American Bison Society
Encyclopedia
The American Bison Society (ABS) was founded in 1905 by pioneering conservationists and sportsmen including William T. Hornaday and Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore "Teddy" Roosevelt was the 26th President of the United States . He is noted for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his "cowboy" persona and robust masculinity...

 to help save the bison
Bison
Members of the genus Bison are large, even-toed ungulates within the subfamily Bovinae. Two extant and four extinct species are recognized...

 from extinction and raise public awareness about the species.

Over 40 million American bison
American Bison
The American bison , also commonly known as the American buffalo, is a North American species of bison that once roamed the grasslands of North America in massive herds...

 (Bison bison) once roamed the plains and grasslands from Mexico to central Canada, shaping the landscape with their migrations, grazing patterns, and behavior. By the 1870s, their populations had been decimated by westward expansion and over-hunting. An 1884 survey conducted by Hornaday, the first director of the Wildlife Conservation Society
Wildlife Conservation Society
The Wildlife Conservation Society based at the Bronx Zoo was founded in 1895 as the New York Zoological Society and currently manages some of wild places around the world, with over 500 field conservation projects in 60 countries, and 200 scientists on staff...

 (known then as the New York Zoological Society), showed that approximately 1,000 bison remained in North America.

History

The early American Bison Society launched a campaign to raise funds to create wild bison reserves and stock them with bison from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo
Bronx Zoo
The Bronx Zoo is located in the Bronx borough of New York City, within Bronx Park. It is the largest metropolitan zoo in the United States, comprising of park lands and naturalistic habitats, through which the Bronx River flows....

. In 1907 the ABS shipped 15 bison to the Ouachita National Forest
Ouachita National Forest
The Ouachita National Forest is a National Forest that lies in the western portion of Arkansas and portions of eastern Oklahoma.-History:The Ouachita National Forest is the oldest National Forest in the southern United States. The Forest encompasses , including most of the scenic Ouachita Mountains...

 and Game Preserve in Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...

 by cart and rail. This was the first animal reintroduction in North America. In 1910, the ABS helped buy the nucleus herd for the National Bison Range
National Bison Range
The National Bison Range is a National Wildlife Refuge located in western Montana established in 1908 to provide a sanctuary for the American bison. The NBR is one of the oldest National Wildlife Refuges in the United States. The size of the bison herd at the NBR is relatively small, numbering...

 in Montana
Montana
Montana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller, "island ranges" are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...

, and in 1913, ABS donated 14 bison to Wind Cave National Park
Wind Cave National Park
Wind Cave National Park is a United States national park north of the town of Hot Springs in western South Dakota. Established in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt, it was the seventh U.S. National Park and the first cave to be designated a national park anywhere in the world. The cave is...

 in South Dakota
South Dakota
South Dakota is a state located in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is named after the Lakota and Dakota Sioux American Indian tribes. Once a part of Dakota Territory, South Dakota became a state on November 2, 1889. The state has an area of and an estimated population of just over...

. Counting on the successful reproduction of the species, the ABS considered their work done, and the organization was disbanded in 1935.

In 2005, the American Bison Society was re-launched by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) to secure the ecological future of bison in North America.

On August 12, 2010 National Geographic published a progress report on the Wood Bison Recovery Program supported in part by WCS- North America.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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