Nearly 60 bison have been shipped from Grand Canyon National Park's North Rim to tribal communities/Rebecca Latson file
Tribes in Kansas, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Oklahoma have received bison taken from the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park as part of the park's efforts to reduce the number of bison there.
On September 4, Grand Canyon wildlife managers successfully relocated 57 bison from the North Rim to the Intertribal Buffalo Council, which distributed them among them the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation (Kans.), the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe (S. Dak.), the Santee Sioux Tribe (Nebr.), and the Modoc Nation (Okla.).
Eleven additional bison were outfitted with tracking collars and released during the corralling process. The collaring was conducted in partnership with the U.S. Geological Service for park wildlife biologists to study the bison migratory patterns and population size.
The goal of the 2020 Bison Reduction Program was to capture and relocate approximately 60-100 bison during a two-week corralling period from August 28-September 8. A pilot program was conducted on the North Rim in September 2019 with successful relocation of 31 bison to the Quapaw tribe (Okla.).
NPS biologists estimate that the North Rim bison herd has grown from approximately 100 bison, brought to the House Rock Wildlife Area in the early 1900s, to between 400 to 600 bison. Though the bison roam the Kaibab Plateau, they spend most of their time on the North Rim of the park. Biologists predict that the herd could grow to nearly 800 in the next three years, and be as large as 1,200 to 1,500 animals within 10 years without further management actions to control the size of the herd.
In the next three to five years, the National Park Service will reduce the size of the House Rock bison herd on the Kaibab Plateau. Operational details of future herd reduction are still being discussed.
Comments
I applaud the transfer of these House Rock animals to the Intertribal Buffalo Council. Doing so is far preferable to other, generally far more wasteful, options that are often used to adjust herd sizes on DOI lands. However, I also hope that everyone involved, within the NPS, within the Intertribal Buffalo Council, and within the respective Nations, continues to seek out, listen to, and scrupulously apply the most current, advanced, and farsighted conservation biology genetics expertise available on how and how not to best use these animals in their herds.
The progenitors of this House Rock herd were already burdened with significant levels of mitochondrial and chromosomal introgression when they were first brought to Grand Canyon and, even today, the herd continues to show high mitochondrial introgression with lower, but still significant, chromosomal issues in the nucleic DNA. None of this was considered a problem in earlier years.
In those days, both the breeders who supplied the original animals and, shortly thereafter, the NPS itself were really just in the scenery and entertainment businesses. Any real understanding of or even interest in conservation biology would have to wait for George Melendez Wright to arrive on the scene in the late 1920s. Unfortunately, there are still some who remain in that old mode. As far as they are concerned, if it looks like a buffalo, it's close enough. Only, over the longer term and given the gradual effects of cumulative genetic drift, that isn't a reliable approach to conservation biology or actually even for the Nations themselves.
It would be better to keep these animals restricted to separate meat production herds rather than used for bison conservation breeding stocks. At the very least, the cows (bison females) derived from this House Rock herd should definitely not be used for reproduction in order to cull and prevent spreading the mitochondrial introgression. If there is some reason to want to salvage remnant native genetics from this House Rock herd, the bulls (bison males) should be used where needed. By this time, there is a very high probability that any desirable remnant native nucleic DNA genetics will have been spread across both the bull and cow lines in the House Rock herd and can be accessed by using House Rock bulls on pure bison cows from other sources to filter out the mitochondrial introgression. Even this should be done only after careful study and only when the chance to preserve otherwise rare native genetics is deemed worth the risk of spreading introgression.
...just sayin'
Like the previous commenter says, these animals should be called bison hybrids because they have some of the highest levels of cattle genes of any "bison" herd in the nation. They were brought to the North Rim about a century ago in a failed bison-cattle breeding experiment. There is no record of bison in that area prior to this introduction. They are grazing meadows to ground, threatening rare plants. fouling water sources with feces, and compressing soils in areas that are vital for long term groundwater recharge. They have no native predators and therefore have a 33% reproductive success rate. This number of animals removed per year is not going to save the incredible ecology and archaelogical sites of the North Rim and North Kaibab.
Here's the backstory to those North Rim bison:
Yes, I rest my case. Certainly not all of them are "odd-looking 'bison' today on the North Rim" and most look kind of "bisony" to many less educated folks; but, they truly do have "some of the highest levels of cattle genes of any 'bison' herd in the nation" and I would hope that, by now, the NPS would know that none of these animals should be used in any serious bison conservation effort, although I don't doubt the very high quality of the meat. As table meat, even the most hybridized of bison are worth every penny; but, if anybody is looking to save unhybridized bison genetics, they should, as I have commented many times, look to the Yellowstone herd ...and know what they're doing.
And, Kurt, although the quote you found does not highlight it, Charles "Buffalo" Jones was in the buffalo business as much for the entertainment, celebrity, and advertising benefits as he was the livestock breeding side. Come to think of it, I do have, right now, although you'll need to hurry as it will sell quickly, a twenty-seven year old ranch truck with just a very little bit over four hundred thousand miles on it. This truck actually runs even better than new, very solid. The tires come studded with culturally correct cholla decorations and, if you were interested in purchasing this fine vehicle, I'd be willing to throw in an outstanding pureblood longhorn bull calf. His name is Satan; but, he's cute as a bug and gentle as a lamb, just come get him off the property and he's all yours.