RON HENGGELER

As the populations of the United States pushed West in the early 1800’s, a lucrative trade for the fur, skin, and meat of the American Bison began in the great plains. Bison slaughter was further encouraged by the US government as a means of starving out or removing Native American populations that relied on the bison for food. Hunting of bison became so prevalent that travelers on trains in the Midwest would shoot bison during long-haul train trips. Once numbering in the hundreds of millions in North America, the population of the American Bison decreased to less than 1000 by 1890, resulting in the near-extinction of American bison. Thanks in large part to conservation efforts undertaken by Theodore Roosevelt and by the US government, there are now over 500,000 bison in America.

Right now, Yellowstone National Park is the premiere site for bison restoration in the US. However, there are restrictions in place that force park officials to kill bison when the herd count gets higher than 3,000 and bison leave the park. Several Native American tribes are working with WWF to help restore bison to native lands. But before the bison can be reintroduced, they must be separated from other wildlife to ensure they are healthy. Fort Peck tribes in northern Montana have established a quarantine site that is now ready and waiting to host surplus Yellowstone bison. The National Park Service is now evaluating whether to use the site as their preferred alternative location for surplus bison.

Tell the National Park Service you support Fort Peck as the Preferred Alternative and help us contribute to conservation and cultural restoration efforts in North America.

For thousands of years, the plains bison provided food and shelter for tribal communities across the Northern Great Plains. Today, Native Americans have an opportunity to do the same for the bison in return.

By supporting the allocation of Yellowstone bison by the National Park Service you are helping to put healthy bison back on their historic North American lands.

Tell the National Park Service you support Fort Peck as the Preferred Alternative and help us contribute to conservation and cultural restoration efforts in North America.

Millions of bison were slaughtered for sport, for their hides, to clear the plains for settlers and their livestock and to control the Plains tribes. Native Americans used the bison for food and clothing, shelter, tools and ceremonial implements – nearly everything to survive physically and spiritually.

The settlement of the West changed the environment in numerous ways. One well-known example is the mass killing of American bison. In 1889, William T. Hornady, Superintendent of the National Zoological Park, wrote a detailed report of what he termed the "extermination" of the species. That report appears in Evolution of the Conservation Movement, 1850-1920.

The decline of the buffalo is largely a nineteenth-century story.

The American bison, the largest mammal in North America, once roamed the continent in vast herds and helped to shape the ecology of the Great Plains, as well as the history of the United States of America.

As recently as 200 years ago, the North American continent was home to around 40 million bison, providing a sustainable source of meat, as well as hides for shelter and clothes, for many of the continent’s native people.

Sadly, overhunting during the westward expansion of European settlement in the 19th century resulted in the decimation of the bison population. By the late 1800s, the species was near-extinct, with as few as 1,000 individuals remaining either in the wild or in captivity. Recognising that an iconic American animal was about to be lost, conservationists launched a national recovery campaign that included the implementation of protective legislation preventing the extirpation of the remaining wild herds.

Again largely a nineteenth-century tale, the final stage from 1867 to 1884 was notable for the fury of the slaughter for hides and other products. 4-5 million killed in three years alone.

Following recovery efforts, the bison population has risen to around 500,000 today, but the vast majority (over 90 percent) are held in captive stocks managed for commercial production. With only a small fraction occurring in free-ranging herds, the modern perception that the bison is secure in the wild is somewhat misguided.

In addition, numerous threats are still putting pressure on both captive and wild populations, including habitat loss, reduction in genetic diversity, cross breeding with domestic cattle, and the culling of dispersing wild bison to prevent the spread of bovine diseases.

 

 

Adult females live with their young in hierarchical herds, led by a dominant female, whilst mature males usually move about alone, or in small bachelor groups. Joining the female herds during the mating season, male bison fight fiercely for the right to mate. This usually involves head-to-head ramming, while receptive females gallop about to stimulate competition, thus hoping to mate with the strongest male.

 

The decline of the buffalo is largely a nineteenth-century story. The size of the herds was affected by predation (by humans and wolves), disease, fires, climate, competition from horses, the market, and other factors. Fires often swept the grasslands, sometimes maiming and killing buffaloes. Millions of horses in Indian herds competed for grasses. Drought was perhaps most significant; severe prior to the fifteenth century, and episodic in the eighteenth, it might have been worst at the very moment when other pressures converged in the early years of the decades from 1840 to 1880.

Yet no matter the impact from drought, horses, or fires, what doomed the buffalo most were (1) the commodities markets for buffalo tongues, skins, meat, and robes; and (2) the railroads, which provided the means of transportation to rapidly expanding European-American populations.

