on how many bison should be removed. Many slaughtered bison have been provided to Native American Indian tribes, relief agencies and contract sales. Some live bison were shipped to zoos, reservations and other parks. Also in recent years hunting quotas have been increased in Montana and Wyoming for bison leaving Yellowstone Park.