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Why grazing bison could be good for the planet – BBC News
American bison were hunted almost to extinction by European settlers. Now making a comeback, they could help reverse damage to prairies from decades of poor management.
It takes mettle to live on Montana’s shortgrass prairie. It’s dry, windy and a long way from anywhere. In summer, temperatures can top 100F (38C). In winter, the mercury plunges to -50F (-45C). In some spots, it is more than an hour’s drive on gravel roads to buy a loaf of bread. When you get back, grasshoppers start cannibalising their brethren impaled on your car grille.
Hila Shamon, a research ecologist with the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Washington DC, has spent five years tracking the ecology of the remote grasslands.
She partners with American Prairie, a conservation organisation with parcels of land on either side of the million acre Charles M Russell National Wildlife Refuge, to study how bison are changing the ecosystem.
Why We Should Bring Back the Buffalo
This new chapter in our nation’s complicated and sometimes tortured history is poised to move beyond the restoration of a shaggy but majestic animal. If given a chance, the buffalo can lead us toward a long delayed reconciliation with the first people who inhabited the bounteous land we all now call home — and into a future every American can be proud of.
Mr. Duncan is the writer of the recent Ken Burns documentary “The American Buffalo.”
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