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Anyone who has visited Fort Robinson State Park mentions the bison. Inside the 22,000 acre park, the bison roam, feeding on prairie grass, tumbling around in the dirt and lounging in the warm summer sun. Visitors to the park will travel as far as they need in order to catch up the symbol of the Great Plains.
At one point in time, there were hundreds of millions of bison (sometimes called buffalo) in North America. In one century, a few dozen remained. Man nearly wiped out the American bison (Bison bison). Through conservation efforts, their numbers have grown.
The National Bison Legacy Act, signed by President Barack Obama on May 9, 2016, made the bison the first national mammal of the United States. According to the Washington Post, the bison represents the country’s first successful foray into wildlife conservation.
Native Americans slaughtered what could be eaten and used the hair and bones. By the 1800s, the introduction of horses from the 1500s and guns meant certain doom for the thundering beasts on the plains. Westward expansion displaced Native Americans and killing bison was a tactic used by the U.S. government to control tribes. The introduction of cattle, and their associated diseases, reduced bison herds. Hides, which were worth a lot of money, tourists paying to shoot bison from train windows and the encroachment of farming on bison habitat all contributed to its demise.
The PBS Nature program “American Buffalo: Spirit of a Nation” told the story of the destruction of bison by greed and uncontrolled hunting. There were buffalo killing contests. A Kansan set a record by killing 120 bison in 40 minutes. Buffalo Bill Cody, hired to slaughter the animals, killed more than 4,000 buffalo in two years, PBS said.
According to the National Park Service (NPS), Yellowstone was the only place in the contiguous 48 states where wild, free-ranging bison persisted into the 20th century. Even with the Lacey Act, which meted out hard punishment for poachers, “Yellowstone’s bison were reduced by poaching from as many as one thousand in 1872, to approximately two dozen animals in 1902.”
Today, you can see herds in several places across the country, but it is unlikely they will ever reach the numbers they once had in the 19th center.
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