BISON

Bison came up in conversation today as an example of a tremendous, almost miraculous, conservation victory. (Also, winner of best scientific name ever? Plains bison: Bison bison bison.) I've been a huge fan of these beasts ever since seeing and photographing herds of them on America's Great Plains as a child. Today I instantly recalled the Yellowstone brochure warning visitors that these seemingly lumbering, punk rock, Prairie cows grow up to 2,000lbs (907kg) and can suddenly bolt, hitting 35 miles an hour (56km/h) when they want to. The park made it clear that waltzing into a field of bison was about as safe as crossing a freeway on foot. That always stuck with me. What I couldn't recall were any recent population estimates. I made a note to look into it later and return with real numbers tomorrow. And that's when things went sideways.

The conservation story is a great one, and getting better. The bison population went from near-extinction, all the way down around roughly 400 individuals, up to somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 today. We're nowhere near the historical population highs but bison have most certainly been saved from the brink. All that seems irrefutable.

That's not the problem. The problem is that the accepted estimate for North America's bison population prior to European arrival is between 30 million and 60 million. From there it is said that at the height of the US bison slaughter (1872-74) as many as 1.2 million were killed annually. And, from what I can gather, it is also agreed upon that in other years fewer than 100,000 were shot. What is certain is that in a twenty year period bison were virtually wiped out.

DOES THAT MAKE SENSE?

So, without even thinking about this we have two very big issues. The first and most glaring is the basic math involving just the simplest numbers folks seem to agree upon. And even if you generously presume the population estimates are far off, and start with a figure as small as 20 million bison, the math still doesn't work. If you also pair this with a hunt twice the stated size (six million shot at the height of the slaughter and then closer to 200,000 every year thereafter) you cannot possibly arrive at the picture we've come to accept. This rewriting of the consensus would only result in reducing a diminished population of 20 million by half. (20,000,000 - 6,000,000 - [200,000 * 20] = 10,000,000.) Of course, if the starting population was somewhere between 55 and 65 million and the hunt smaller than was boasted about at the time, as it probably was, such a cull would only have reduced herds minimally: at worst down 2% annually at the peak and down just 0.1% in a more typical year. So, with no other factors, the story makes little sense; however, problematically, there are other factors, many of them.

Problem number two is that bison are animals. Unlike Barbie dolls or automobiles, bison reproduce. (Surprise!) So how does that change the picture? Looking at US National Park Service factsheet, I find that plains bison tend to give birth annually, and typically to one calf who is weaned in under a year and who arrives at maturity in under three years. Too, cows often start giving birth at two years of age and do so each year for a decade or two. To my mind then, if we're only looking at the lower of the popular estimates, that of 30 million bison, there would be an annual reproduction rate of, what? At the very least several million. Right? If only half the population is female (15 million or so), and we assume less than half of those are capable of reproduction at any one time (just six million, say); and, for some reason, only half of the remaining actually give birth to live young who survive in any year (infant mortality is in reality between 20-40% but let's just say 50% or just three million surviving young); then you still have millions and millions of new bison each year. What am I missing?

Now put all this together. Add a generously low estimate for a reproduction rate, of two to four million new bison arriving annually, AND with a mysterious higher-than-normal natural death rate of young, AND pair that with a wild killing campaign of ten times the agreed upon rate. Would all that see a decline in even this lower bison population estimate of 30 million? Only a little. But now acknowledge that the 60 million figure is by far the most popular. (In some people's minds it frames the population as more abundant and thriving and the devastation even more horrific. But, it causes a far bigger problem for folks who would forward that argument.) If 60 million is more accurate then the big bison slaughter only took a truly tiny percentage of annual population growth, making it closer to what we might call a "sustainable yield" today.

So, all the above alone makes me think the standard model we grew up with is missing something major, or a whole bunch of major somethings.

WHAT AM I MISSING?

Like the conventional story, none of the above factors in natural death rates, novel diseases (I'm thinking of those terrible prion diseases currently plaguing cows, deer, elk, and others), the gradual reduction of bison territory with the introduction of cattle ranching and the associated invention of barbed wire (though it, "devil's rope", was only patented in 1873, and wouldn't have spread across America for some time), etc… So, it is surely complicated and there are plenty of other factors to consider in the collapse of the bison population. However, none of these appear in the narrative I grew up with, either.

Still, we know the rough base bison population and it's distribution: 30-60 million does seem like a solid best guess and the going consensus. And we are certain these herds ranged across the continent: from Northern Canada to Mexico and the Rockies to the Atlantic. And we know the relative size and distribution of the human population: few and sparse. Prior to 1890 most of the US had a population density of less than two people per square mile. And even a century later huge swathes of the country remain as devoid of humans as previous centuries.

