175 Persistence and Serendipity: The Ecological Recovery of North American Bison Populations

Abstract Bison or buffalo were once the dominant herbivore that impacted the ecology and landscape of North American grassland and forest ecosystems from Alaska to Mexico prior to European colonization. By the early 20th century they were almost extirpated in the wild with two exceptions; in the areas that eventually became Yellowstone and Wood Buffalo national parks. Since then, private individuals, NGOs, government agencies and indigenous peoples have collaborated to restore these populations, but significant hurdles remain to achieving full ecological recovery of the species; a vision which was articulated in a landmark paper in Conservation Biology in 2008 (Sanderson et al 2008 - The Ecological Future of the North American Bison: Conceiving Long-Term, Large-Scale Conservation of Wildlife). Unfortunately, bison have been virtually erased from most people’s consciousness and imagination for over a century now, making restoration efforts for the largest land mammal on the continent particularly challenging. Despite this, several locations have had remarkable success in re-establishing wild, free-ranging bison populations in Canada, the US and Mexico over the past two decades. Bison populations have recently been re-established in Banff National Park, Alaska, and Yakutia (Siberia) and there are plans to restore populations on tribal and indigenous lands in both Canada and the US in the next 10 years. The signing of the Buffalo Treaty in 2014 was the impetus for many of the current restoration efforts on tribal and indigenous lands and indigenous groups are heavily involved in shared stewardship of these transboundary bison populations. While commercially raised bison have very different goals and vastly outnumber their wild counterparts, who are managed for ecological restoration and conservation, both groups have several shared values relating to the long-term goal of maintaining and increasing the overall number of bison in North America as well as maintaining their wild character.