neohn

After 120 years, Yellowstone bison are a single breeding population

(phys.org)

bikenaga

COMMENTS:

I saw a documentary (PBS? Ken Burns? Something like that) about bison and I'm astonished we have any left today. They had a couple of private herds and a handful of individuals in zoos, and that was just about it. That's after having a population, less than a century previous, that produced regular accounts of covering the land for as far as the eye could see. The only reason we didn't wipe them out completely was because of just a few people working independently of one another who thought it would be a shame to see them disappear.
y33t
It was a deliberate attempt to deprive Native Americans of their historical means of support. You can't besiege a Native American city because they had already been pushed off their historical lands. But if you can eliminate a major source of food for them, it's possibly even more effective.

In general people under-estimate the capability of humanity to eradicate other forms of life. We've managed to eliminates organisms as plentiful as things like rinderpest for example. Large animals are actually easier. Were it not for a last minute change, almost all forms of whales would have been extinct in the 20th century. We've been the most advanced life form on Earth for a long time, possibly even before modern humans arrived. But in the past 1000 years or so we really became the most dominant life form. Our population has exploded and we can pretty much push out any other form of life we choose.

sidewndr46
Latest estimates I recall are that humans and our livestock together comprise over 90% of the total mass of land animals globally. All wild animals together are less than 10%.

The mental picture of a wild Earth on which humans live is now outdated. The Earth has become a human place, with essentially some open-air zoos containing the few wild animals we have chosen to not kill.

snowwrestler
Insects comprise a total weight to about 1 billion tons.(1) Which is roughly the same as the weight of all people and farm animals on Earth combined. (1) https://www.jpost.com/environment-and-climate-change/article...
lalalandland
gus_massa
Bacteria still outweigh us a thousand to one and that's not counting those already in our bodies is a great alt-text as well.
0xcafecafe
Bacteria aren't really animals though.
mitthrowaway2
I remember a joke posted in a old thread here. Paraphrasing:

> Eukaryotes are the method that Prokaryotes use for space travel.

gus_massa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Mountain_locust is an interesting example of eradicating an organism. From massive swarms of locusts to none in under 30 years.
buerkle
Along the same lines is the passenger pigeon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon

fanatic2pope
This is true of macro life forms, but rinderpest is a bad example. It's one of only two diseases we have ever been able to eliminate. Both of them were viruses-we've never stopped a bacterial disease, and with the increasing failure of antibiotics, that's only going to get worse.
Miraste
> It was a deliberate attempt to deprive Native Americans of their historical means of support.

No, it was not. The bison population collapse was not something expected or planned. One year the bison simply disappeared (1882).

The bison ecosystem in North America was deeply unnatural. Bison are fast-replicating herbivores that don't have any natural predators! This only happened because Natives exterminated almost all the large predators.

Such systems almost always go through boom-bust cycles, and that's exactly what happened. The migration patterns were disturbed by railroads, and that likely led to the spread of the Texas tick fever and anthrax among the bison population. They have around 90% death rate, and that's what caused the population collapse.

However, this time the population did not recover by itself.

> But if you can eliminate a major source of food for them, it's possibly even more effective.

It's the same nonsense as giving smallpox-impregnated blankets used to exterminate populations.

cyberax
Do you have any evidence for the claim that it was disease rather than the immense slaughter?
onychomys
Yes. There are multiple papers written about this, here's a nice overview article: https://www.nacdnet.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/bisoncoll...

There was overhunting of bison, but normally overhunting leads to a gradual decline of the population (and we've seen that with overfishing). The bison near-extinction happened within _one_ year. The hunters in 1883 were waiting in vain for the bison to come.

cyberax
from page 108:

Removing 840,000 animals from 4.5 million leaves them a good 3 million short of extinct. But Texas tick fever has an 81% death rate.11 Removing 81% from 4.5 million leaves just 855,000. Shooting b 840,000 of them leaves N 15,000, which is a lot like b 25,177 (Fig. 1)

Their own conclusions was that absent hunting, there would have been around 855,000 bison that year. Hunting reduced the remaining population after tick fever by 99.2%! Ignoring this is the equivalent of suggesting it was not an iceberg that sunk the titanic, but a lack of buoyancy.

sidewndr46
Well, yes. Hunting obviously was a part of the issue.

I'm just saying that bison near-extinction was not a result of a directed action to exterminate them.

It's more fair to say that bison went through a normal bust cycle and hunting prevented them from bouncing back.

cyberax
You’ve shown an interesting insight: hunting could not have been only cause of the near-extinction of the buffalo. However, the way you’ve presented it is extremely misleading. It sounds like you are blaming the natives for the downfall of the buffalo.

I do not believe this is what you intended to get across, since the evidence you have presented doesn’t support it. Please be careful about how you share information. It is as important as the information itself.

