Bison decline contributed to dwindling prairie landscape on Great Plains
As the prairie landscape steadily vanishes, the root cause is often overshadowed by the spotlight on industrial practices, with experts pointing to agriculture and energy development as the primary driver.
But history shows the origins of this loss can be traced back centuries ago – and will be felt for centuries to come.
“In my opinion, the original sin that we’re still, to this day, in terms of grasslands is the removal of two species from the ecosystem: The Indigenous humans and the American bison,” said Jon Hayes, who serves as the executive director for Audubon Southwest and vice president for the National Audubon Society. “And everything that comes after that, to me, is really driven by that fundamental change on the landscape.”
More: ‘The most imperiled ecosystem’: Grassland wildlife declining in West Texas, Great Plains
While data indicates modern agricultural practices did indeed play a crucial role in the decline of grasslands — removing more than 60% of grasslands, totaling 360 million acres, in the last century — many experts concur that the pivotal shift occurred long before.
Hayes emphasized that the slaughter of Native Americans and their displacement from natural habitats have significantly played a role in the deterioration of native grasslands, because their land-management practices played a crucial role in protecting the landscape, a factor that wasn't previously acknowledged.
“There’s a lot of science, in the last 10 to 20 years, that’s shown that the historic fire regime in place wasn’t really from lightning strikes as we had believed,” he said. “It was actually driven by Native Americans lighting the fires for moving game, but also because they knew it would come back regenerated with more vigor.”
Coinciding with the forced displacement of Indigenous populations, settlers also engaged in the widespread slaughter of bison, which many Indigenous tribes had strong connections with and relied upon for sustenance and shelter, as well as cultural and religious practices.
As a keystone species, bison were not only culturally significant to Indigenous tribes, but provided essential ecological services to the Great Plains, promoting biodiversity through seed and grass dispersion and preventing overgrowth of invasive flora. Hayes added that the loss of the species also led to the declines of other vital grassland species, including migratory birds and pollinators.
“Bison evolved with our prairie grasslands over centuries, and the prairie evolved with bison,” said Chamois Andersen, Senior Representative for Defenders of Wildlife’s Rockies and Plains program. “They’re a keystone species, and when we’re losing that keystone species, it’s like a rug with a frayed edge that, once you start to pull on it, it unravels, and the bison is emblematic of that.”
"Now, we are trying to make up for the atrocities of the past by returning the buffalo to tribal lands," she added.
In the early 1700s, bison – or buffalo to Native American populations – ranged most of North America and existed in populations between 30 and 100 million. But by 1800, with the arrival of equestrian hunting, Plains tribes had begun to kill between 200,000 to 400,000 bison annually, according to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
A more substantial threat emerged in the following decades with the advent of the first transcontinental railroad, and by 1870, there were only 8 million bison remaining, according to Emory University. The construction of the railroad had not only disrupted bison routes, dividing them into northern and southern herds due to their aversion to crossing the tracks, but it also transformed the role of bison into a primary food source for railroad workers. Simultaneously, commercial hunters took advantage of the railroad's accessibility, slaughtering more than 4 million bison by 1874.
“Because of their size, aggressiveness, and herd instinct, healthy bison generally were able to protect themselves against the wolves (their primary predators),” wrote Roger L. Di Silvestro in his recent book, ‘Return of the Bison’. “Once the horse and the rifle came to the Plains, and later the railroad, the bison was doomed.”
The situation worsened as Plains tribes and European settlers faced increased conflict. Under President Ulysses S. Grant, Secretary of the Interior Columbus Delano foresaw the disappearance of bison leading to the confinement of Native Americans into smaller areas, now reservations. Heading into the 20th Century, the bison population dwindled to about 500.
Under the leadership of President Theodore Roosevelt, conservationists committed to the recovery of the bison species. Since then, the population has rebounded to over 20,000, as reported by the U.S. Department of the Interior, which has announced an allocation of more than $30 million for bison conservation initiatives.
To spearhead these efforts, the department has formed a Bison Working Group – comprising representatives from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and U.S. Geological Survey – which will develop a Bison Shared Stewardship Plan. Additionally, the department established a Bison Management Apprenticeship program that empowers Tribes to manage bison herds on their own lands or through co-stewardship agreements.
"Our attention and efforts must turn toward the ecocultural restoration of bison as native North American wildlife," an order from the department reads. "Significant conservation work is necessary not only to ensure that bison will remain a viable species but also to restore ecosystem function, strengthen rural economies dependent on grassland health and provide for the return of bison to Tribally owned and ancestral lands."
Regardless, while many experts acknowledge the significance of reintroducing the species to tribal lands, the bison no longer occupies its previous ecological as a leading keystone species, culminating in adverse effects on the larger prairie ecosystem.
"While the security of the species is a conservation success worth celebration, bison remain functionally extinct to both grassland systems and the human cultures with which they coevolved,” the U.S. Department of Interior wrote.
This story is part of the ongoing 'Silent Plains' series by the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal on the disappearance of grasslands and the long-term implications of biodiversity loss and wildlife loss in West Texas and the broader Great Plains.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Bison decline contributed to dwindling prairie landscape on Great Plains
