These pescatarian birds are directly exposed to PFAS contamination due to the island's position near the St. Lawrence Seaway.
Over fifty years of data show a peak in PFAS (also known as "forever chemicals") content in seabird eggs in the 90s, followed by a decrease as regulations went into effect. The most recent findings show a 70% decrease of most common PFAS.
While continued vigilance a regulation is needed, this data indicates that regulations are working to reduce PFAS concentrations in marine ecosystems.
The return of the bison means the return of the prairie, one of the three great grassland ecosystems on the planet.
"A tribal-led nonprofit is creating a network of native bison ranchers that are restoring ecosystems on the Great Plains, restoring native ranchers’ connections with their ancestral land, and restoring the native diet that their ancestors relied on.
Called the Tanka Fund, they coordinate donors and partners to help ranchers secure grazing land access, funds needed to install and repair fencing, increase their herd sizes, and access markets for bison meat across the country.
That’s the human part of the story. But as Dawn Sherman, executive director of the Tanka Fund, told Native Sun News, they’re “buffalo people” and these four-legged, 2,000 lbs. “cousins” are equal-part-protagonists.
The return of the bison means the return of the prairie, one of the three great grassland ecosystems on the planet, of which just 1% remains as it was when the Mayflower arrived.
“Bringing buffalo back to their ancestral homelands is essential to restoring the ecosystem. We know that the buffalo is a keystone species,” said Dawn Sherman, a member of the Lakota, Delaware, Shawnee, and Cree.
“Bringing the buffalo back to the land and to our people, helps restore the ecosystem and everything it supports from the animals to the plants to the people. It’s come full circle. That’s how we see it.”
As Sherman and the Tanka Fund help native ranchers grow their operations, everyone is well aware of the power of the bison to transform the environment: just as nations across Europe are, who are reintroducing wood bison to various ecosystems, for all the same reasons.
Sherman points out the variety of ways in which buffalo anchor the prairie ecosystem. The almost-extinct black-footed ferret, she points out, lived symbiotically with the bison, and with the latter gone, the former followed—nearly.
The long-billed curlew uses bison dung as a disguise to hide nests from predators. Deer, pronghorn antelope, and elk all rely on bison to plow through deep snows and uncover the grasses that these smaller animals can’t reach.
Everywhere the bison hurls its massive body, life springs in the beast’s wake. When bison roll about on the plains, it creates depressions known as wallows. These fill with rainwater and create enormous puddles where amphibians and insects thrive and reproduce. Certain plants evolved to grow in the wet conditions of the wallows which Native Americans harvested for food and medicine.
Native plants evolved under the trampling hooves of millions of bison, and that constant tamping down of the Earth is a key necessity in the spreading of native wildflower seed.
Indeed, Sherman says some of these native ranchers are bringing bison onto lands still visibly affected by the Dust Bowl, and already the animals are acting like a giant wooly cure-all for the land’s ills.
Since 2020, the Tanka Fund, in partnership with the Inter-Tribal Buffalo Council and the Nature Conservancy, has overseen the transfer of 2,300 bison from Nature Conservancy reserves to lands managed by ranchers within the Tanka Fund network.
“[T]he more animals that we can get the more of that prairie we can restore,” said Sherman. “We can help restore the land that has been plowed and has been leased out to cattle ranchers.”"
-Article via Good News Network, February 13, 2025. Video via Tanka Fund, July 17, 2024.
Bison Return to Illinois Prairie to the Sounds of Drumming After 200 Years of Absence
The 6 animals were released from a large trailer into a cattle enclosure to allow them to get used to the idea of the frozen prairie again.
A herd of 6 American bison—3 males and 3 females—have been released onto native Illinois prairie.
There, to the sound of drumming, songs, and cheers, they began to acclimate to their new surroundings—surroundings that had missed them for 200 years.
A large crowd of Santee Sioux, herded together in their woven blankets and synthetic down jackets, had arrived at sunrise on Burlington Prairie Forest Preserve in Kane County, 60 miles northwest of Chicago, to witness something of a homecoming.
“It’s different when you’re welcoming them back home. That’s their home, not mine,” tribal elder Robert Wapahi told CBS News Chicago.
The 6 animals were released from a large trailer into a cattle enclosure to allow them to get used to the idea of the frozen prairie again, and come the spring, they’ll be moved onto a larger area, still fenced, where it’s anticipated they will improve native grasslands.
“It’s really important and awesome to see another herd that is hitting the ground in a good way,” one man said at the event, where drummers sang a song as the trailer arrived.
The American Indian Center, the oldest urban Native American cultural establishment in the United States, will look after the animals in partnership with Kane County Forests Persevere staff, and a designated herd manager.
The reduction in bison from 35 million to several thousand had a profound effect on the North American prairie even without the conversion of so much of it to farmland. Bison engineer grassland ecosystems with much the same impact as beavers on a stream.
The millions of hooves stamped the grasslands flat, preventing any one species from over colonizing an area. Their wooly coats acted as an excellent seed dispersal vehicle. Their dung helped fertilized the plains and their digging of wallowing pits increased the landscape’s ability to resist drought and retain water.
In bits and pieces, fits and starts, bison are being reintroduced to native prairie when it can be found, and though 6 is a far cry from 35 million, all good things have to start somewhere.
Judging by the smiles and the cheers of the Santee Sioux—when the shaggy beasts rumbled out of the trailer—this is a very, very good thing.
fucking love big trees everywhere. now that the heat is back don’t remove them and whine afterwards @ landlords/cities/idiots/companies/stingy people who don’t know shit and love being scorched & suffocated to death 🪵❌
