After spending the day talking with these folks about the importance of Yellowstone bison (the last free-roaming, genetically pure, wild bison herd), I would sojourn on the rivers in Yellowstone, casting flies for trout. Fishing is a time for contemplation, my grandfather always used to say. As I fished, I would think about those tourists and those bison, and how we could get some of those bison back to their historic habitat on America’s grasslands. Those contemplations stayed with me through my graduate studies as I learned and wrote about Native peoples and their cultural and ecological connections to the land and wildlife.
And, today, I’m elated to share with you that I saw the return of 138 Yellowstone bison to the Fort Peck Reservation. In a blog a few weeks ago, I wrote, “With the relocation of 138 bison to the Fort Peck Tribes, we have taken yet another positive step forward in bringing bison back to western landscapes. Doubters have become believers, opponents have become supporters. People now recognize that Tribes are leading the way forward in wild bison conservation.” After several decades of hard work with Tribes and our conservation partners, we are experiencing success after success. You and I both know that means now is the time to go full throttle – let’s keep pushing to get more bison back to tribal and other Western landscapes.
Seeing the bison run out onto tribal land at Fort Peck is exciting and it couldn’t have happened without your support.
[quicktime]http://blog.nwf.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/11/files/2014/11/Bison_plains_4.mov[/quicktime]
What inspires me most is the actions and words of our tribal partners. As Mark Azure, President of the Fort Belknap Tribes, expressed on the day the first Yellowstone bison arrived at Fort Peck, “Today is a great day!” And, as Robert Magnan, Director of the Fort Peck Tribes’ Fish and Game Department and the bison program said, “I’m so proud of the role the Fort Peck Tribes have played in bringing buffalo back. In two years, since we welcomed back the first Yellowstone buffalo, we’ve seen the ecosystem revive. Grassland birds have returned, native grasses are thriving. We welcome and look forward to the buffalo’s continued infusion of new life into our tribal culture and the health of our lands.”
There is nothing more to say than TODAY is a GREAT DAY!
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However, this Saturday couldn’t have been any different from mid-March 2012 when the first bison stepped foot onto the land of the Assiniboine and Sioux. In March of last year, we were out in freezing temperatures waiting for the trucks and trailers to roll in with the bison.
For me, it was my first time seeing them since I saw them come off the trailers. Today, it is 88 degrees, sunny and absolutely gorgeous as we drive along the highway. I am excited to see how the bison have acclimated to their new surroundings.
Finding the bison
Robbie warns us it might take awhile to find them. They have thousands of acres after all and could be anywhere. We are lucky though. We drive up over a hill after five minutes and there they are, bedded down near a wetland, babies hopping and jumping and playing as their moms chew their cud and watch closely. Two big bull bison are off by themselves, contently resting after a morning of browsing the lush prairie grass.
How you can help
We aren’t done. Many other Tribes are seeking to restore Yellowstone Bison back to Tribal Lands but we need your help to make it happen.
Your donation can help our work to restore bison back to tribal lands—donate here. To read more about our efforts and long term vision, go to our website here.
You can like National Wildlife Federation’s Tribal Lands Partnerships Facebook page here to stay updated on all bison related news and events.
Jason explains that the plants, animals and humans of the American prairie have been evolving together for millennia. Bison were an integral part of the prairie ecosystem: their hooves broke up the soil so seeds could germinate and their wallows – the depressions left when they rolled in the dirt – gathered rain which fed medicinal plants.
The lives of Native Americans were also inextricably tied to the bison. They followed the herds across the plains, relying on the great creatures for food, shelter and tools. They worshipped bison, performing religious ceremonies to promote its abundance and express gratitude for its ultimate sacrifice to them in the hunt.
The U.S. Army recognized this reliance in the late 19th century, when the westward movement of miners and homesteaders led to clashes with the resident Sioux, Cheyenne, Shoshone, and Arapaho. To defeat the tribes and clear the way for “Manifest Destiny,” the U.S. Army used the following tactic: eliminate the tribes’ main food source.
NWF has been working for two decades to transfer some of these Yellowstone bison – whose numbers now overwhelm the Park’s capacity – back to their native lands. Our first major victory came last spring when we helped the Fort Peck Tribes move 61 Yellowstone bison to their reservation in northeast Montana. The tribes are thrilled to have these “tatanka” home. The bison and their 21 new calves are enjoying thousands of acres of wild prairie.
Today, NWF is working with Jason and other members of the Shoshone and Arapaho tribes to move a herd of Yellowstone bison to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. A group of bison awaits transfer on a Montana ranch. The land and the tribes are ready to receive them. Standing in the way is a complex web of legal and political hurdles that we are working to overcome.
