Restoring Native Bison
Restoring the Native Bison-Daniel N. Gossett
After watching the Ken Burns two-part series on the American Buffalo (Bison bison), I felt that his film missed a large part of the recent history of the return of the bison. Some of this was discussed in the local Public Television-Colorado Experience segments on bison in Colorado.
As kids growing up on the Front Range of Colorado, we didn’t have much exposure to bison. We saw stuffed bison in the dioramas at the Museum of Natural History in Denver. We visited Buffalo Bill Cody’s grave and museum on Lookout Mountain in Golden. There was a herd of bison off I-70 near Genesee exit west of Denver. The University of Colorado in Boulder has had a “buffalo” mascot named Ralphie starting in the mid-late 1960’s.
When our family went to Yellowstone in 1965, we were more captivated by the bears, and the unwise humans that were posing their children with bears for photos. I am sure that we saw bison, but I don’t remember seeing them there, because of where we visited. It was all about bears, including the bear (grizzly?) that came through our campground on a rampage, when we all locked ourselves in the station wagon, while Dad was in the outhouse. I remember that bear swiping an axe out of a tourist’s hand, when the camper tried to confront the bear. This was the era that bears were being fed at garbage dumps in the Park, and by tourists alongside the roads. It was also the Yogi Bear cartoon period, that gave tourists a tame expectation of bears and other wildlife in the Park.
In 1978, my parents took me to Yellowstone in winter. We snowmobiled out of the Flagg Ranch into the Park and had a single bison block the road while we waited for him to cross. We took a Snow Cat into Old Faithful, and stayed in a small cabin, where we had to keep the water dripping to keep it from freezing in the 20-40 below zero weather. We cross-country skied and I photographed bison and Elk foraging near the Firehole river. My Mamiya-Sekor 500DTL SLR camera broke the shutter spring while photographing a group of Bighorn sheep on a hillside south of Jackson. We found a camera repair shop in Jackson, but the repairman told me it wasn’t worth fixing. My dad lent me his Canon FTb, which was a steep learning curve while photographing Yellowstone wildlife in the snowscape. Most of my photographs from that trip are overexposed. It was amazing to watch bison plow snow out of the way to forage, using their head and the muscles in their hump. This was pre-wolf restoration in Yellowstone, so elk and bison were mostly not under pressure from predators other than humans.
Bison near the Firehole river, Yellowstone National Park-1978
Bison foraging, Firehole River, Yellowstone National Park-1978
Most of Wyoming elk and bison were infected with Brucellosis, a bacterial disease that causes abortion, its historical origins from domestic livestock. In the modern west, most states are certified Brucella-free for their cattle herds, including Montana. Every year efforts to keep bison from wandering out of Yellowstone Park and contaminating domestic cattle meant that bison were shot when they left the Park. From 1985 to 2000, 3100 bison were killed when they left Yellowstone National Park, despite no evidence of Brucella transmission from bison to domestic cattle.
I worked as a seasonal Park Ranger at Rifle Gap Reservoir State Park in 1983 and 1984. Rifle Gap had a small bison Herd, that often broke out of the fences along Rifle Creek and had to be rounded up. One of the cows had Pinkeye, and the Park Manager Boyd Cornell wanted to treat it before it spread to other bison in the herd. I had just completed my first year at Colorado Mountain College in the Veterinary Technician program, and my professor, Dr. Randy Vanderhurst, offered me the use of their Captur dart pistol to immobilize and treat the sick bison. He gave me the pistol and darts and told me that one-half cc of Rompun (100mg/ml xylazine) should work adequately to knock down and treat the cow.
We had pickup trucks and work-release inmates from the Rifle Correctional Facility adjacent to the Park headquarters, to help wrangle the bison. I had loaded up several darts and practiced my darting technique shooting at a bison drawn on a 4x 8 piece of plywood.
Understanding that bison are protective of the rest of the herd and will gather around a fallen herd member to protect it, we used inmates and pickup trucks in the pasture to block the others once the darting began.
The first dart missed, it went right over the target animal and struck the one behind it. The darted cow acted like little, or nothing had happened, only urinating to show some drug effect. I added more Rompun to the darts and after hitting the target cow with several more darts, for a total of 8cc of xylazine, she lay down. Barely sedated, I drew blood and treated her pink eye with an injection, before she got up, staggered to the creek bed, and fell down again. She staggered upright again and stayed up. It was a success.