Again largely a nineteenth-century tale, the final stage from 1867 to 1884 was notable for the fury of the slaughter for hides and other products. In 1867 the first of five railroads split the herd in the heart of buffalo range, a process repeated again and again. Provisioners like Buffalo Bill Cody, sportsmen, farmers, and ranchers who craved the prairies for crops and cattle—all placed new pressure on bison.

 

The railroads made transportation of buffalo hides easy and cheap, so market hunters flooded in, wasting three to five times the numbers they killed.

The carnage from herds already depleted by other factors defied description: 4-5 million killed in three years alone. The commercial hunt was finished by the fall of 1883.

As long as the North American buffalo roamed free and bountiful, the Plains Indians were able to remain sovereign. Buffalo were their lifeline—the Indians had a symbiotic relationship with them, and always honored the mighty beasts for the many blessings they provided.

The buffalo crossed many different areas and functions, and it was utilized in many ways. It was used in ceremonies, as well as to make tipi covers that provided homes for people, utensils, shields, weapons and parts were used for sewing with the sinew. For several millennia, both the buffalo and the Plains Indians prospered. Estimates put the peak bison population, during the mid-1800s, near 60 million.

The American buffalo, also known as bison, has always held great meaning for American Indian people…buffalo represent their spirit and remind them of how their lives were once lived, free and in harmony with nature.

-the InterTribal Buffalo Council

To Native Americans, the Bison or American Buffalo was a symbol of sacred life and abundance. This importance and symbolism was created from legend:

One summer a long time ago, the seven sacred council fires of the Lakota Sioux came together and camped. The sun was strong and the people were starving for there was no game. Two young men went out to hunt in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

Along the way, a beautiful young woman dressed in white appeared to the warriors and said, "Return to your people and tell them I am coming." This holy woman presented the Lakota people with the sacred pipe which showed how all things were connected. She taught the Lakota people the mysteries of the earth. She taught them to pray and follow the proper path while on earth. As the woman left the tribe, she rolled upon the earth four times, changing color each time, and finally turning into a white buffalo calf. Then she disappeared. Almost at the same time as her leaving, great herds of buffalo could be seen surrounding the camps. It is said that after that day, the Lakota honored their pipe, and buffalo were plentiful.

The Native Americans see the birth of a white buffalo calf as the most significant of prophetic signs, equivalent to the weeping statues, bleeding icons, and crosses of light that are becoming prevalent within the Christian churches today. Where the Christian faithful who visit these signs see them as a renewal of God's ongoing relationship with humanity, so do the Native Americans see the white buffalo calf as the sign to begin life's sacred hoop.

"The arrival of the white buffalo is like the second coming of Christ," says Floyd Hand Looks For Buffalo, an Oglala Medicine Man from Pine Ridge, South Dakota. "It will bring about purity of mind, body, and spirit and ;unify all nations—black, red, yellow, and white." He sees the birth of a white calf as an omen because they happen in the most unexpected places and often among the poorest people in the nation. The birth of the sacred white buffalo provides those within the Native American community with a sense of hope and an indication that good times are to come.

 

Historically, the American bison had the widest natural range of any North American herbivore, extending all the way from northern Mexico to Alaska, with central Alberta being the dividing line between the plains bison to the south and the wood bison to the north. Today, free-roaming bison herds occupy less than one percent of their former range, and are restricted to a few national parks and small wildlife areas.

For most Americans, the end of bison was assumed to be a natural and necessary by-product of manifest destiny. “There was a general belief in the 1870s that the bison were wild animals who were likely to eventually go extinct anyway,” Isenberg said. “The eradication of bison from the Great Plains and their replacement with cattle would be an improvement that turned a wilderness into a productive landscape.”

The final shipment of hides took place in 1884.

With very few exceptions, the buffalo was gone and bone collectors scooped up all the remains they could find for shipment east where they were processed into phosphate fertilizer.

 

Despite having such a bulky frame, bison are able to run at speeds of up to 60 kilometres an hour.

Eyesight is poor, but the senses of hearing and smell are acute, and appear to be vital in detecting danger.

Over winter, bison can dig through deep snow, by sweeping the muzzle from side to side, to access buried vegetation.

