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Eisenberg, who has spent his career studying wolves and bison, applies a combination of western science and traditional ecological knowledge, an area of environmental study based on ancient indigenous knowledge. The field is particularly important for bison restoration efforts, as the Plains Indians — a term used to describe several indigenous tribes living in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada — relied on animals and their habitat based on thousands of countries. years.
“Bison have historically been moving from that landscape to fire, Native Americans, predators, and climate,” said Kyran Kunkel, a conservation biologist and associate professor and research association at the University of Montana at the Smithsonian Institute. Kunkel is also collaborating with the American Prairie Reserve, a nonprofit group that aims to restore bison, remove fences and merge parts of private and public land to restore the local prairie ecosystem.
“They were moving and creating a landscape that was highly heterogeneous,” he added. “And so they affected the grass, and vice versa, which led to the diverse ecosystems there (birds, small mammals, large mammals, and insects,” he said.
“The change we are seeing today is because we have made it directly with other species — not only with bison loss, but also with predator control and management barriers, grass growth and pasture manipulation,” Kunkel said.
The greatest impact that bison would have on pasture restoration, Curtis Freese, a former biologist at the World Wildlife Fund and the American Prairie Reserve, said would be felt after fences and man-made water sources were removed and bison could interact with fire. Fire is a natural and essential part of the grassland ecosystem. By working in conjunction with grazing, it accelerates the decomposition that returns food to the soil. Prior to European settlement, indigenous tribes deliberately lit a fire on the prairie, knowing that after burning the grass, it would regenerate within a few weeks, after which the bison would appear to eat grasses rich in nutrients.
“You have an ecosystem that’s working now,” Frees said, “where they could graze a mainland pasture as they used to do historically, especially to create a heterogeneous habitat where the evolution of grassland birds has been crucial.”
Bison are a valuable source of protein for wild carnivores and tribes as well, as they want to return bison meat to their diets. Their bodies drive fast foxes, golden eagles, grizzly bears, wolves, beetles and nematodes. “And then of course it’s like taking a bag of nitrogen fertilizer and throwing it on the ground,” Frees said.
In addition to American efforts to restore bison, U.S. conservation groups have struggled for a long time to return bison to parts of their original range. The American Bison Society, the Boone and Crockett Club, and the New York Zoological Society have been researching the ecology and spread of bison. One of the most promising efforts is shaping the historic habitat of bison in central Montana, under the direction of the American Prairie Reserve. The nonprofit has a herd of about 810 bison on land they have acquired so far, but many ranchers see the effort as a serious threat to their livelihoods and livelihoods, which could further sideline their businesses.
Glacier County, The home of the Blackfeet Reserve, the ranch boosts the local economy. Many ranchers — including Native Americans — view bison as a threat to competition from scarce resources (such as grass and water) and potential carriers of livestock diseases. However, other ranchers are trying to recreate the land by changing livestock grazing methods, in some cases involving cows that historically imitated the way bison grazed and how they moved the land.
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