Late in the day on my visit to Yellowstone, I came upon a lone buffalo walking the center line of the Park’s loop road. I pulled to the shoulder to give him space to pass and he paused long enough to make eye contact. I stared with a sense of wonder and respect. His return gaze was fearless and unconcerned. And at that moment I knew: we are beginning to restore the balance.
Please donate to the National Wildlife Federation Tribal Lands Partnerships Program to help return bison back to tribal lands.
This week, the Sioux and Assiniboine Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation have reached another conservation milestone–after being held in a temporary surveillance corral for the past four months while fencing for a larger enclosure was specially crafted, the 61 bison adults and their 21 calves will be able to freely roam within a 2,200-acre pasture.
These are the first wild Yellowstone bison to be restored to the Great Plains. Later this fall, an additional 5,120-acre pasture will be opened to the bison, allowing them access to more than 7,000 acres of their native habitat.
Bison are one of America’s most iconic species, a symbol of the West, and a vital part of our nation’s wildlife heritage. Their return to Fort Peck is a critical step forward in returning the animal to important parts of its historic range across the West. Building on this victory, NWF is working with the Wind River Tribes of Wyoming and other tribes to restore wild, genetically-pure bison. To accomplish this goal, we need your help. Together, we can bring wild bison back to the tribes and public lands, restoring them to their rightful place on America’s western landscape.
Learn more about our work at nwf.org/tribalbison
This amazing little bison was welcomed into the world surrounded and protected by 61 members of his extended family.
“They’ve been doing a good job of protecting him,” said the Tribes’ Buffalo Ranch Manager Tote Gray Hawk. “They don’t let him drift too far away.”
A longtime friend of mine and NWF, Jonny Bearcub Stiffarm, who works for Native Energy and is an enrolled Fort Peck Tribal member, was at the bison pasture with her grandkids and was witness to the birth.
Jonny’s grandkids, 12-year-old Jaymee and 7-year-old Joe, were the first to see the newborn bison being licked off and dried by his mom. As Jonny put it to me:
“Oh my god, Alexis, it was so beautiful and amazing. All the buffalo were in a circle protecting this brand new baby who was just wobbling around and nursing on his mom every once in a while. Jaymee and Joseph Stiffarm, Fort Peck tribe members, the first to see the first born bison of the buffalo who came home!”
Watch the Story
This mom and the rest of the herd endured a 500-mile trek from a quarantine facility outside of Yellowstone National Park to the bison pastures at Fort Peck. The tribes, NWF, and other groups have worked for years to relocate wild bison to tribal lands rather than see them sent to slaughter. Now, instead of seeing bison killed we have created a pathway for bison to thrive.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNkOWYm9Tbc[/youtube]
Help keep the bison roaming free on tribal lands! Please donate today to help National Wildlife Federation save bison and other wildlife >>
These photos and the video below capture the welcome home ceremony.
The Round Up
“Tribal people have a deep historical, cultural, traditional and spiritual connection to bison that stretches back thousands of years. Yellowstone bison have a special status for us because they are the last wild, free-ranging herd with no cattle genes. The well-being of the bison and the tribes are intertwined.” ~ Mike Fox, Fort Belknap tribal council member
Driving the Bison Home
“Special thank you to all who worked to make this happen!! You did good!!!” ~ Comment from Linda S. on National Wildlife Federation’s Facebook wall
The Bison are Released
“By restoring wild bison to tribal lands, we’re also restoring a landscape, a habitat, one that supports a plethora of wildlife. Simultaneously, we’re helping to re-establish Native peoples’ cultural and historic connections to wildlife and the land.” ~Garrit Voggesser, NWF’s National Director, Tribal Partnerships.
The Pipe Ceremony
“This means everything to us. We’ve been separated from these majestic animals and now they’re here. We’re the buffalo people, tatanka oyate. Without the bison, none of us would be here.” ~Stoney Anketell, a member of the Fort Peck tribal executive board
Video of the Bison Release:
[youtube width=”620″ height=”450″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28BXNWy3Hdw[/youtube]
Help support National Wildlife Federation’s ongoing work to bring wild bison back to tribal lands >>
Related Links
- Wild Bison Homecoming for Indian Tribes
- National Wildlife Federation’s Tribal Bison Work
- Article: “Tribes Welcome Home Yellowstone Bison”
Since the mid-1990s, the National Wildlife Federation has been working to ensure people won’t have to ask that question. We believe restoration to other landscapes is a better management strategy to resolve livestock-wildlife conflicts. We envisioned a future when Yellowstone bison, the last genetically pure, free-roaming, wild bison population in the U.S., could provide animals to establish new herds across the West.
