The American bison: its difficult cohabitation with humans

If life is easier for bison today, it was not the same story a few centuries ago.

They were 30 to 60 million in the 16th century, then the colonists had a major impact on their habitat in the 18th century and finally caused their population to drop to only a few thousand individuals.

As the men plowed the ground and planted crops, the bison were gradually pushed out, their territory becoming smaller and smaller until by 1802 their population in some states like Ohio had completely disappeared.

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leather and bones

The pressure continued to build and the herds disappeared from west of the Rockies.

Their leather, highly prized by the Amerindians, represented a lucrative trade.

The steam train tracks also extended over large portions of bison territory, and their meat was used to feed the workers laying the tracks.

Until the 1870s, tens of thousands of bison were slaughtered daily to satisfy the demand for hides and bones.

Whether it was northern or southern bison, all were killed in the same way, and by mid-1883 it was estimated that there were only 324 bison left in the United States, of which only 25 lived in Yellowstone.

On the verge of extinction

Sensing the imminent extinction of bison, Congress passed laws enforced by the US military to protect these cornered animals.

Their numbers fluctuated, remaining low until 1905, when the American Bison Society, of which Theodore Roosevelt was honorary president, began lobbying for their populations to multiply again.

Gradually the bison began to increase in number;

today there are about 500,000 across the continent.

They are of course nowhere near as widespread as they once were, and of the four extinct species found in the world, three –

,

and

– inhabited the Great Plains of North America.

European bison and American bison

Two species survived, however:

, which lives in Europe and the Caucasus, and

, which is found in North America.

The North American bison is in turn divided into two subspecies: the wood bison (

) and the plains bison (

), the latter being found in good numbers in Yellowstone and the National Bison Range, Montana.

Wood bison, of which about 7,000 remain, are much more common in Canada and Alaska, particularly in Wood Buffalo National Park in the Northwest Territories.

Other types of bison can be seen on reservations in North Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Iowa.

Often these populations are considered at least semi-domesticated because they live behind fences.

The low number of wild bison today (around 20,000) means they are classified as ecologically extinct, but the fact that they are not completely extinct is a miracle and we should rejoice.

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