How Native American tribes are

bringing back the bison from brink of

extinction
The continent’s largest land mammal plays crucial role in spiritual
lives of the tribes
Jeremy Hance

The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/12/how-native-american-tribes-are-

bringing-back-the-bison-from-brink-of-extinction

Wed 12 Dec 2018

Bison herd with calves in Lamar Valley,

Yellowstone Park.

Photograph: Neal Herbert/Yellowstone NPS

On 5,000 hectares of unploughed prairie in north-eastern Montana, hundreds of wild bison roam once
again. But this herd is not in a national park or a protected sanctuary – they are on tribal lands.
Belonging to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of Fort Peck Reservation, the 340 bison is the largest
conservation herd in the ongoing bison restoration efforts by North America’s Indigenous people.

The bison – or as Native Americans call them, buffalo – are not just “sustenance,” according to Leroy
Little Bear, a professor at the University of Lethbridge and a leader in the bison restoration efforts with
the Blood Tribe. The continent’s largest land mammal plays a major role in the spiritual and cultural
lives of numerous Native American tribes, an “integrated relationship,” he said.

“If you are Christian and you don’t see any crosses out there, or you don’t have your corner church …
there’s no external connection, [no] symbolic iconic notion that strengthens and nurtures those beliefs,”
said Little Bear. “So it goes with the buffalo.”

Only a couple of hundred years ago, 20 million to 30 million bison lived in vast thundering herds across
North America. They were leftover relics of the Pleistocene and one of the few large mammals to survive
the Ice Age extinction.
 Bison in the snow

Photograph: Neal Herbert/Yellowstone NPS

But less than 400 years after Columbus’ direful voyage, white settlers pushed their way west into Native
American territory in so-called manifest destiny. And the US government made the fateful decision to
cripple the Native Americans through whatever means necessary. One of these was the bison: the
government viewed slaughtering the great herds en-masse as a way to starve and devastate Native
American tribes.

Within just decades, the bison went from numbering tens of millions to within a hair’s breadth of
extinction. “Fort Peck was the first to stand up and say we want to help. We want to restore these
important bison back to their historic Great Plains home,” said Jonathan Proctor, Rockies and Plains
program director with NGO Defenders of Wildlife, who has worked with the tribes for years to bring the
bison back.

To do so, the tribe looked to Yellowstone’s bison herd. After the slaughter of the 19th century, 23 bison
survived in a remote valley in Yellowstone. Today, the herd is 4,000 strong and is seen as a vital
population because it has never been domesticated or interbred with cattle, maintaining genetic purity.
While so-called pure genetics of the bison are often important to scientists and conservationists, Kelly
Stoner – who heads the bison program at the Wildlife Conservation Society – said the issue is more
complicated among tribal groups.

Yellowstone National Park Bison Herd grazing as a

storm rolls in

Photograph: Jacob W Frank/Yellowstone NPS

“You’ll find that amongst Native Americans … the predominant attitude is ‘if it looks like a buffalo and
smells like a buffalo, it’s a buffalo’. The deep, personal relationship between Native Americans and
buffalo exists, and is relevant and important, whether or not a particular animal has 8% cattle genes or
not,” she explained.

Still, in 2007, Fort Peck Reservation eyed Yellowstone’s herd as a potential source to build a cultural
herd. Fort Peck, and many other tribes, already had a commercial herd – used for economic purposes –
but now they wanted to build a second herd with conservation in mind.

But getting bison from Yellowstone national park would prove far harder than Fort Peck initially
thought. Although pure bred, Yellowstone bison carry the disease brucellosis. The Yellowstone bison
originally contracted the disease from cattle in the early 20th century and now ranchers and state
officials fear a return. Although scientists have never recorded brucellosis jumping from bison to cattle,
it is theoretically possible according to lab research.

“It’s really difficult [to pass]. It’s passed through the placenta,” explained Proctor. “You’d have to have
cattle mix with bison in the spring when the bison would potentially abort their calf because of
brucellosis and the cattle would have to lick [the aborted placenta]. It’s not likely.”

Still, cattle ranchers so fear the disease that they have pushed for hundreds, sometimes even more than
a thousand, bison to be slaughtered every year in Yellowstone national park to keep the animals from
roaming outside the park boundaries and potentially mixing with cattle. Yellowstone elk also carry the
disease, but are spared slaughter since they are seen as less of a risk.

The brucellosis panic almost stopped Fort Peck from ever getting Yellowstone bison. Over six years, the
tribes had to battle anti-bison legislation from the Montana congress and legal battles. The case went all
the way to Montana supreme court, which the tribes won unanimously.