I went back to Dr. Vanderhurst, who told me that wild bovids might need a higher dose, and he laughed about it, and called me Buffalo Bill Gossett in class. At least no one was hurt!
Years later I became certified in immobilization and euthanasia when I worked at Wildlife Services. Twelve years’ experience of darting animals and knowing effective drugs to use, would have been handy thirty years before.
The following year, a couple of bison were doing poorly at Island Acres State Park near Grand Junction, and so we were going to euthanize them and do necropsies. They were shot, and again pickup trucks were used to separate the rest of the herd. We used a front-end loader to hang the carcasses for necropsy. I obtained a bunch of samples, the lungs and liver being the primary focus from what we could see that appeared diseased. They had Corynebacterium abscesses on the liver and the lungs appeared to have what is often called “fog fever”.
I worked for the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes as a Wildlife Biologist from 2005 to 2008. When Yellowstone bison were killed leaving the Park because of the threat of Brucellosis, they would go to slaughterhouses, and the meat was often distributed to tribal nations. In 2008, the Wildlife and Parks Department (FWP) received a truckload of bison meat to distribute, and the Fisheries Biologist, and I, and other FWP employees, cut it up to hand it out to the tribal members. Most of the younger tribal members did not want a quarter of bison to cut up, they wanted it cut up for them. I am sure many of the elders had the skills, but we had a hard time trying to mete out bison to the younger generation. Jake and I had plenty of meat left for us to cook for ourselves.
I went to work for USDA APHIS Wildlife Services later in 2008 at the National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC). I worked with a group of veterinarians with USDA Veterinary Services (VS), that were teamed with Colorado State University (CSU) for large ungulate disease work. I also was the NWRC representative for the APHIS Native American Working Group (ANAWG). Part of my responsibilities was covering events relating to that work. In 2015, VS and CSU, working through Jennifer Barfield’s reproductive laboratory, produced a herd of genetically pure Yellowstone bison. Those bison were produced by cleansing bison semen and ova from killed Brucella infected animals, and using embryo transfer techniques, implanted them in surrogate bison cows.
Jennifer Barfield receiving the gift of a blanket from the Native American Tribes at the event, November 1, 2015.
Bison release dedication event at NWRC-November 1, 2015.
The resulting herd of fifteen animals was released into the Laramie Foothills, Soapstone Prairie Natural Area, and Red Mountain Open Space, between Fort Collins and Wyoming.
Bison at the National Wildlife Research Center, bison release event-Soapstone Prairie-November 1, 2015.
In subsequent years, more bison were released, now totaling about 80 animals, and these genetically pure Yellowstone bison began being transferred to Native American tribes, such as the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana.
There are several other bison herds in Colorado. The Rocky Mountain Arsenal
National Wildlife Refuge, starting in 2007, now has around 180 bison (2020) on 6300 acres, on this 15,000-acre refuge. Daniel’s Park near Sedalia with 1001 acres, and Genessee Park west of Denver, have split Denver’s herd of approximately 85 bison. The Southern Ute Tribe in Ignacio Colorado, in 1995 started with 31 animals, and now maintains around 40 as a sustainable population, on top of harvesting some of them for tribal cultural events. They are part of the Intertribal Buffalo Council, with 69 tribes in 19 states, maintaining 2000 head of bison. Another ten bison are maintained at the Heartland Ranch Nature Preserve in Las Animas County, by Colorado State University, the Southern Plains Land Trust, and Defenders of Wildlife. Near the Great Sand Dunes National Park in the San Luis Valley, on the Medano Ranch, the Nature Conservancy has 1600 bison free ranging on 44,000 acres.
Many bison have been transferred to native tribes since 2015. The National Park Service (NPS) has transferred 294 bison to the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes in northeastern Montana. Another 170 have been sent to other tribes by the NPS. These numbers are steadily increasing, as more bison are bred, transferred, and released as part of these programs.
The future of bison restoration appears good. Current population estimates nationwide are around 440,000-500,000 animals. Original North American population estimates were 30-70 million during the Lewis and Clark expedition. Restoration efforts by private organizations, the Department of Interior (DOI), and tribes are ensuring that the near extirpation of the late 1800’s will not happen again if grassland ranges are maintained. That genetically pure (Yellowstone) bison are being bred cleansed of Brucella, has been one of the more important developments in this effort. The return of bison to Native American tribes after both of their near extirpation, is a positive step in conservation and humanity, essential to righting some of the wrong of United States 19th century history during westward expansion.