In 1997, we signed a memorandum of understanding with the Intertribal Bison Cooperative, the first ever conservation agreement between an environmental organization and a tribal organization, to advocate for the return of wild bison to tribal lands. NWF and the tribes shared a common vision – restoring wild bison to their historical habitat and restoring Native peoples’ cultural connections to bison. But the political opposition to the return of the bison seemed insurmountable.
A Victory for Conservation and Tribes
This has been one of the hardest nuts to crack in wildlife conservation history. Many other large mammal species that had depleted in numbers have been restored, but not bison. By restoring bison to tribal lands and other former habitats across the country, we’re also revitalizing a landscape, habitat, and a diversity of wildlife. Simultaneously, we’re helping to re-establish Native peoples’ cultural and historic connections to wildlife and the land.
This is a win-win proposition for the tribes, the state of Montana, and the millions of Americans nationwide who want bison back where they belong. The return of wild bison to tribal lands is a major milestone in efforts to restore an iconic North American species to the landscape and restore an important element of Native American culture.
This spring, we will welcome the bison home.
The bison, or American buffalo, roamed the plains and woodlands of North America tens of thousands of years ago. It was a contemporary of saber-toothed cats, woolly mammoths and woolly rhinos but was a better survivor: the bison is the largest land animal in North America today, and once numbered in the millions (the exact figure is disputed, but likely approached 40 million animals on western grasslands).
Neither its size nor its numbers protected it.
Once guns arrived in North America, and a market opened for wild meat and hides, only decades elapsed before the bison all but vanished from its native range in the United States and Canada.
The woodland bison of eastern U.S. forests vanished by the early 19th century, and theplains bison was all but wiped out by 1884—in less than 20 years of intensive hunting.
Saving Bison
Some people, most notably hunters, wanted to save the bison. Outstanding among them was National Wildlife Federation Conservation Hall of Fame member Theodore Roosevelt, who as a young man joined with leading naturalist (and Conservation Hall of Fame inductee) George Bird Grinnell in an effort to save the last bison.
The year was 1887, and in the U.S. wild bison were restricted to fewer than 100 animals in Yellowstone National Park. Saving the iconic species was a huge challenge. No Endangered Species Act existed to protect the animals, and even the 1872 law that created the park failed to authorize protections for park resources. People still entered Yellowstone quasi-legally to cut firewood and to kill game for markets. Elk and bison were still being shot.
Under pressure from Roosevelt, Grinnell and their allies, Congress finally in 1894 enacted a law protecting the natural resources within Yellowstone National Park.
Protection alone did not suffice to recover the bison: decades passed before the herd began to recover. Nevertheless, today the Yellowstone animals remain perhaps the only genetically pure U.S. bison still alive, the last truly wild bison in the United States.
The years that went into making the park safe for wildlife has paid off for the American buffalo—its number there sometimes reaches as high as 4,000.
The Fight Goes On
National Wildlife Federation is involved in what might be called the next phase in restoring U.S. bison. The Federation is partnering with Indian tribes across the nation, with promising developments occurring right now for reintroduction of bison from Yellowstone in the Fort Belknap and Fort Peck reservations in Montana.
NWF is also initiating a long-term plan to restore bison to the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge (CMR to aficionados) south of the reservations. The refuge may offer the last grassland large enough to allow the nomadic species to follow a normal pattern of life, moving in herds across a vast prairie.
The story of the bison reinforces at least three critical lessons in wildlife conservation:
- Without legal protections, a rare or imperiled species is unlikely to survive
- Despite tremendous efforts, recovering a depleted wildlife population may be the work of years and even decades—the destruction of a species moves with speed, but the biological pace of recovery in species that breed slowly cannot be hastened.
- Suitable habitat is the key to species protection—without Yellowstone National Park the bison as a wild creature would almost certainly be extinct today.
Habitat at the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and the two Indian reservations offers promise for the future of the American buffalo. Anyone who helps to restore this species is picking up the work that Theodore Roosevelt and his colleagues started more than 100 years ago and is marching in step with the generations of conservationists, hunters, wildlife enthusiasts and just plain bison fans who helped ensure that today we can see bison in native habit and not only in museums—an inheritance we too will want to leave to future generations.
Help bring bison back to their native prairie habitat. Give today and your donation will be matched dollar-for-dollar!
The photo associated with this blog was donated by a competitor in the annual National Wildlife Photo Contest. If you are a nature photographer, you may want to participate this year in the 41st annual National Wildlife Photo Contest. In addition to cash awards, winning photos will appear in National Wildlife magazine and on the NWF website.