Something’s missing. Scan the plains and prairies with a hunter’s eye and you can see some, and on occasion much, of what once was there. Pronghorns, whitetails, and muleys remain, if not rampant, at least common. A stroll through grama grass can kick up sharp-tailed grouse and, with luck, sage grouse and prairie chickens. Prairie dogs appear suspiciously unendangered. Elk wander down from the mountains, and where I live—at the rising edge of the plains—cougars, black bears, and moose (with coyotes too numerous to mention) have been known to amble into town. While the deer and the antelope still play, though, what definitely does not roam is Bison bison, the American buffalo.

Disregard the bald eagle (“a bird of bad moral character…and often very lousy,�?wrote Ben Franklin). The buffalo was always the emblematic animal of the United States. At the outset of the 19th century, its population is speculated to have been between 30 and 90 million. The buffalo plummeted to less than .01 percent of that population in not much over a fairly average human life span.

No need to rehash the probable causes for that here, except to suggest that they might be a wee bit more complex than those proposed in movies like Dances With Wolves. Today, though, with upward of 300,000 tatanka once more on the hoof, the buffalo supposedly represents some great “conservation success story”—which is a bigger heap of buffalo chips than a 1-ton bull extrudes in a year.

The buffalo was, is, and into the foreseeable future shall continue to be, the most disgraceful example of wildlife “conservation�?on the continent. Genuine conservation success stories do not beg the question, So where are all the buffalo?—and then blithely provide as the answer, In Yellowstone, a bunch of other U.S. and Canadian parks no one’s ever heard of, and on fenced properties owned by delusional and/or insolvent hobby ranchers.

Inbred, Crossbred, and Diseased
A real definition of success probably ought not to encompass a buffalo population that is woefully inbred, crossbred (with domestic cattle), and diseased (the infection originating in domestic cattle), and yet still fobbed off as “wild.�?Such a story should include buffalo that go where buffalo want to roam—to some extent, anyway. It should include buffalo that experience something akin to a natural life cycle and can be hunted by licensed sportsmen. It should include buffalo that generate funds for wildlife departments and preserve a linkage to a tradition that extends back for millennia.

Alas, the buffalo is now too inconvenient for nearly any of that to be the case; and for some folks it is more than just inconvenient, it’s a downright nuisance. Take the folks at the National Park Service—please. More than any other large mammal under its jurisdiction, the buffalo embarrassingly highlights the destructive absurdity of the NPS’s “natural regulation�?policy, particularly in Yellowstone. Reestablished from less than two dozen head in 1902, Yellowstone’s bison population was rigorously controlled for two-thirds of the 20th century, with the herd held at 425—judged to be the park’s ideal carrying capacity.

Yellowstone is actually very marginal buffalo range, but buffalo demonstrate superb fecundity, with an annual 18 percent fertility rate. So after 1968, when the park ceased regulating its bison with Winchesters and Remingtons, the population proceeded to sextuple. Wolves seemed like nifty natural regulators, except that eight years after wolf reintroduction, the bison herd has decupled to 4,000 strong. As buffalo are “aggressive dispersers�?to start with, their being preyed upon by Canis lupus, according to ethologist Valerius Geist, author of Buffalo Nation, has only succeeded in making their “space requirements go up exponentially.�?

Passing the Buck
Utterly unable to contain its buffalo, the NPS passed the buck. Since most of the bison that move out of Yellowstone move into Montana, it seemed logical to cede the responsibility to that state’s Fish, Wildlife and Parks department. The FWP would have gladly done without the buffalo, but it was never their call. In 1984 Montana’s livestock was certified free of brucellosis (a disease that can cause cows to abort their calves), and Yellowstone bison are a reservoir of disease for brucellosis—which the bison contracted from cattle that used to graze the park.

While it has never been verified that bison have retransmitted brucellosis to Montana cattle, Big Sky ranchers speak with a mighty voice, and in 1985 Montana’s Legislature (not its FWP) decided the buffalo ought to become a big-game animal. The “hunts�?that ensued could charitably be termed travesties. When buffalo left the park, fortunate hunters had 36 hours to present themselves at a check-in station, then two entire days to get their animal. And so, as TV cameras cranked and greasy-haired antihunters raged, 569 buffalo did the dirt dive. To put an end to the horror, the Montana Legislature changed its mind about licensed hunting for managing buffalo and turned the task over to the Department of Livestock.

“Sympathy�?for Stockmen
Montana stockmen deserve some sympathy (perhaps) for finding themselves stuck between one intractable U.S. government department (Agriculture)—that threatens to rescind the state’s brucellosis-free status if its cattle are not prevented from coming into contact with buffalo—and another (Interior, through its NPS)—which has let the buffalo overflow Yellowstone in the first place.

Montana’s Department of Livestock has also turned to more enlightened management techniques, such as the entirely ineffective and lavishly expensive one of hazing buffalo exactly 1 mile back into the park. Not to worry; the stockmen are having to use precious few of their own dollars, having persuaded the federal government, to the tune of nearly $1 million per annum, to foot the bill with your money and my money. There actually are some states and provinces, such as Utah, Wyoming, and British Columbia, in which wild buffalo are established, revenue-producing big game—due to those places having the luxury of isolated ranges where buffalo will not conflict with cattle or anything else. They even have seasons of reasonable length and give the quarry a sporting chance. But unless some madcap scheme (such as turning most of the increasingly depopulated High Plains into a “buffalo commons�? takes hold, all the rest of America will be considered far too cramped for buffalo.

Should that be important? Not if conservation is only to be a matter of convenience, based on animals that don’t get in the way; and not if the thought of ever pursuing buffalo in fair chase holds absolutely no appeal for you. As long as it’s acceptable for the American environment, without wild buffalo, to contain a void as stark as an eyeless skull lying white on a withered prairie, it won’t be important at all.

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