812-Lancaster Farming, Saturday, April 22, 1995
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Once-Endangered Buffaloes Stampede To Revitalization
BRYAN HODGSON
National Geographic News
Service
YELLOWSTONE NATION
AL PARK. Wyo. If his grand
vision comes true, a Lakota Indian
named Fred Dußray will soon be
able to plan the 20th century’s
greatest wild buffalo roundup, cut
ting Yellowstone’s 4,000-animal
herd in half.
‘This hunt will be a little diffe
rent,” Dußray says. “We’ll do it to
save their lives.”
Severe overcrowding in recent
years has driven many of the
park’s buffaloes onto neighboring
cattle ranches. In 1994, Montana
game wardens shot about 400 of
them to eliminate any chance that
they could infect domestic cattle
with brucellosis, a deadly bovine
disease that causes spontaneous
abortion.
Now, after years of letting the
herd roam without supervision in
order to duplicate natural condi
tions, the National Park Service
has agreed to quarantine as many
as 2,000 buffaloes for brucellosis
testing and vaccination.
That’s where Dußray hqpes to
come in. He is the founder of the
Intertribal Bison Coalition, whose
33 member tribes are restoring
buffalo hods to Indian reserva
tions across the United States. The
organization is a leading candidate
to handle the difficult roundup and
quarantine operation, which would
be based on a fenced tract of adja
cent U.S. Forest Service land.
“We’re the best-equipped to do
it,” Dußray says. “We’re exper
ienced in handling the animals.
They’ve been part of our culture
for centuries. Besides that, we’ll be
able to use healthy animals for
breeding. For the first time in
years, the Yellowstone gene pool
will become available to buffalo
ranchers everywhere.”
That any buffalo genes still exist
is something of a miracle. Once the
shaggy giants roamed North
America SO million strong, but by
the end of the 19th century only
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Fred Dußray, a buffalo rancher on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation In South
Dakota, hopes to take the lead in a planned roundup and quarantine 0f2,000 buffaloes
in Yellowstone National Park, Wyo. He founded the Intertribal Bison Coalition, which
seeks to restore buffalo herds to reservations.
about a thousand survived. Most
experts believe that their numbers
were reduced by commercial hunt
ing, aided by a dc facto govern
ment policy of eliminating the
Plains Indians’ main source of
food.
Now some scientists raise the
possibility that a disease like
brucellosis, introduced with cattle
imported from Europe, may have
ravaged the herds at the same time
hunters were killing prime animals
by the hundreds of thousands.
“Settlers who crossed the plains
on the Oregon Trail and other mig
ration routes brought about 4 mil
lion cattle with them,” says wild
life biologist William Alan Stumpf
of Boise, Idaho, who has studied
population dynamics of wild crea
tures for many years.
“Vaccination was unknown in
those days,” he says, “and it’s rea
sonable to suppose that many of
them carried the disease. Abo,
when the buffalo population
crashed, the pronghorn antelope
population crashed at the same
time -- and they weren’t being
hunted.”
Today, although several herds
still carry the disease, their birth
rate isn’t affected by it ~ strong
evidence that a handful of survi
vors developed an immunity they
passed along.
The buffalo’s future is secure.
Some 250,000 animals range park
lands and private ranches from
New York to Hawaii, from Canada
to Oklahoma. The American Bison
Association’s membership has
doubled to 2,300 since 1993, says
president Bud Flocchini of Gillet
te, Wyo., whose
Durham Ranches Co. maintains
some 4,000 buffaloes.
“We’ve never seen such inter
est. Heifer calves are selling now
for about $1,600 each, and 2-year
olds for up to $3,500. Last year, a
champion blue-ribbon bull sold for
$15,000,” he tells National
Geographic.
“But most buyers are small
operators. We advise them to study
the animal very carefully before
getting started, and pay a lot of
attention to fences. These animals
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are much tougher to work with
than beef cattle. To produce
income, you need between SO to
100 head and around 300 acres of
good pasture, with supplementary
feed in the off season.”
For people who can’t invest
thousands of dollars in a private
herd, the Nature Conservancy
offers a low-cost alternative. For a
$25 donation, anyone can adopt a
buffalo on the environmental orga
nization’s 37,000-acre Tallgrass
Prairie Preserve in Osage County,
Okla. The preserve is designed to
restore an almost-vanished ecosys
tem, whose 10-foot-tall grasses
once covered millions of acres.
“So far we’ve had a thousand or
so individuals and groups signing
up, including a lot of school clas
ses,” says public affairs represen
tative Beth Daniel of San Francis
co. “We received about 400 buffa
lo as a donation from a private
rancher.”
The bison association points
with pride to the healthful qualities
of buffalo meat, which is lower in
cholesterol than chicken breast. To
«iHf
Seven of Yellowstone National Park’s 4,000 bison cross a geyser basin In a winter
time quest for grass. Overcrowding has forced many of the buffaloes onto neighbor
ing cattle ranches. Concerned about the possible spread of brucellosis, a deadly
bovine disease, Montana game wardens shot 400 bison last year.
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keep it that way. the association
recommends that growers pledge
not to use hormones or growth
stimulating drugs.
The meat is increasingly popu
lar on human dining tables, as Sam
Arnold knows. In 1994, he served
some 50,000 buffalo dinners for
about $1.5 million at his Fort
restaurant west of Denver. Experi
ence has made Arnold an ardent
advocate of high quality-control
standards in the buffalo industry.
“The first night I put buffalo on
the menu, 1 had 52 dinners sent
back because they were too
tough,” he says. “I never forgot
that, and I’ve had long, serious
talks with purveyors about stan
dards. We’ve learned that one
tough steak can sour a person on
buffalo for life, and he’ll tell his
Blacksmith Demonstration
LANDIS VALLEY (Lancaster
Co.) Williamsburg blacksmith
will demonstrate blacksmithing at
Landis Valley Museum on Satur
day, April 29, from 9-5. Admis-
Dial Gauge Pressure
Canners Tested
Improper temperatures result in
food spoilage, failure of jars to
seal, loss of liquid and even serious
microbic toxins that could cause
botulism. The lids with a
weighted-gauge do not need to be
checked.
LEESPORT (Berks Co.)
Dial gauge pressure canners will
be tested on May 2 at the Berks
County Agriculture Center, Lees
port. Testing takes only five
minutes and there is no charge.
Call the office for an appointment
Herb Program
LANDIS VALLEY (Lancaster
Co.) —Free program “Herbs Yes
terday and Today” by Adrienne
Lind will be held on Tuesday April
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friends.”
Fred Dußray has mixed feelings
about the buffalo’s hew lease on
life. Raising his own the
Cheyenne River reservation in
South Dakota, he sees the animals
as helping to restore Indian tradi
tions and provide a healthy diet
Teaching young members of the
tribe to herd the animals while rid
ing bareback, he says, would
imbue them with a sense of the
pride and skill that placed their
ancestors among the world’s most
formidable cavalrymen.
As for those who breed buffa
loes to be show animals, Dußray
offers a heartfelt plea: “Buffalo are
wild animals, with all their survi
val instincts intact The worst thing
you could do is teach them to be
cows.
sion is $6 for adults and $4 for ages
6-17. The museum is located at Rt
272 Oregon Pike, 2.5 miles north
of Lancaster. For more informa
tion. call (717) 569-0401.
25 at Landis Valley Museum, Rt
272 Oregon Pike, 2.5 miles north
of Lancaster.