Bison roundup shows species' prairie recovery

updated 2:57 p.m. ET Nov. 28, 2008

PAWHUSKA, Okla. - It's 6 a.m. and the cowboys are already downing second and third cups of coffee, adjusting to a 35-degree morning. Slowly, a full moon and stars give way to hues of orange sky. And with daybreak, what had been obscured comes into clearer focus: hundreds of shaggy bison standing on an unfenced landscape that looks like it rolls on forever.

Any other time of year, this herd of 2,600 would have a 23,000-acre swath of the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve to roam.

But for one week in November, it's time for the annual roundup in this place where man took a 5,500-year-old species to the brink of extinction and brought it back.

The 21st century cowboys who round the animals up employ pickups and ATVs instead of horses to thin the herd. Some bison will be sold to private ranchers and some trucked to slaughterhouses.

It's the 15th roundup since 300 bison were reintroduced to the tallgrass prairie in the early 1990s. Overseen by The Nature Conservancy, which bought the preserve in 1989, the program here is among several across the country that have rescued the American bison — also commonly called the buffalo — from near-annihilation.

With predators largely gone and uncontrolled hunting now long past, the roundup keeps the herd in healthy balance, says preserve director Bob Hamilton.

"We are the predator, we are the wolf," he says.

Game hunters ravaged bison herds
Just 120 years ago, about 500 bison remained in the U.S., slashed from a peak of at least 30 million by game hunters, European settlers and railroad crews. Government policy supported the mass killing as a way to subdue American Indian tribes, which used nearly every part of the animal.

Bison were slaughtered by the thousands for their tongues, hides and bones, the bulk of their carcasses left to rot.

In his 1889 work, "The Extermination of the American Bison," zoologist William T. Hornaday offers a glimpse of the devastation:

"With the building of three lines of railway through the most populous buffalo country there came a demand for robes and hides ... and then followed a wild rush of hunters ... eager to destroy as many head as possible in the shortest time.

"For those greedy ones, the chase on horseback was too slow and too unfruitful. That was a retail method of killing, whereas they wanted to kill by wholesale," he wrote.

Still-hunt method
Instead of hunting on horseback with bow and arrow, as the Indians did, shooters employed the still-hunt method: sneaking up on a herd, perhaps positioning on a ridge overlooking a prairie, taking aim with rifles and downing as many as they could.

Old photos and paintings are testament to the carnage. One picture in Hornaday's book, captioned "Five Minutes' Work," shows eight bison lying dead on the prairie, the shooter's horse standing to the side. A black-and-white photograph from the late 1800s shows a man standing atop a mountain of bison skulls.

As the bison suffered, so did the tallgrass prairie, which once encompassed 142 million acres and stretched from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Today, one-tenth of that prairie remains, the largest of it located in the Flint Hills of Oklahoma and Kansas.

Before reintroduction of the species in recent years, the last recorded bison on the tallgrass prairie was in northern Osage County, Okla., in 1851. It was killed by a survey crew.

"It's appalling that we really decimated the wildlife," laments Harvey Payne, who's been involved with the preserve for about 25 years.

No longer in danger
Today, bison are no longer in danger of extinction.

With more than 500,000 living in North America, the animals can be found on private ranches, public parks — such as Yellowstone in Wyoming — and wildlife preserves like the tallgrass prairie, located about 80 miles northwest of Tulsa. About 5,600 can be found on conservancy preserves in the Great Plains.

Perhaps the most famous bison owner is media mogul Ted Turner, who has about 50,000 head and manages 2 million acres of ranch land.

He's parlayed that into dozens of namesake restaurants that serve up the lean, low-calorie meat. His Ted's Montana Grill locations offer bison meatloaf and bison pot roast, among other dishes.

Bison meat has gained in popularity in specialty supermarkets and burger joints across the country, and its health appeal is winning new converts.

A selling point: From ranch to dinner plate, your meal is 100 percent organic.

"It's the exact thing Lewis and Clark would've eaten," says M. Sanjayan, lead scientist at the conservancy. "You're not going to get more pure than that."

Back to the pickup
Six pickups are on the move. A twangy country tune blasts out one of the windows.

One is equipped with a glasspack muffler, and its throaty roar is effective when bison are being moved down the corral alley.

The vehicles box in a few hundred of the animals — a perfect day's haul.

Though bison have a reputation for being a slow, plodding animal without much brainpower, it is myth.

MORE FROM ENVIRONMENT

Environment Section Front

Brazil: ‘Gringos’ must pay to save Amazon Australia town to shoot invading camels China vows to slow carbon emissions growth Newsweek: Is carbon sequestration really green? U.S. sets climate target ahead of summit Nissan hatches plan to boost battery cars S. Africa's baboon gangs get more aggressive ‘Flotilla’ of icebergs sails toward New Zealand GOP opens probe into climate science e-mails   One man’s trash is another man’s house Environment Section Front   Add Environment headlines to your news reader: