Long before ships sailed to North America’s shores, before shopping malls and parking lots blanketed its plains, mahogany waves of muscle, horn, and hide thundered from sea to shining sea.
American Bison (Bison bison)—also known as buffalo—have roamed the continent for some 200,000 years, since their ancestors crossed the Bering land bridge from Siberia into Alaska.
When humans made the same trek between 15,000 and 20,000 years ago, bison became central to Indigenous people’s way of living: They ate the animal’s meat and fat, and made clothing and shelter from its hide, tools from its bones, rope from its hair, glue from its hooves.
Later, the Europeans who arrived on the continent’s shores slaughtered almost all the animals, in order to break the will of Native Americans and clear land for railroads.
Later still, people of both Indigenous and European descent began to work together to bring bison back. You can’t tell the story of people in North America without also telling the story of bison, and vice versa.
Today, bison number about 530,000, scattered in distinct herds across the continent. Their recovery is one of the 20th century’s great conservation success stories, with the majestic beasts evoking the American wilderness as they stalk reserves such as Yellowstone National Park.
Bison are “doing OK” right now, says Steve Yang, a biomedical scientist at the University of Saskatchewan’s (USask’s) Western College of Veterinary Medicine who is part of a major bison genetics project called Bison Integrated Genomics (BIG)...
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