The bison keep eating hay, peering at a world they haven’t roamed in more than 120 years.
HERE TO STAY Nobody knows for sure how many bison roamed the Plains of North America hundreds of years ago. Estimates range from 25 to 60 million. Their range stretched west from Pennsylvania to southern Alberta and as far south as Mexico and the Florida Panhandle. Tribes throughout the West called themselves the “people of the buffalo.” They included the animal in their creation stories and considered them spiritual kin. Plains Indians hunted the huge herds for centuries. Bison provided everything: food, clothing, weapons and shelter. By the late 1880s, however, whites had hunted the bison to near extinction. And the removal of North America’s largest terrestrial animal made room for herds of domesticated cattle. Some of the last free-ranging bison held out in the Pelican Valley of Yellowstone National Park, in a herd numbering less than 30. Nationwide, fewer than 2,000 bison survived the slaughter. Through careful breeding and raising, conservationists in the 20th century have managed to bring the number of bison in North America up to nearly half a million. Fewer than 14,000 are considered wild and genetically pure, however—the Yellowstone herd among them. The rest, including the herds already at Fort Peck and Fort Belknap, have been partly domesticated through crossbreeding with cattle and are raised largely for human consumption. Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who’s been instrumental in getting the Yellowstone bison to Fort Peck, calls the crossbreeds “mongrels.” Given the venerable place that bison hold in ceremonies among Plains tribes such as the Assiniboine and Sioux, genetic purity carries a lot of weight in Indian Country. So, too, does the idea of restoring wild herds to the prairie. Bison today are largely treated like livestock, confined to private herds and wildlife preserves. Those that wander
north out of Yellowstone are hazed back inside the park’s boundaries by state agents on horseback, in helicopters and on ATVs. If the bison venture onto private property, they’re shipped to a quarantine facility. Fear over the spread of brucellosis, a disease that can cause ungulate calves to be stillborn, has kept them under close scrutiny. Even the new Fort Peck herd were given ear tags. At Fort Peck Community College, Schweitzer pounds the podium with his
line the back. They’ve come to celebrate the bison’s return and to thank those responsible. Everyone keeps saying the same thing: “Today is a good day.” Schweitzer tells the crowd that this herd will be the starting point for pockets of genetically pure bison at other locations throughout the West. “May the bison roam free,” he says. “And may we recapture the pride that existed for 400 generations before we destroyed them.” No bison truly roam free these days,
left hand again and again and again, mimicking the sound of the drum circle at his inauguration in 2005. The thuds continue through the first few minutes of his speech on the occasion of the return of the bison to Fort Peck. “When we took the bison, we took a part of the soul of the Indian people,” he says. “Now they’re back—and they’re here to stay.” There are elders in the audience this morning. Tribal leaders line the front of the room, school children from Frazier
not in the way elk, deer, antelope, moose and scores of other natives species do. It took years just to put this new herd in a two-acre enclosure here. Already, the tribe is being forced to build a stronger fence, one that will not only keep the bison in but the deer, elk and antelope out. They and their conservation partners, Defenders of Wildlife and the National Wildlife Federation, have already sunk $200,000 into fences, solar-powered water tanks and other improvements to
Missoula Independent Page 15 March 29 – April 5, 2012