“The biggest roadblock is the politics in Montana,” said Robert Magnan, director of the Fort Peck tribes’
fish and game department and the buffalo program. “They don’t understand what we’re trying to do out
here.”

TheTatanke Oyate, Buffalo Nation, Singers from

the Fort Peck Reservation in Poplar, Montana,
sing a welcoming song for bison arriving from
Yellowstone National Park on Monday, March 19,
2012. Sixty-four bison from Yellowstone National
Park were shipped to northeast Montana’s Fort
Peck Reservation on Monday

Photograph: Richard Peterson/AP

The first Yellowstone bison finally arrived in 2012: around 60 animals in all. “There was a huge
celebration; many, many people from the community came out,” said Proctor. “It was just thrilling to
see.”

Two years after their arrival, Magnan said that the bison had already begun to rejuvenate the land.

“We’ve seen the ecosystem revive. Grassland birds have returned, native grasses are thriving. We
welcome and look forward to the buffalos’ continued benefits to our tribal lands.”

Since then, several more deliveries have been made and the Fort Peck herd – at 340 – is among the top
10 conservation herds in the US.

But the work has only begun. In 2014, two years after the bison came to Fort Peck, 13 tribal nations –
representing eight reservations both in the US and Canada – signed a ‘Buffalo Treaty’. The treaty
outlined the importance of bringing back free-roaming bison to both the US and Canada. “We used to
always have an empty chair for the buffalo, for the spirit of the buffalo [at the dialogues], in our talking
circles,” said Little Bear, who facilitated the dialogues. “It’s hard to explain but the buffalo was basically
asking us, ‘you know, I’ve been gone for 150 years, why do you want me to come back?’”
 A herd roam on the Fort Peck Reservation
near Poplar, Montana

Photograph: Matthew Brown/AP

By the end of the dialogues, the tribes agreed why. “The concern was the young people hear only stories,
they hear the songs, they see the ceremonies, but they don’t see the buffalo out there,” added Little
Bear.

The treaty is already making good. Last year, Blackfeet Reservation, also in Montana, received 89
genetically pure bison from Elk Island in Canada. Although the Blackfeet’s Iinnii Initiative – their name
for buffalo – is the youngest, it’s also the most ambitious.

The tribe is negotiating with state officials to allow these bison, which are free of brucellosis, to range
freely into Glacier national park and even, hopefully, one day as north as Waterton Lakes national park
and Blood Tribe Reservation Canada – which would make it the first international bison herd in over a
century.

Tribes sign the treaty to

commit to bison repopulation
and conservation in Polson,
Montana

Photograph: Dennis
Jorgensen/WWF

Little Bear said they are also working with the Y2Y Initiative, which aims to create a massive wildlife
corridor from Yellowstone to the Yukon for wildlife such as bears and wolves.

“We talked to the Y2Y people and said ‘hey, what about buffalo?’ And [they said], ‘we never thought
about it but we can include buffalo.’” This year, wild bison returned to Banff national park after being
gone over 100 years. Little Bear said the tribe’s Buffalo Treaty acted as a “catalyst” for the re-wilding in
Canada’s first park.

“Tribes of the northern plains are the lead in wild bison restoration right now,” Proctor said. In 50
years’ time, the conservation community hopes to have at least 10 bison herds that number 1,000
animals – the minimum, he said, needed for the bison to fulfil their ecological role (currently only
Yellowstone has a herd of more than 1,000 animals).

On top of that, Proctor hopes there will be a few herds of more than 10,000 animals, a herd size which
hasn’t been seen since the mass extermination in the 19th century.
 A coyote and bison in Lamar Valley,
Yellowstone national park.

Photograph: Sumiko Scott/Getty Images

“Well never see bison roaming the entire Great Plains again,” said Proctor. “We’ll never see 20 million
to 30 million bison again. No one is trying to go back in time. We’re trying to go forward. We’re trying
to restore this important animal where we can, where people want them, and to the level where they
will help restore the natural balance.”

For any of this to happen, Native American tribes will be key. They have the land and the desire to bring
back the continent’s largest land mammal. And it’s not just bison, Proctor said. They have been
instrumental in conserving wolves, grizzly bears, swift foxes and black-footed ferrets among other
species.

Magnan said Fort Peck’s “dream” is to have 2,500 buffalo in their conservation herd running on more
than 40,000 hectares. Already the tribe has passed a resolution to purchase more land.

“It’s amazing … with limited budgets and widespread poverty, [Native American tribes] are the leader
in wildlife restoration when compared to the state wildlife agency,” he said. “In reality, it was not the
buffalo that left us, it was us that left the buffalo. So we have to do something.”

Newly born bison calf and mother

Photograph: Neal Herbert/Yellowstone

NPS