Persistence Personified: The Bison of Yellowstone

Getting ready for my Yellowstone trip, I had been looking forward to seeing bison in their natural habitat. Those I had seen in zoos were unprepossessing specimens that looked small and ragged and smelled bad in their barren enclosures. They did not live up to their American icon status. I had to believe that the bison that had been central to the cultures of so many Native American tribes was majestic and awe-inspiring, and those were qualities I hoped to see by encountering bison in the wild.


On our first day in Yellowstone we came around a bend in the road and there on the left in the snow banks built up at the road’s edge by the plows were EIGHT BISON! Their shaggy brown coats were crusted with snow, and they swung their heavy heads back and forth, patiently scraping away several feet of snow to get at the grasses and sedge under its cover. Their bulging neck muscles, thick skulls, and sturdy legs are made to order for plowing through the deep snow to uncover food. These adaptations enable them to live year-round in Yellowstone and other places where mule deer and less hardy grazers fail to thrive.


Through our driver Peg’s open window we could hear the crunch of snow under their hooves and the snorts, grunts, and sighs they emitted. Clouds of white steam blasted from their nostrils into the freezing air.


Although each paused in feeding to fix our van with a round, brown eye for a moment when we first stopped, none of them seemed at all disturbed. We were so close – half a road-width away, not much more than a bison’s 10-foot body length – that we didn’t dare get out of the van, so everyone with cameras took turns getting up to the driver’s side windows and shooting through them.


The bison of Yellowstone are a true conservation success story. As every child learns in American history, tens of millions of bison roamed the west up until the coming of Euroamerican settlers. Eyewitness accounts preserved in letters and journals describe herds so vast that it took several days and several nights for all of the bison to pass a given observation point. During the mid and late 1800s they were slaughtered wholesale, and by the end of the nineteenth century only a few dozen remained. Almost two dozen of those lived in Yellowstone National Park, which was an American experiment when it became the very first national park in the world in 1872. In the park they were protected, but their numbers grew slowly. In the early 1900s, more bison were brought in from privately owned herds, and the population grew more rapidly.


During the early half of the 20th century, the bison were managed aggressively: bred, herded, relocated, protected from predators, and culled. In the mid-1960s the park supposedly backed off of such aggressive herd management and allowed nature to take its course; the official party line is that natural ecologic processes now control the number and distribution of bison within the park. And the official population numbers look impressive:
· 1902: less than two dozen
· 1954: 1500
· 1996: 3500
· 2005: a record summer population of 4900
· 2006: a summer population of 3900
· 2007: a late-winter (February) population of 3600
· 2007: a summer (July-August) population of 4700
· 2008: as of April 15, the population dropped to 2100
Although the general upward trend in the bison population seems like something to celebrate, the last bullet in the list above illustrates the downside: increasing numbers of bison wander beyond the boundaries of the park in search of food. Because the bison carry a disease called brucellosis, which might be picked up by domestic cattle, bison that stray outside of the park are “hazed” or harassed by park workers and employees of state and federal agencies in charge of bison management. The hazing includes buzzing the bison by helicopters and chasing them on snowmobiles, horses, and ATVs, using the noise of the machines to drive the bison back into the park.


Bison that persist in leaving the park in spite of hazing are rounded up, tested for brucellosis, and slaughtered if they test positive. According to the New York Times, nearly 1200 had been slaughtered by March 23 of the 2007-2008 winter, and the killing was scheduled to continue through April. (source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/us/23bison.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1) This culling of the herd supposedly protects the interests of area ranchers by keeping Montana brucellosis-free, but it’s an issue fraught with emotion on both sides. In at least one of the areas where the bison were hazed and captured for slaughter, there were no cattle present, and the owners of the land apparently had no problem with the bison being there. (source: http://www.buffalofieldcampaign.org/media/press0708/pressreleases0708/052908.html)


In the winter of 2007-2008, a total of approximately 1700 bison died (source: Jackson Hole Daily article http://www.jhguide.com/article.php?art_id=3078); the 500 or so that were not killed by humans were victims of winterkill, which is the toll that extreme weather and harder-to-reach food takes on the less fit animals. Surprisingly, the reintroduction of wolves hasn’t taken much of a toll on bison. Only one of the park’s dozen or so packs “specializes” in hunting bison by running them down in deep snow, and even they don’t take that many of the great beasts.


Probably because bison bulls can weigh 1800-2000 pounds, and even the slightly less massive cows (they’re not exactly diminutive at 1000-plus pounds) stand six feet tall at the shoulders. And not only does one bison feed a lot of wolves and other carnivores and scavengers for long time; their curved, pointed horns are quite deadly and are not shed every year like the antlers of elk and deer. Bison can move at 30-35 miles per hour in short bursts, and park regulations advise people to stay at least 25 yards from them and all other wildlife in the park (except bears, which rate a minimum distance of 100 yards, but which were hibernating soundly in their dens during our Yellowstone sojourn).


Peg, behind the wheel of our van, had all of this in mind and kept the engine running, ready to make a quick getaway if the small herd of bison we had encountered decided it was time for us to move along.


Their massive heads dipped down, swung left and right and back again, and then came up with white-coated fodder hanging from their mouths. Wise brown eyes looked into our faces and camera lenses. The great mouthfuls disappeared with a couple of movements of the massive jaws, and the heads dipped down again for another go. Our cameras clicked and buzzed and beeped. Our voices were hushed with admiration as we said “wow” and “amazing” and felt ourselves in the presence of ancient wordless wisdom.


We moved on after about ten minutes of watching these majestic animals go about making their livelihoods in their patient, dignified way, but we saw bison again and again throughout our days in the park. Usually they were in the distance, often mere dark dots moving through the deep snow in single-file lines that stretched for several dozen creatures.


One morning, dropping down into Lamar Valley from Cooke City, we found a lone bull grazing in a quiet pocket-sized meadow. It was about fifty feet away, armpit-deep (do bisons have armpits? Legpits?) in drifted snow, its muzzle crusted with a layer of white every time its head emerged with a mouthful. Peg pulled the van over. When the bull seemed undisturbed, we quietly opened the sliding side door. After ascertaining that the bull still didn’t mind our presence, I slid down to kneel just outside the door in the snowbank, glad I had invested in really thick quilted snowpants. Behind me the rest of the group clustered in the door, cameras shooting over my head as we gazed silently at the majestic grazer.


I have a friend who considers the bison his “spirit animal” because he admires their patience, their fortitude, their ability to keep putting one foot in front of the other no matter what Mother Nature throws at them. To remind him to “keep on keeping on” even in the toughest of times, a silhouette portrait of a bull, muzzle crusted with snow, eye gazing wisely at the camera, breath forming a cloud around its curved horn, hangs in his family room.


Having finally met the bison in the wild, I understand why.


A number of organizations are campaigning for less deadly bison management strategies in the greater Yellowstone area, including The Humane Society, Defenders of Wildlife, and the NRDC. Check their web sites and search for “bison” to get the latest information and find out how to get involved.