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Go DeeperTallgrass Prairie Preserve Bison Return to Iowa Bison, Fire and the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve
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1,091 Bison
Historians estimate that 30 million to 50 million bison roamed the Great Plains and montane grasslands before European settlers arrived on the continent. Bison dominated these prairies for nearly 10,000 years. Their migrations, grazing patterns and behaviors influenced fire cycles, created habitat, and provided food and nutrients for other species.
When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark explored the West 200 years ago, they were astonished by the size of the bison herds they encountered. In his Journals, Lewis recounts a scene at the White River in the Dakotas in 1806: “If it be not impossible to calculate the moving multitude, which darkened the whole plains, we are convinced that twenty thousand would be no exaggerated number.”
But some 65 years later, the population of North American bison was in rapid decline. Railroad tracks cut across the country, dividing bison into northern and southern herds.
The market value of a buffalo hide climbed to an all-time high of $3.50, and hunters targeted bison with Christian Sharp’s newly developed .50 caliber rifle. The U.S. Army helped facilitate the hunt by providing bullets free of charge. While hunters and tourists slaughtered bison for fun and profit, the U.S. government exterminated whole herds in order to deprive Plains Indians of natural resources and force them onto reservations.
The introduction of cattle and sheep to the plains also took a toll: Competition for grazing lands fragmented some bison herds; others succumbed to exotic livestock diseases imported from Europe and Africa.
By 1899, rancher and hunter Charles Jesse “Buffalo” Jones marveled in his autobiography at the bison’s rapid demise. “A few years ago — scarcely a quarter of a century — millions upon millions of American bison … roamed over the vast plains of the intracontinental region of North America,” he wrote. “Now they are so reduced in number that absolutely the last lingering spark of vitality is smouldering on the very verge of extinction.”
By the close of the 19th century, zoologist and conservationist William Temple Hornaday found that only 1,091 bison remained in all of North America. And most were in captivity on ranches or in zoos.
The North American bison might have gone the way of the passenger pigeon, were it not for the foresight of a handful of individuals who, in the 1870s, began capturing the few remaining bison and raising them on private ranches. Most of the nearly 500,000 bison in existence today are descendants of the 500 bison in these private herds. (Two small wild herds also continued to thrive in Yellowstone National Park and Canada’s Wood Buffalo National Park.)
While bison survived, the ranchers’ efforts unknowingly set in motion a new threat to the species’ future. In the late 1800s, the ranchers began experimentally breeding the bison with cattle, with an eye toward engineering hardier livestock that could better withstand harsh winter weather, parasites and viral diseases.
The resulting animals, called beefalo or cattalo, possessed none of the hoped-for “hybrid vigor.” First-generation hybrids in particular were more freakish than functional, with awkward bodies, peculiar coloring, and considerably more hump and less rump than cattle. Since the prime cuts of meat come from the ribs and back of an animal, these hybrids with their big brisket chests and petite posteriors — along with an ornery attitude, to boot — were of little value to the ranchers who bred them. Today, the descendents of these hybrids more closely resemble bison.
It has taken nearly a century for the consequences of this failed experiment to come to light. But the legacy of the ranchers’ breeding strategies is revealed under the microscope: Cattle genes from hybrids have been passed down to nearly every bison herd in existence.
Nature picture credits: Photos © Ann E. Cutting
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