The Last Wild Bison

Bison in a snowstorm, Yellowstone NP WY. Photo by George Wuerthner

The wild bison in Yellowstone National Park are the last major herd of buffalo, the least domesticated members of their genus left in the United States. When Yellowstone was established in 1872, an estimated 25 wild bison roamed the park, a relic of the great herds that once roamed the entire West. With protection, the Yellowstone bison herd numbers between 4000 and 6000 animals.

The decline of wild bison on the Great Plains began in the 1700s with the tribal adoption of horses by northern tribes who obtained them by trade from more southern tribes who had stolen them from the Spanish herds in New Mexico and Texas.


The romantic era of the plains Indian bison hunter, which has become the “stereotype Indian,” began at this time and lasted little more than a hundred years. This led to the regional extirpation of bison across much of the West.

The mounted hunter on a horse created a new predator for bison whose primary evolutionary predator defense was to run. Mounted horse riders could easily overcome bison. Buffalo hides became a significant source of commerce for Indian people, who used to obtain more horses and wives or trade goods like guns, ammo, metal knives, pots, and other accouterments necessary for survival.
In the past, before horses, hunting bison was haphazard. A hunter could carefully approach a herd and kill a few animals before the animals stampeded or left. Occasionally, entire herds could be driven over a cliff, but such situations were scarce.

This map shows the decline of bison. Commercial bison hunting did not start until after 1870, but by that time, bison had been reduced to a northern and southern herd, and extirpated from much of the West due to tribal hunting.

With the horse, hunters could roam further to find more distant animals, and mounted hunters could encircle a herd and kill an entire bison group. The horse also allowed for the transport of heavy hides and meat. With the horse, the Indian became a “super predator.”

Indian hunters preferably selected bison cows, the reproductive segment of the herd, for slaughter because their meat was better and their hides more valuable for all uses from tepees to trade.


By 1870, due to Indian slaughter, bison had been eradicated or were functionally extinct from Idaho, Utah, North Dakota, Manitoba, South Dakota, New Mexico, Nebraska, western Wyoming, and portions of Texas, Kansas, Colorado, and Southwest Montana.

This was before any significant white settlement of the western plains and mountains, which only began after gold and silver were discovered, starting with the California gold rush of 1849, and later in other western states like Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, after the 1860s.

After the Civil War, with the coming of the railroads westward into the last refugees of the remaining herds, bison were slaughtered without mercy by white commercial hunters along with the tribal hunters. By the 1880s, bison were functionally extinct across the West.

Like almost all bison, even the animals at the National Bison Range, Moise, Montana are domesticated. Photo by George Wuerthner

EXTINCTION OF WILD BISON

A few small relic herds remained, mostly on private ranches, including the small Yellowstone herd. With protection, bison numbers grew, so over 400,000 or more bison are scattered around the country on private ranches, state parks, national parks, wildlife refuges, and other public lands. However, nearly all of them are managed like domestic livestock. They are not wild.

They are fenced inside small pastures so they cannot migrate. They are regularly fed hay or other feed during drought or in harsh winters when the snow is deep. They are often inoculated against disease. They are protected from predators. Many are selectively bred. In short, there are no wild bison herds of any significant size in the lower 48 states other than those that reside in Yellowstone National Park.

I find it difficult to believe that tribal hunters are sincere when they exclaim support for wild bison. If that were the case, they would abstain from killing bison trying to move beyond the park to other public lands.

Furthermore, tribal acceptance of dead or alive bison helps the Montana Livestock Industry achieve its goal of keeping buffalo bottled up in Yellowstone National Park.


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Comments

  1. Ida Lupine Avatar
    Ida Lupine

    If you didn’t know better, you’d think that people still want to finish the job of the extinction of bison. I know a lot of ranchers would. The only thing stopping them is the laws, which are on shaky ground again.

    It’s sad to think that nothing has changed, and the new thinking is still not to protect our last bison, but to let Native Americans kill them.

    Nobody seems to want to realize that so much damage had been done in the pas that cannot be repaired, and it is no longer 200 years ago where things can be picked up where we left off!

  2. Jeff Hoffman Avatar
    Jeff Hoffman

    I applaud George for being someone to finally tell the truth about this instead of the lies we were always fed about white people slaughtering bison. This is, of course, ultimately the fault of white colonizers because they brought the horses here, but it’s a very different story. And as George also pointed out, the white colonizers slaughtered bison when they got to what is now the western U.S., so no one here is claiming that they’re innocent either.

    Like all other environmental and ecological problems, the problem is humans in general, and only a tiny fraction of 1% of them have the proper love and respect for nonhumans that’s required in order to prioritize them. With the colonizer culture eliminating ever more traditional indigenous culture here, the remaining Natives act more like the white colonizers — whose culture has replaced theirs — every day, as their modern bison slaughters show.

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Author

George Wuerthner is an ecologist and writer who has published 38 books on various topics related to environmental and natural history. Among his titles are Welfare Ranching-The Subsidized Destruction of the American West, Wildfire-A Century of Failed Forest Policy, Energy—Overdevelopment and the Delusion of Endless Growth, Keeping the Wild-Against the Domestication of the Earth, Protecting the Wild—Parks, and Wilderness as the Foundation for Conservation, Nevada Mountain Ranges, Alaska Mountain Ranges, California’s Wilderness Areas—Deserts, California Wilderness Areas—Coast and Mountains, Montana’s Magnificent Wilderness, Yellowstone—A Visitor’s Companion, Yellowstone and the Fires of Change, Yosemite—The Grace and the Grandeur, Mount Rainier—A Visitor’s Companion, Texas’s Big Bend Country, The Adirondacks-Forever Wild, Southern Appalachia Country, among others.
He has visited over 400 designated wilderness areas and over 200 national park units.
In the past, he has worked as a cadastral surveyor in Alaska, a river ranger on several wild and scenic rivers in Alaska, a backcountry ranger in the Gates of the Arctic National Park in Alaska, a wilderness guide in Alaska, a natural history guide in Yellowstone National Park, a freelance writer and photographer, a high school science teacher, and more recently ecological projects director for the Foundation for Deep Ecology. He currently is the ED of Public Lands Media.
He has been on the board or science advisor of numerous environmental organizations, including RESTORE the North Woods, Gallatin Yellowstone Wilderness Association, Park Country Environmental Coalition, Wildlife Conservation Predator Defense, Gallatin Wildlife Association, Western Watersheds Project, Project Coyote, Rewilding Institute, The Wildlands Project, Patagonia Land Trust, The Ecological Citizen, Montana Wilderness Association, New National Parks Campaign, Montana Wild Bison Restoration Council, Friends of Douglas Fir National Monument, Sage Steppe Wild, and others.

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