The buffalo did not just disappear and the extermination was most definitely planned. Regardless of the logistical impossibility of that goal via hunting alone, this was the goal and the goal was achieved. This is well documented. The technicality between “preventing a bounce back” and “seeking extermination” does not matter, because the goal was extermination.

goldencoralefan
> It sounds like you are blaming the natives for the downfall of the buffalo.

Well, yeah. They created an unhealthy ecological situation with abysmal biodiversity, where one species dominated an entire ecological niche without natural predators.

And it's not like the North American Natives are special. Humans have been causing large-scale extinctions since the Ice Age: https://ourworldindata.org/quaternary-megafauna-extinction

> this was the goal and the goal was achieved.

Care to provide the proof? Contemporary official documents, large-scale official plans, etc.?

cyberax
In looking through sources, I'm no longer even convinced that disease was relevant anymore. An encyclopedia article shows a decline from about 15 million in 1865 to 7 million in 1873 - roughly 1 million per year.[1] This sounds like a gradual decline to me. And with some math Buffalo Bill famously killed 4000 over two years. Assuming the average hunter only did a tenth of that, it would only take 5000 hunters over 20 years to get the job done (roughly).

Furthermore, the National Park Service, part of the Department of the Interior, quotes the Secretary of the Interior of 1873 stating that "[t]he civilization of the Indian is impossible while buffalo remain on the plains”.[2] In fact the DOI secretary in 2023 said verbatim that "bison were nearly driven to extinction through uncontrolled hunting and a U.S. policy of eradication tied to intentional harm against and control of Tribes". [3]

This is not hard to believe at al. There were centuries of war between the natives and the settlers. Presidential campaigns slogans focused on defeats over the Indians[4]. The U.S. absolutely hated the Natives from the start. One of the cited grievances in the Declaration of Independence is the fact that Britain would deal with the Natives.

It is both plausible and proven that extermination was the goal. If you still don't believe this here is the most detailed timeline I've ever seen on the subject from the US Fish and Wildlife service. [5]

[1] https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-... [2] https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/what-happened-to-the-bison.... [3] https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/interior-department-announ... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tippecanoe [5] https://web.archive.org/web/20200210033215/https://www.fws.g...

goldencoralefan
Do you have any source for this being planned to exterminate them to make it more difficult for the natives?

Because it sure sounds like that wouldn’t have happened without the diseases eliminating well over 80% of the population already

moi2388
> The US Army sanctioned and actively endorsed the wholesale slaughter of bison herds.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison_hunting#Government_inv...

MadcapJake
Grizzly bears hunted bison and were present in the plains states down through Texas and into Mexico. The last Grizzly in Arizona was killed later than the last one in California.
SpicyUme
Grizzly bears do not normally hunt healthy adult bison. They will normally hunt weakened or injured individuals, or bison calves.

In general, predators need to be overwhelmingly more powerful than their prey (or use pack tactics, like lions).

cyberax
There are several examples of this in other species. The Przewalski horse is probably one of the most dramatic examples. The population was reduced to around a dozen individuals, all in captivity. After an intensive breeding and reintroduction program, the population is now around 2,000, with several hundred of those in the wild. There's also the Père David's deer. It's an interesting species: the only semi-aquatic deer species. It has webbing between its hooves and eats aquativ plants (along with grass). They were hunted essentially to extinction in their native territory in China, the only remaining individuals were a handful taken by missionaries (including Père David, their namesake). Today their population is over 8,000, with hundreds reintroduced to the wild.

It's sad to think about, but it's also hopeful in a way. Humanity as a whole nearly killed these species, but a few dedicated individuals were able to save them.

openasocket
The Black Robin in New Zealand is almost the most extreme example of a recovery from near extinction: Just 1 female and 5 males in the early 1980s have now bred a population of around 300 individuals. There's an interesting story in the wikipedia page [0] of 'edge laying' egg behaviour, and how humans initially corrected the problem but later had to stop to ensure the behaviour wasn't propagated.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_robin

PlunderBunny
Something similar also happened in Europe. They were eradicated everywhere but a small natural park in Poland. Now they are being reintroduced, although I don't know where they will find the space.
karmakurtisaani
Somewhat curiously, there is another recently extinct animal the "Auroch" which was hunted to extinction as well. As recently as 1000 years ago they were quite plentiful, but completely extinct by the time Europeans started moving to the Americas
sidewndr46
There have been some, let's say, 'interesting' attempts to recreate the species via back-breeding [0]. They seem to be having some success.

[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nazi-super-cows-e...

WorkerBee28474
Lions were also roaming Europe relatively recently, likely into the middle ages.
dendrite9
Fruska gora, a mountain region in Serbia, has acquired or were gifted 5 European bisons from Poland[0]. It's always heartwarming to see a country working extremely hard to preserve any species. It was devastating news for a lot of people that one of the bisons, Djuka, passed away recently (not to be confused with a Serbian politician Vladimir Djukanovic also known as bison Djuka[1]).

