BUFFALO RESTORATION PROGRAM
When Bison Become Bualo
Indigenous partnerships deepen TNC’s understanding of North America’s largest mammal
A Keystone for People Similar eorts had been underway since the late 1970s in the central United States. The new herd in Missouri was among 11 scattered across TNC preserves, from Cross Ranch Preserve in North Dakota to Joseph H. Williams Tallgrass Preserve in Oklahoma, from Kankakee Sands in Indiana to Medano-Zapata Ranch in Colorado. Bison are considered a keystone species, because they’re like the block at the top of an ecological archway, holding everything together. Their patchwork way of grazing and habit
In 2011, roughly three dozen bison rumbled out of metal livestock trailers onto fields of tallgrass at The Nature Conservancy’s Dunn Ranch Prairie. An estimated 60 million bison, also known as the American bualo, once roamed the Great Plains before the species was nearly wiped out in the 1800s. The bison that arrived that day at Dunn Ranch were most likely the first in more than a century to step foot on those 3,000-plus acres in northwest Missouri. They were not shy in their return. “Thundering” is the way some described the scene. Also “beautiful” and “majestic.”
There is something about the sight of the muscled, deep brown mammals pushing through big bluestem that stirs the spirit, but they had a job to do. TNC brought bison to the preserve to help with the work of restoring the prairie. Less than 1 percent of Missouri’s native grasslands remains, and Conservancy sta and supporters had spent years tending to nearly 1,000 acres of unplowed prairie onsite as well as connecting surrounding pieces. Painstaking reseeding, prescribed fires and constant vigilance against invasive plants had already returned Dunn Ranch to a place of booming wildflowers and biodiversity. Bison were seen as the last missing piece.
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NATURE.ORG/MISSOURI 3
THIS PAGE Bualo from Dunn Ranch Prairie are released in 2021 at Wind River Reservation. © Brad Christensen
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