A Project of the Center for Great Plains Studies and the School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska Great Plains Bison traces the history and ecology of this American symbol from the origins of the great herds that once dominated the prairie to its near extinction in the late nineteenth century and the subsequent efforts to restore the bison population. A longtime wildlife biologist and one of the most powerful literary voices on the Great Plains, Dan O’Brien has managed his own ethically run buffalo ranch since 1997. Drawing on both extensive research and decades of personal experience, he details not only the natural history of the bison but also its prominent symbolism in Native American culture and its rise as an icon of the Great Plains. Great Plains Bison is a tribute to the bison’s essential place at the heart of the North American prairie and its ability to inspire naturalists and wildlife advocates in the fight to preserve American biodiversity.

In a celebration of the wild hoofed animal that descended from the prehistoric bison and was the lifeblood of the Plains Indians, the author and photographer document this awesome beast in all its grandeur and beauty.100 color photos.

"This is the best book I've read about American bison and their habitat. It is vivid, concise, witty, erudite, first-hand, and up-to-date. Most important, it argues convincingly that the only way to assure survival of bison and their habitat in the wild is to establish a Great Plains National Park at least 5,000 square miles in extent."—David Rains Wallace, author of The Bonehunter's Revenge: Dinosaurs, Greed, and the Great Scientific Feud of the Gilded Age "Dr. Lott's scholarship is strong and thorough. American Bison presents an extensive, state-of-the-art review of key points of American bison that are unaddressed or under-addressed by previous books. Moreover, it does it in a popularized, often narrative form that makes the material comprehensible to the educated lay reader as well as to the bison scholar."—James H. Shaw, Department of Zoology, Oklahoma State University

For many, plains bison are the embodiment of wildness and the pre-settlement American West. After millennia of evolution through natural selection, however, the species was nearly wiped out, only to be subjected to domestication for more than 100 years. Domestication alters the bison genome through inbreeding, crossing with cattle genes, shrinking genetic diversity and artificial selection. These forces continue to replace natural selection and valued wild characteristics of bison. Does the future hold only continued domestication for plains bison in the United States? With a view from over 50 years in the profession of wildlife biology, Bailey probes this and other questions in The American Plains Bison: Rewilding an Icon. The book presents his original and lively analysis of 44 conservation bison herds on native range in the United States. He focuses upon the gray area between wildness and domestication and sheds light on domesticating practices of Native American and government agencies, as well as commercial bison producers. He challenges the profession of wildlife management to expand its views on manipulating wildlife populations. For bison, Bailey makes a strong case for creating large reserves to restore wild bison and their natural contributions to our grassland ecosystems.

The near disappearance of the American bison in the nineteenth century is commonly understood to be the result of over-hunting, capitalist greed, and all but genocidal military policy. This interpretation remains seductive because of its simplicity; there are villains and victims in this familiar cautionary tale of the American frontier. But as this volume of groundbreaking scholarship shows, the story of the bison’s demise is actually quite nuanced. Bison and People on the North American Great Plains brings together voices from several disciplines to offer new insights on the relationship between humans and animals that approached extinction. The essays here transcend the border between the United States and Canada to provide a continental context. Contributors include historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, paleontologists, and Native American perspectives. This book explores the deep past and examines the latest knowledge on bison anatomy and physiology, how bison responded to climate change (especially drought), and early bison hunters and pre-contact trade. It also focuses on the era of European contact, in particular the arrival of the horse, and some of the first known instances of over-hunting. By the nineteenth century bison reached a “tipping point” as a result of new tanning practices, an early attempt at protective legislation, and ventures to introducing cattle as a replacement stock. The book concludes with a Lakota perspective featuring new ethnohistorical research. Bison and People on the North American Great Plains is a major contribution to environmental history, western history, and the growing field of transnational history.

This study, first published in 2000, examines the cultural and ecological causes of the near-extinction of the bison.

In a Chicago junk shop three small-time crooks plot to rob a man of his coin collection, the showpiece of which is a valuable "Buffalo nickel". These high-minded grifters fancy themselves businessmen pursuing legitmate free enterprise. But the reality of the three--Donny, the oafish junk shop owner; Bobby, a young junkie Donny has taken under his wing; and "Teach"; a violently paranoid braggart--is that they are merely pawns caught up in their own game of last-chance, dead-end, empty pipe dreams.

Rapidly disappearing bison in the late 1800s prompted progressive thinkers to call for the preservation of wild lands and wildlife in North America. Following a legendary hunt for the last wild bison in central Montana, Dr. William Hornady sought to immortalize the West's most iconic species. Activists like Theodore Roosevelt rose to the call, initiating a restoration plan that seemed almost incomprehensible in that era. Follow the journey from the first animals bred at the Bronx Zoo to today's National Bison Range. Glenn Plumb, retired National Park Service chief wildlife biologist, and Keith Aune, retired Wildlife Conservation Society director of bison programs, detail Roosevelt's conservation legacy and the landmark efforts of many others.

America's Great Plains once possessed one of the grandest wildlife spectacles of the world, equaled only by such places as the Serengeti, the Masai Mara, or the veld of South Africa. Pronghorn antelope, gray wolves, bison, coyotes, wild horses, and grizzly bears: less than two hundred years ago these creatures existed in such abundance that John James Audubon was moved to write, "it is impossible to describe or even conceive the vast multitudes of these animals." In a work that is at once a lyrical evocation of that lost splendor and a detailed natural history of these charismatic species of the historic Great Plains, veteran naturalist and outdoorsman Dan Flores draws a vivid portrait of each of these animals in their glory—and tells the harrowing story of what happened to them at the hands of market hunters and ranchers and ultimately a federal killing program in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Great Plains with its wildlife intact dazzled Americans and Europeans alike, prompting numerous literary tributes. American Serengeti takes its place alongside these celebratory works, showing us the grazers and predators of the plains against the vast opalescent distances, the blue mountains shimmering on the horizon, the great rippling tracts of yellowed grasslands. Far from the empty "flyover country" of recent times, this landscape is alive with a complex ecology at least 20,000 years old—a continental patrimony whose wonders may not be entirely lost, as recent efforts hold out hope of partial restoration of these historic species. Written by an author who has done breakthrough work on the histories of several of these animals—including bison, wild horses, and coyotes—American Serengeti is as rigorous in its research as it is intimate in its sense of wonder—the most deeply informed, closely observed view we have of the Great Plains' wild heritage.

A beautifully rendered reference guide to the Great Plains portion of the famous expedition through the American West highlights the explorer's remarkable encounters with previously undocumented flora and fauna as they moved through the Plains region. Original. (Biology & Natural History)