A Land Without Buffalo

The end came quickly—less than 400 wild bison were left by 1893. And the Plains Indians were just about pushed off the Plains as well—their warriors had fought valiantly against the Army in spite of their inferior numbers, but they now felt inadequate because they were unable to provide for their families. Those proud warriors were confined to reservations, told to farm and wait for the government to provide rations. “It’s really hard to force another culture to recognize what your attributes are for being an upstanding man. They were told, ‘A good farmer is the best thing you can be in our culture,’?” said Jim Stone, a Yankton Sioux and the executive director of the Intertribal Bison Cooperative. “To force that sedentary lifestyle on somebody who was out living on the adrenaline rush of hunting buffalo—either on horse or foot—I don’t know if we can fully comprehend what that would feel like. They had been the caretaker of the buffalo, and suddenly there were no more. From the cultural side, they had failed in their role as humans. I don’t know how I would deal with that.”

Crow Chief Plenty Coups (1848-1932) described the mood of his people to his biographer, Frank B. Linderman: “[When] the buffalo went away, the hearts of my people fell to the ground.…After this, nothing happened. There was little singing anywhere.”

 

 

Prior to European settlement on the continent, the plains bison undertook seasonal migrations of hundreds of kilometres along the same routes year after year. Moving in vast herds, the bison was considered to be a classic ‘keystone’ species, significantly influencing grass composition, nutrient cycling, fire regimes, and the availability of habitat for a diverse assemblage of other animals.

 

Within three hours, the newborn calves are able to run about, but are guarded closely by the mothers, who will charge any intruders. The young are weaned at around seven to twelve months and reach sexual maturity when they are two to four years of age, with wild individuals having a potential life expectancy of around 20 years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The bison, shaggy behemoth of the Great Plains, despite weighing as much as a ton, can race up to 40 mph, jump up to 6 feet vertically and can quickly pivot to combat predators. Unfortunately this mighty beast is not faster than a speeding bullet.

Though the bison’s ancestors roamed the continent with saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths, he could not protect himself from expansion and was nearly wiped out in the late 1800s as the nation’s population moved West.

Before their near extermination, an estimated 30 million to 60 million bison ranged from Canada to northern Mexico and from the Plains to Eastern forests. By about 1890, roughly 1,000 remained, including two dozen in Yellowstone National Park.

More than 100 years ago, bison were slaughtered by the millions. In the spring of 2012, the great herds were being re-born on the Great Plains—one baby at a time.

For more than a decade, Earthjustice has been fighting to protect bison in and around Yellowstone National Park. Now as the bison are returning to the ranges of Northeast Montana, we are continuing to fight for this magnificent creature on Indian reservations.

WHY BRING BISON TO THE FORT PECK INDIAN RESERVATION?

We are at a pivotal moment for bison conservation in Montana. For the first time ever, the State of Montana has transplanted wild bison from their refuge in Yellowstone National Park to their native habitat on the Great Plains. It's an historic step, but it has not gone unchallenged.

Livestock interests and their allies have sued to reverse the restoration of bison on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation and kill the larger bison restoration program in its infancy. We've stepped in to defend the restoration program and make sure it succeeds as what we hope will be the first of many efforts to bring bison to the plains.

Our clients are Defenders of Wildlife and the National Wildlife Federation, and we are also working closely with the affected American Indian tribes. We aren't trying to put 30 million bison back on the plains, but there are plenty of places where wild bison can be restored. Aside from tribal lands such as the reservations, there are public lands in Montana owned by all Americans. The choice is whether they are for cattle or whether some of them might be better used to restore bison that are part of our nation's wildlife heritage.

 

 

Today, one hundred years later, the buffalo has returned from the brink of extinction to roam the grasslands again in Yellowstone and beyond. Feared by farmers for diseases like brucellosis that they might carry to cattle herds, their fate beyond Yellowstone is uncertain, although Indian people have joined forces in a cooperative effort to save animals wandering from Yellowstone from the rifle, and to raise viable herds of this formerly vital, and currently deeply symbolic, animal.

Right now, Yellowstone National Park is the premiere site for bison restoration in the US. However, there are restrictions in place that force park officials to kill bison when the herd count gets higher than 3,000 and bison leave the park. With your help, I'd like to change that.

Several Native American tribes are working with WWF to help restore bison to native lands. But before the bison can be reintroduced, they must be separated from other wildlife to ensure they are healthy.

Fort Peck tribes in northern Montana have established a quarantine site that is now ready and waiting to host surplus Yellowstone bison. The National Park Service is now evaluating whether to use the site as their preferred alternative location for surplus bison.

Tell the National Park Service you support Fort Peck as the Preferred Alternative and help us contribute to conservation and cultural restoration efforts in North America.