Bison Conservation Champions
The rescue of the bison from near extinction began in the late 1800s with the efforts of a few individuals. Even today most bison are in private herds, as efforts continue today to reestablish this majestic symbol of the plains.
The story begins in the territory that was to become Saskatchewan. Most of bison in public and private herds in Canada are progeny of calves captured here in the 1870s and 1880s!
There were once an estimated 60,000,000 head of plains bison roaming North America. By the 1870s, the vast nomadic herds had been decimated primarily as a deliberate US government policy to subdue Indian tribes. This was to have major effects in Canada since the northern bison herds roamed from the Dakotas and Montana into the Canadian Prairies.
The zoologist Valerius Geist, drawing on the first Canadian book on wildlife conservation, writes that "as early as 1857 the Cree reported few bison ranging between the North and South Saskatchewan rivers and that the Cree tried to protect the remnants." First Nations Chiefs such as Beardy, Sweet Grass and Big Bear raised the issue of conservation at treaty negotiations. Métis hunters, also concerned about depletion, developed their own code of conduct for their biannual hunts. However, Métis and First Nations peoples had also been enlisted by the fur-trading firms to harvest hides and robes. Hides were used for many purposes including belting for machines in Eastern factories.
In the 1870s, two men joined forces to save the bison. Charlie Alloway*, a horseman and a lover of nature, spent extensive time in freighting, trading and merchandizing into the North-West Territory as part of the freighting company his brother started with James MacKay, a burly Métis guide. MacKay could speak all the dialects of the prairie Indians, was respected by them and was one of three commissioners for the Treaty Six negotiations at Fort Carlton and Fort Pitt.
In spring 1873, Alloway and MacKay captured bison calves near Prince Albert. "Taking along a domestic cow as foster mother they joined a Métis brigade and spent the whole summer capturing three young orphaned calves...and bringing them safely to Winnipeg." (Neufeld) There were two more expeditions to Saskatchewan in following years. The herd multiplied, tended by a Samuel Bedson near Stony Plain, MB. In 1888, most of this 100 strong herd were sold to a C.J. Jones of Kansas and some were donated to Banff National Park. The bison now in the Winnipeg zoo are also from that herd.
Meanwhile, another group of four calves were captured by Sam Walking Coyote. Some sources say they were captured in Saskatchewan, where, estranged from his tribe, he was living and hunting. He trailed them back to Flathead Reservation in Montana as a peace offering. In 1884, he sold his bison to Charles Allard and Michel Pablo, Métis men who married tribal members and owned ranches on the Reservation. By 1893, the Allard-Pablo herd had grown to 100. Meanwhile, the Jones herd in Kansas had been decimated by ticks in the southern heat. It was also purchased by Allard and Pablo.
By 1906, this herd numbered some 800 and was the main plains bison herd in North America. The others were the small herd in Banff National Park and another small wild herd in Yellowstone National Park, which had some supplemental stock purchased from Pablo and Allard as well.
In 1907, the Canadian government purchased 716 animals of the Allard-Pablo herd for $150,000. It took experienced cowboys from the reservation over five years to round up the buffalo for shipping by rail to the newly created Elk Island National Park in Alberta.
Two years later, all but 45 of the animals were sent to a larger facility in Wainwright, Alberta, where they interbred with the larger, and equally threatened, northern wood bison. Most of today's purebred plains bison originated with those few dozen animals left behind at Elk Island.
In 1970, there were 30,000 plains bison, with approximately half in public herds in parks and reserves and half in private herds, obtained originally form surplus stock of conservation herds. By 2005, there are over 225,000 bison in private commercial herds in Canada, 85% of which are in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.
The Canadian Bison Association (CBA), which has been active since 1984, has been a leading force in the restoration of the bison. It now serves over 1800 bison producers on individual farms across the country. About 40% of these are in Saskatchewan.
The CBA was founded in large part as a conservation effort, but uniquely combines conservation with market development. According to the CBA, this combined focus serves as a model for other environmental conservation efforts. It has expanded the domestic market and created a unique brand and appeal by creating new export demand. In doing so, the bison industry has converted over a million acres of cultivated land back to grass or employed native pasture in the way that nature intended. There is evidence that bison create a mosaic of vegetation through differential grazing, which in turn increases the diversity of fauna.
The CBA demonstrates how agriculture can work with the environment to bring value to food products where none existed previously. This has resulted in economic and environmental benefits to Saskatchewan and Canada.
The Canadian Bison Association moved to Regina, Saskatchewan from Morden, Manitoba in June of 1999 to be closer to the centre of bison production across the prairies.
The effort of private bison producers has contributed to one of the largest and most successful conservation stories in the history of Canada. However, for zoologists like Geist, the development of bison as a commercial product is at odds with the preservation of the bison as a wildlife species,
There are also some significant herds public herds in Saskatchewan. Prince Albert National Park's bison herd is the only free-ranging population of plains bison in a Canadian national park. The herd took shape after 1969, after 50 plains bison were released north of Prince Albert and some of the animals moved into the park. This herd now has 220 individuals.
There is also an unmonitored free-ranging herd in the Primrose Lake Air Weapons Range north of Meadow Lake. Buffalo Pound Provincial Park has a small herd of about 35 for educational and historical display. Bison have also been reintroduced to Grasslands National Park Parks. Seventy animals arrived in the park in the fall of 2005 to over-winter in a holding facility and be released into a larger fenced area in the spring of 2006. Old Man on His Back conservation area has also introduced bison.
For more information on commercial bison visit the CBA web site at http://www.bisoncentral.com/cba/.
* Charles Alloway, spent considerable time trading in Saskatchewan. In the early 1870's, while camped in the Qu'Appelle Valley he was "warned by Indians to move camp, which moments later was plowed to pulp by a 'brown river of buffalo'." The herd continued to lope by for the next 24 hours at about 10 a second. Alloway estimated that over a million bison passed by.
Sources and further information:
Geist, Valerius: Buffalo Nation-History and Legend of the North American Bison. Fifth House, 1996.
Boyd, D. P. 2003. Conservation of North American Bison: Status and Recommendations. Master's Degree Dissertation, University of Calgary.
Neufeld, Peter Lorenz: Bison Conservation: The Canadian Story Manitoba History, Number 24, Autumn 1992 http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/24/bisonconservation.shtml