Don't call them buffalo

DAWN WALTON
May 19, 2009

Plains bison are often confused with their relative, the larger wood bison, and are wrongly called buffalo. Although bison and buffalo belong to the same family, buffalo are native to Africa and Asia.

Last year, the Swiss-based World Conservation Union (IUCN) sounded an alarm by declaring the bison "near threatened" on its Red List of Threatened Species.

"Future progress in conservation and recovery of the North American bison will depend on significant changes in its legal status and management as wildlife by federal and state/provincial agencies, harmonization of policies and activities among agencies at multiple levels, and co-operation with environmental organizations," concluded the group, which is considered the world authority on the collection of biological information.

In 2004, the Committee on Endangered Species of Wildlife in Canada suggested that plains bison should be listed as "threatened," but no government has acted on that recommendation.

Bison once dominated the continent from Mexico to Alaska in numbers ranging from 30 to 60 million (of those, between 100,000 and 200,000 were wood bison) until the animals were nearly annihilated in the 1800s.

There are now more than 400,000 bison in North America, but most are on commercial farms and only about 31,000 are managed in the public interest for conservation purposes.

Cormack Gates, co-chair of the IUCN's bison specialist group, said conservation of the species is an uphill battle, but small-scale efforts bring glimmers of hope.

In 2003, Elk Island National Park in Alberta sent 50 plains bison to the Nature Conservancy of Canada's Old Man on His Back Prairie and Heritage Conservation Area in southwest Saskatchewan, and now the herd has grown to 87 animals, with more calves on the way. Last year, Elk Island shipped 53 wood bison to Alaska for release this year. And now, officials in Mexico are working on a plan to reintroduce plains bison to that country, said Prof. Gates, who also teaches at the University of Calgary.

Herds need to have at least 1,000 individuals to be considerable viable, stable and less prone to natural disasters and predators, and also to avoid breeding dominance, an undesirable situation involving a single male fathering most of the calves, he added.

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