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Give Me a Home Where the Buffalo Roam….Again
A 2014 video report in The New York Times showed efforts to re-introduce the largest animal in Europe, which was hunted to near-extinction in the 19th century. Eight European bison (also known as wisent, but the bison name excites me in a way wisent cannot) had just been released into the wild. That tiny herd produced two calves and had one death, so their number stood at nine when the Times reported. Even as few as nine bison were facing pushback by claims that they carry disease and trample crops. Sound familiar?
When the Europeans started thinking about extinction, there were only about 50 animals left of a species that appeared on cave drawings as old as 36,000 B.C.E. Scientists had already learned that European bison could breed with cattle and with the American bison but, like in the U.S., they preferred to breed within the European bison if it could be done with such a small surviving population.
American Indians are veterans of the struggle to pull the American bison back from near extinction in the same time frame, the difference in North America being that the extinction was purposeful. Gen. Philip Sheridan famously stated the motive: “You kill the buffalo, you destroy the Indian’s commissary.”
So it was that the colonists attacked the giant herbivores with repeating rifles, skinned away their hides and…
