Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
Aggressive Bison that Butted off Car Mirror
At one time American bison numbered 30 million but with the introduction, or
reintroduction in a sense, of horses by the Spanish, the agriculture based plains Indians turned
to hunting bison by horse. Later the white bison hunters came with guns, driven by the need of
hides for bison robes and factory machinery belts for eastern US industry. Overpopulation may
also have contributed to the decline and population crash from disease. Travelers on trains
reported seeing western prairies covered in dead bison and no evidence of being shot.
Population crashes due to over population are well documented in animals like mule deer in
Arizona in the 1940s, reindeer on Alaskan islands, white tailed deer in North America, Soay
sheep in the Hebrides, moose on Isle Royale in Lake Superior, and herbivores in South
African game reserves during droughts and of course lemmings in Scandinavia. As in Southern
Africa, the American bison population was down to two dozen or so each in the Texas
Panhandle, Colorado foothills, Big Horn Mountains, and 200 in Yellowstone (established as a
national park in 1872). By end of the nineteenth century the Yellowstone bison had been
poached down to a population of two dozen as well despite the US Army taking over anti-
poaching operations in 1886. Indeed, for establishing the Wichita Falls Game Preserve, bison
had to be exported from the Bronx Zoo for the restorancy of the population. Second only to
Yellowstone Park in the United States, the Lowveld on the Lebombo Plain began the world's
first major restoration project for wildlife in what was first called the Sabi Game Reserve,
promulgated in 1888, now known after enlargement as the Kruger Park. Bordering the Kruger
Park to the south, east, north, and west, under man's protection, wild animal Bushveld habitat
and wildlife has expanded from the non-existence of elephants and rhino, and 20 buffaloes in
1903, to some five hundred thousand animals in the early 1960s and some 18 million animals
today. In South Africa, there are now roughly 18,000 elephants, and in the Kruger Park alone,
some 33,000 buffaloes producing the nucleus for further Park and private populations. Black
wildebeest were essentially extinct apart from some 30 that farmers allowed on their property,
but there are now close to 30,000. Similarly, there were only some 15 white rhino left in
KwaZulu and today there is a thriving population of eighteen thousand, mostly on private game
ranches, that are exported over all of Africa and further afield.
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