'Our people can get to know themselves again': Repopulating bison on Native American land
Following a brief ceremony April 17 that included the burning of sage and the singing of Native American prayers, five bison from the Laramie Foothills Conservation Herd were loaded into trailers bound for the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.
On April 18, 12 more were loaded into trailers bound for the Crow Reservation in Montana.
The week before, seven bison from the herd were sent to the Grand Portage Reservation in Minnesota and seven more to the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin.
The conservation herd, launched in 2015 to raise healthy bison to supplement existing bison herds and start new ones across the country, is doing just that.
“It was always the goal for us to be able to share these animals and have them go and be re-homed with other herds and to help support those herds,” Colorado State University professor Jennifer Barfield said. “We’re realizing that mission, and it’s pretty exciting.”
From IVF to natural births, conservation herd has grown exponentially
Barfield, a professor in reproductive physiology, helped get the herd started through in vitro fertilization, using sperm and embryo from North American prairie bison of the Yellowstone National Park herd’s lineage.
Bacteria that cause brucellosis, a disease that leads to miscarriages and premature births in bison, elk and cattle, is removed from the sperm and embryo before it is implanted into a female bison to ensure disease-free offspring.
The herd grew from 10 bison in 2015 to about 120 last year and had 100 or so this year before the re-homing shipments began.
Although in vitro fertilization is still used, many of the births within the conservation herd are now occurring naturally, Barfield said. Most of the cows, in fact, will be giving birth to new calves over the next couple weeks at Soapstone Prairie, a city of Fort Collins natural area near the Wyoming border where bison are grazing and roaming on two 500-acre pastures.
Barfield, a professor of reproductive physiology in CSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, and others still screen the bison for genetic disorders, brucellosis and other diseases and, depending on the wishes of the organization receiving them, vaccinate them as necessary.
“We use the reproductive technologies to bring new genetics into our herd, and, by doing it that way, we really make a lot of those disease risks not an issue,” she said.
Brucellosis has not been found in the offspring of any bison from the Laramie Foothills Conservation Herd, she said.
How the local conservation herd got started
Efforts to save wild bison, particularly the Yellowstone herd that had dwindled to as few as two dozen animals by 1902, according to the National Park Service, were what got the local conservation herd started, said Matt McCollum, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and CSU who manages the herd.
In 2004, he built the livestock pens for the first shipment of bison from the Yellowstone lineage that arrived the following year from Idaho and pushed for studies to determine if animals exposed to brucellosis and other diseases in USDA research could be quarantined and returned to the wild rather than sent off to slaughter.
Barfield got involved about 2010 to 2011, she said. The city of Fort Collins and Larimer County were brought in, too, purchasing two adjacent parcels of open space near the Wyoming border — Soapstone Prairie Natural Area and Red Mountain Open Space — where a conservation herd could roam in large, fenced pastures and grow.
There were 36 bison in the herd Monday when McCollum brought some hay and other feed used to get them through the winter until the native grasses green up for them to eat. The remainder of the herd had been transferred to the Foothills Campus, awaiting genetic testing or transfer.
CSU and the USDA work with the South Dakota-based InterTribal Buffalo Council for most bison transfers to Native American organizations and reservations. Previous transfers have gone to the Cherokee and Osage nations in Oklahoma, Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation in Kansas, Pueblo of Sandia in New Mexico and tribes as far away as Alabama, Barfield and McCollum said.
But bison from the Laramie Foothills Conservation Herd are also sent to supplement existing herds or start new ones through a number of other preservation groups, including the Southern Plains Land Trust in southern Colorado, Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge northeast of Denver and American Prairie Reserve in Montana. They’ve also gone to zoos across the country, Barfield said, noting that the very first bison embryo she implanted was in a pregnant cow transferred to the Bronx Zoo in New York, where it was born and remains as the bull on display.
The animals can only be used for breeding, Barfield said, and cannot be sold for profit.
“When we started this project, this was always our goal, to be doing exactly what we’re doing now,” McCollum said.
'Now, our people can get to know themselves again'
The transfer Monday to the Oglala Lakota Nation’s Knife Chief Buffalo Nation Society was nearly four years in the making, he said, thanks to COVID-19 travel restrictions, weather delays and other issues.
So, there were smiles all around as a small group of representatives from the Oglala Lakota Nation, including two young children and a couple teenagers, gathered with Barfield, McCollum, research assistant Karl Held, CSU student Owen Dietrich, drivers of the two trucks hauling the bison in trailers, a local Native American volunteer and a few members of the media. Everyone gathered in a circle for a couple brief messages and to pass a burning piece of sage, taking in the fragrant smoke in a ceremonial cleansing, as Daryl Slim, a member of the Dine Nation, sang a Native American prayer.
“Somewhere along the line, we separated ourselves from the Earth,” said Slim, who traveled from Arizona to accompany the bison on their journey to Pine Ridge. “So, now we put them back together and take these animals back to their place. Now, our people can get to know themselves again.”
Slim sang another prayer song as Held, Dietrich and McCollum herded the bison through a chute into the trailers and said he would sing another when the bison were released into the wild on the reservation later that day.
“It’s a good thing to educate the young about the buffalo and tradition and culture,” said Jamie Ghost, one of the Oglala Lakota who had traveled from Pine Ridge to bring back the bison. “It’s part of our culture, so it’s a good thing. It’s really nice to see something like this.”
These transfers are why the conservation herd exists.
“It’s really hard to describe how excited we are when it happens, and I think part of the excitement is seeing how excited the receiving tribe or group is and how much it means to them,” Barfield said. “It just reinforces that everything we’re doing is worth it. It’s incredibly rewarding.”
How to help
The rehoming of animals from the Laramie Foothills Bison Conservation Herd to tribal, federal and private conservation herds across the country without selling them is entirely depending on support from donors.
Donated funds go toward the costs of managing and maintaining a healthy herd, including winter feed, veterinary support, transport and daily care. To donate, visit advancing.colostate.edu/bison.
Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news.