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When the Bison Come Back, Will the Ecosystem Follow?

June 4, 2021/

Prior to European settlement, research suggests that between 30 to 60 million bison roamed the North American Great Plains. By 1889, the North American bison had been slaughtered to near extinction, and less than 1,000 remained across the continent. There was no civilization around the world that linked their culture so closely to the bison than the Native tribes on the Great Plains. There were between 2 and 18 million Native people on this continent, and many of those tribal territories overlapped and coexisted with the bison. The Blackfoot people, who now live in northern Montana and southern Alberta, are one of those tribes.

An effort to bring wild bison to the Great Plains aims to restore one of the world’s most endangered ecosystems.

“The elders from back in the day predicted that the only way the Native people are going to start gaining ground again, their ways of life, is when the bison come back,” said Fox.

The biggest impact that bison would have on prairie restoration, said Curtis Freese, a former biologist for the World Wildlife Fund and American Prairie Reserve, would be felt after the fences and manmade water sources were pulled out, and bison could interact with fire. Fire is a natural and essential part of the grassland ecosystem. Operating in concert with herbivore grazing, it speeds up decomposition that returns nutrients to the soil. Prior to European settlement, Indigenous tribes would intentionally set fire to the prairie, knowing that, once the grass burned, it would regenerate within several weeks, and then the bison would show up to eat the nutrient-rich grasses.

By Louise Johns

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