We also know the technology and resources at hand in the late 19th century: we're talking men on horseback with slow-loading and slow-firing muskets and carbines, ones with such a powerful kick soldiers said it would "knock down two men with each shot" (the fellow firing the shot and the less fortunate one struck by it.) And we know bison and the men hunting them were moving across millions of square kilometres of what was at the time rough terrain in one of the most remote locations on the planet. Are we not? So, consider the conventional narrative. How many horses and rifles and how much ammunition are we talking about? Just imagine this physical and material undertaking and the cost of all that. There were only 40 million Americans at this time and, as far as I can tell, less than 12,000 enlisted soldiers on the frontier, a fraction of whom were hunting bison. And then what do you think happens when you discharge a high-calibre rifle, or ten, in proximity of a herd of bison? And what happens the next time you show up with the same horses, same uniforms, and same rifles?

For better context, consider that there were "only" around 600,000 men killed in the whole of the US Civil War. (Yes, that's a lot of dead, but we're contrasting this with 60,000,000 bison.) That war, a conflict with 3-4 million combatants, occurred just a few years prior to and lasted twice as long as the highly concerted portion of the bison hunt. Of course, during the war both sides had sabers and bayonets, revolvers and rifles, cannons and artillery. (I suppose bison have horns, but I think you see what I'm getting at.) Troops in this war also commonly charged in formation at or sat in trenches across from one another and taking an attack face-on, typically at close-range or actually hand-to-hand. (So, they weren't scattering away in every direction at the speed of a modern car after the first shot went off.) And we're also not talking about modern-day Marines or Navy SEALS here. Just do a Google image search for "1875 US infantry" and what you will find are small men, some of whom appear elderly and in ill-fitting costumes with tattered shoes and toting ancient-looking firearms. And many of these men were likely impaired by varying degrees and combinations of blindness, deafness, malnutrition, iodine deficiency, emphysema, typhoid, and/or alcoholism. (Health was so poor at this time, there are even stories of the army rejecting essential recruits, men they desperately needed for the war effort, for having an insufficient numbers of teeth to do the job of firing a gun or taking a bullet for the cause.)

But you're telling me fewer than 12,000 (or even 120,000) such men and with at best .50 caliber Springfield rifles killed 60,000,000 (or maybe just 29,999,999) free-range bison and did so all across the US and in just a few years?

(Looking into this further and thinking about Yellowstone specifically, I learned that the US Army was responsible for the administration of Yellowstone National Park at the time of the bison cull. So they were the ones both responsible for the hunt and also preventing poaching and preserving the species from extinction. As we know, Yellowstone was the only place to sustain a continuous plains bison population from ancient times to the present and, as a result, was also the key reservoir for rebooting the population across North America. So the situation is infinitely more interesting than the one I thought I knew.)

BUT WE HAVE OTHER NUMBERS, TOO

Still, let's think more critically about the situation. Take all of the above information and combine it with the assertion that these murderers of bison just left them to rot. Does that make sense to you? If it does, pair that with all the photos we have of piles of bison skulls. To that, now add all the documentation we have for the use and value of bison hides and bones. Hides were processed and sold to Asia and Europe but were also sold to tanneries in local cities. If you care to look you can find ship manifests attesting to volumes heading overseas. And then with bison bones we aren't talking about them going into key chains and tourist bobbles but everything from fertilizer to sugar refining and fine china. Where did all of that bison bone come from if not America's bison? Now mix into this murky picture the reality that prior to the 20th century or so, effectively everyone on the planet was living in what we would consider abject poverty and suffering illnesses and deficiencies we've since made extinct, or virtually so. Now notice that this was especially true for Europeans and their descendants on America's frontier. But the narrative demands that subsistence farmers and young infantrymen, often lacking basic resources and occupying a sparse and climatically hostile environment (have you been to Montana or Arizona in January?), walked away from mountains of valuable resources that they themselves harvested and at great expense. I mean, maybe.

SO WHAT?

I don't know what did or did not take place. But, really, does any part of this story we've come to know make any sense? To my simple mind, all of the above almost certainly disrupts, if not eliminates, the possibility of the simple "settlers exterminated the bison" narrative. Yes, surely that's part of the story; however, without much more information it seems pretty safe to suggest that the picture is at best fuzzy. Myself, I'm calling this a myth until someone can bring something more to the table.