Bison | Research & Encyclopedia Articles

The American bison (Bison bison) or "buffalo" is one of the most famous animals of the American West. Providing food and hides to the early Indians, it was almost completely eliminated by hunters, and now only remnant populations exist though its future survival seems assured.

Scientists do not consider the American bison a true buffalo (like the Asian water buffalo or the African buffalo), since it has a large head and neck, a hump at the shoulder, and 14 pairs of ribs instead of 13. In America, however, the names are used interchangeably. A full-grown American bison bull stand 5.5–6 ft (1.7–1.8 m) at the shoulder, extends 10–12.25 ft (3–3.8 m) in length from nose to tail, and weighs 1,600–3,000 lb (726–1,400 kg). Cows usually weigh about 900 lb (420 kg) or less. Bison are brown-black with long hair which covers their heads, necks, and humps, forming a "beard" at the chin and throat. Their horns can have a spread as large as 35 in (89 cm). Bison can live for 30 or more years, and they are social creatures, living together in herds. Bison bulls are extremely powerful; a charging bull has been known to shatter wooden blanks 2 in (5 cm) thick and 12 in (30 cm) wide.

The American bison is one of the most abundant animals ever to have existed on the North American continent, roaming in huge herds between the Appalachians and the Rockies as far south as Florida. One herd seen in Arkansas in 1870 was described as stretching "from six to 10 mi (9.7 to 16.1 km) in almost every direction." In the far West, the herds were even larger, stretching as far as the eye could see, and in 1871 a cavalry troop rode for six days through a herd of bison.

The arrival of Europeans in America sealed the fate of the American bison. By the 1850s massive slaughters of these creatures had eliminated them from Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, New York, and Tennessee. After the end of the Civil War in 1865, railroads began to bring a massive influx of settlers to the West and bison were killed in enormous numbers. The famous hunter "Buffalo Bill" Cody was able to bag 4,280 bison in just 18 months, and between 1854 and 1856, an Englishman named Sir George Gore killed about 6,000 bison along the lower Yellowstone River. Shooting bison from train windows became a popular recreation during the long trip west; there were contests to see who could kill the most animals on a single trip, and on one such excursion a group accompanying Grand Duke Alexis of Russia shot 1,500 bison in just two days. When buffalo tongue became a delicacy sought after by gourmets in the east, even more bison were killed for their tongues and their carcasses left to rot.

In the 1860s and 1870s extermination of the American bison became the official policy of the United States Government in order to deprive the Plains Indians of their major source of food, clothing, and shelter. During the 1870s, two to four million bison were shot each year, and 200,000 hides were sold in St. Louis in a single day. Inevitably, the extermination of the bison helped to eliminate not only the Plains Indians, but also the predatory animals dependent on it for food, such as plains wolves. By 1883, according to some reports, only one wild herd of bison remained in the West, consisting of about 10,000 individuals confined to a small part of North Dakota. In September of that year, a group of hunters set off to kill the remaining animals and by November the job was done.

By 1889 or 1890 the entire North American bison population had plummeted to about 500 animals, most of which were in captivity. A group of about 20 wild bison remained in Yellowstone National Park, and about 300 wood bison (Bison bison athabascae) survived near Great Slave Lake in Canada's Northwest Territories. At that time, naturalist William Temple Hornaday led a campaign to save the species from complete extinction by the passage of laws and other protective measures. Canada enacted legislation to protect its remnant bison population in 1893 and the United States took similar action the following year.

Today, thousands of bison are found in several national parks, private ranches, and game preserves in the United States. About 15,000 are estimated to inhabit Wood Bison National Park and other locations in Canada. The few hundred wood bison originally saved around Great Slave Lake also continued to increase in numbers until the population reached around 2,000 in 1922. But in the following years, the introduction of plains bison to the area caused hybridization, and pure specimens of wood bison probably disappeared around Great Slave Lake. Fortunately, a small, previously unknown herd of wood bison was discovered in 1957 on the upper North Yarling River, buffered from hybridization by 75 mi (121 km) of swampland. From this herd (estimated at about 100 animals in 1965) about 24 animals were successfully transplanted to an area near Fort Providence in the Northwest Territories and 45 were relocated to Elk Island National Park in Alberta. Despite these rebuilding programs, the wood bison is still considered endangered, and is listed as such by the U. S. Department of the Interior. It is also listed in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES) treaty.

Controversy still surrounds the largest herd of American bison (5,000–6,000 animals in the early 1990s) in Yellowstone National Park. The free-roaming bison often leave the park in search of food in the winter and Montana cattle ranchers along the park borders fear that the bison could infect their herds with brucellosis, a contagious disease that can cause miscarriages and infertility in cows. In an effort to prevent any chance of brucellosis transmission, the National Park Service (NPS) and the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, along with sport hunters acting in cooperation with these agencies, killed 1,044 bison between 1984 and 1992. Montana held a lottery-type hunt, and 569 bison were killed in the winter of 1988–89, and 271 were killed in the winter of 1991–92. The winter of 1996–97 was exceptionally harsh, and some 850 buffalo of the Park's remaining 3,500 starved or froze to death. In addition, the NPS, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the Montana Department of Livestock cooperated in a stepped-up buffalo killing program, in which some 1,080 were shot or shipped off to slaughterhouses. In all, more than half of Yellowstone's bison herd perished that winter.

Wildlife protection groups, such as the Humane Society of the United States and the Fund for Animals, have protested the hunting of these bison—which usually consists of walking up to an animal and shooting it. Animal protection organizations have offered alternatives to the killing of the bison, including fencing certain areas to prevent them from coming into contact with cattle. Conversely, Montana state officials and ranchers, as well as the USDA, have long pressured the National Park Service to eradicate many or all of the Yellowstone bison herd or at least test the animals and eliminate those showing signs of brucellosis. Such an action, however, would mean the eradication of most of the Yellowstone herd, even though no bison have not been known to infect a single local cow.

There is also a species of European bison called the wisent (Bison bonasus) which was once found throughout much of Europe. It was nearly exterminated in the early 1900s, but today a herd of about 1,600 animals can be found in a forest on the border between Poland and Russia. The European bison is considered vulnerable by IUCN—The World Conservation Union.

Endangered Species Act; Endangered Species; Overhunting; Rare Species; Wildlife Management

Grainger, D. Animals in Peril. Toronto: Pagurian Press, 1978.

McHugh, T. Time of the Buffalo. New York: Knopf, 1972.

Park, E. The World of the Bison. New York: Lippincott, 1969.

Turbak, G. "When the Buffalo Roam." National Wildlife 24 (1986): 30-35.

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