Buffalo Literature
Tuesday, January 6, 2009

I am obsessed with buffalo. Luckily, it's been an awesome two years for Buffalo Literature. Last year and 2007 saw the publication of three riveting, fascinating and brilliantly written books about American bison.

American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon

I just finished the last one, Steven Rinella's "American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon" on Sunday. On Monday I Googled him and saw that he was speaking at the Barnes 'N' Noble in Tribeca on Tuesday. So I went to hear him.

Steven Rinella

Steven wrote in his book that he lived, for a spell, in Missoula, MT, my hometown. When I walked up to introduce myself he shook my hand and said, "Hey, you were the singer in Moxie!"

Yeah! That's the band I sang in when I was in college.

Steven's book is an engrossing tale of one of the few Americans since 1880 to hunt bison. In 2005 Steven drew a permit to shoot a buffalo from a herd that was introduced to an Alaskan valley (and was descendant from buffalo in the National Bison Range just north of Missoula.) The book reinforces something I've long believed, that hunters should be a vital part of bringing the bison back to their native range. I think hunters should have the right to kill buffalo, but there should also be plenty of wild buffalo for hunters to kill. Today there are less than 20,000 wild bison in North America and nowhere in the lower 48 is there a regular hunt. It's part of our heritage. Bring it back.

A book that tells a heartwarming story about an individual buffalo raised by a New Mexican family intertwined with the tragic tale of the buffalo's extermination is "A Buffalo in the House" by J.D. Rosen. Published in 2007, I've purchased several copies of this book as gifts.

A Buffalo In The House

A brilliant book about the crazy fight to create Yellowstone Park - the only area that has had a continuous population of bison since before Columbus - and one heroic American's crusade to save bison is "Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, the Battle To Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West" by Michael Punke. This book was also published in 2007 and is so fascinating it's hard to put down.

Last Stand

Keep the buffalo books coming!

There's a lot of hopeful and exciting things regarding wild bison in the 21st century. One of the coolest is happening on the plains of Montana where the America Prairie Foundation is buying up, securing conservation easements on and patching together swaths of pristine prairie and, you guessed it, putting wild buffalo on it to roam. I can't wait to visit someday.

There has also been positive movement on an issue that's been awfully contentious for more than a dozen years, killing bison that wander out of Yellowstone Park.

In a nutshell, the issue is this: A few Yellowstone bison carry a disease that was passed to them by domestic cattle called brucellosis, a bacteria that causes cows to abort their fetuses. In the past decade thousands of starving buffalo that left Yellowstone Park in the winter in search of food were slaughtered by government agents in order to protect the cattle ranches in the area. It has been the largest mass killing of wild buffalo since the extermination of the last great herds on the plains.

When I was in college I interviewed then MT governor Marc Racicot (who later went on to lead the National Republican Party and George W. Bush's re-election committee) about this issue. I got the distinct impression that the fuss about brucellosis is a red herring. The real issue, I sensed, was the state just doesn't know what to do with 2,000 pounds of ornery hooves, horns and fur stomping around places where people put down roads, homes and railways. Current governor Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat who has not yet stopped the slaughter, was met with protests at his swearing in this week from groups that oppose the bison slaughter.

While too many bison are still killed because of this dubious brucellosis threat (there has never been a documented instance of a buffalo giving brucellosis to a cow), the state of Montana is now allowing a small number of closely monitored bison to roam beyond the park's northern border. Montana will also let an unlimited number of bison to roam outside the western border of the park, so long as they stay in a designated area (of course, too many bison will be killed for going outside the designated area, but it will be fewer than would be killed if the dead zone began at the park's boundary).

Lastly, the state of Montana is also undertaking a cool new initiative in which bison that leave Yellowstone Park will be shipped to Indian Reservations in Montana and Wyoming to be used as food for the tribes. Buffalo meat is higher in protein and lower in cholesterol than beef and experts hope it could help bring down skyrocketing levels of diabetes on the reservations.

However the obstructionist, knee-jerk, anti-buffalo Montana Stock Growers Association don't want these buffalo given (back?) to Native American tribes. Even though the buffalo were quarantined for three years to ensure they are brucellosis free (I saw the buffalo in their pens this summer driving north out of Yellowstone).

Hey! Stockgrowers! Ain't you ever seen Dances With Wolves? Killing buffalo and taking them away from Native Americans ain't gonna' get you anywhere in this century.

Buffalo in the Lamar Valley, Yellowston Park, Summer 2007. Quite possibly one of 1,616 Yellowstone bison that were killed last winter for roaming beyond the park's border.

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