[0] https://www.gov.pl/web/srbija/poljski-bizoni-u-nacionalnom-p...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Đukanović

bkovacev
European Bison?
linkregister
gooseus
Buffalo also feature prominently in The West, another fantastic Ken Burns documentary.

https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-west/

TomBombadildoze
This is not true. An officer from the US was sent to protect the Yellowstone herd at some point. IIRC he had previously been assigned to fight Indians and had a track record for “effectiveness” aka modern day war crimes. Apparently this was more a personality trait than particular hatred of the tribes of the plains because when he was ordered to protect the bison, he did it with the same energy and “effectiveness”.

Not claiming he was the only one, but possibly the only one with enough guns, soldiers T his command, the backing of an executive order, and a dim enough view of human life to move the needle as much as he did.

I need to go research this again and erase this comment if I’m talking trash or update it if I’m not.

david38
They’ve essentially been replaced with cattle. There are probably more cattle on american and europeans grazing lands today than there were ever bison if I had to guess.
kjkjadksj
Makes sense. In Zoo tycoon, these fuckers kept breeding like no one's business.
writtenAnswer
I have mixed feelings about this news, because while it’s good to have more genetic diversity, it makes it easier to justify culling animals. Having multiple herds with distinct breeding populations means each herd is more likely to get protected.

The us government culls bison from the Yellowstone herd every year, to discourage them from leaving them park and competing with cattle grazing on public lands.

Bison are managed completely differently than other wildlife in the area like moose and elk, because they compete with cattle. They’re forced to stay inside the higher elevation park boundaries, even when the snow is too high for them to forage effectively. They get hazed by helicopters, chased by DOL agents and rangers on horseback, and forced to run miles through snow to cross that invisible line back in Yellowstone. I’ve seen newborn bison calves with broken legs from getting hazed back into the park.

If they were allowed to migrate seasonally and breed normally, they would have a much larger range and population.

Source: I used to live on the park boundary and was part of a group documenting bison management.

kaikai
Does the land they keep the bison from going to happen to be federal land the cattle farmers lease? Since you say DOL agents it sounds like. So lame. Prioritizing private ranchers on the peoples' land.
_DeadFred_
It’s a mix of federal, state, and private land. There was a group of private landowners that fought for years to keep the DOL from hazing bison off of their PRIVATELY owned land on Horsehead Butte.

And yes, that’s the Department of Livestock. There’s an interagency management group that handles bison in the area, including the Department of Livestock and at times Homeland Security. They also run catch pens near Gardiner, where they round up wild bison and send them to slaughter houses.

kaikai
There's actually LESS genetic diversity in a single breeding population than in two separate ones. When you have two, they can drift in different directions or be subject to different selection pressures. With just one, all of that stuff is swamped out.
onychomys
Well they can drift until they no longer are capable of interbreeding. Now you have two species with small populations lacking diversity.
kjkjadksj
That takes a really long time though. Most domestic dogs can still breed with wild wolves after ~14,000 years of being pretty well separated by humans, and after some fairly substantial phenotypic shifts.
Karellen
There's also a herd at Custer National Park comprised of 2 breeds ("Minneconjou" and "Humbolt")
FuriouslyAdrift
Isn't interbreeding bad for their health?

Genuine question.

Is it interbreeding in a way like all bisons present now are sharing the ancestors or is it like it's all a single family of 6k bisons now ?

kapitanjakc
The notable discovery is that, where the evidence a few decades ago was that the bison were breeding in their historical herds (so multiple, smaller genetic pools), they now appear to be breeding between herds (so a single larger, more diverse genetic pool).

AIUI with small populations, more variation in breeding between groups is a good thing, because it spreads genetic diversity across the whole population.

InitialLastName
You probably mean inbreeding. Interbreeding is good. It is good that the bison herds mingle and interbreed.

Anyway, for mammals an initial population of a couple dozen individuals (assuming they're reasonably genetically diverse in the first place) is plenty enough to produce a population of any size without problems.

Sharlin
There's a general guideline called the 50-500 rule. You need at least 50 animals to avoid immediate inbreeding (and also stochastic extinction from a fire or flood or disease etc), and about 500 to have a genetically healthy population. That varies some after a bottleneck event since your genetic population will be functionally less than your actual physical one, but it's a decent way to approach the problem.
onychomys
Having a single breeding population across the park creates more genetic diversity than would be present in isolated herds.
ch4s3
> Bison like those in Yellowstone once suffered a population crisis that conservationists call the "population bottleneck" of the 19th century. By the early 1900s, American bison numbers had been reduced by 99.9% across North America and only 23 wild bison were known to have survived poaching in Yellowstone.

So at their worst this particular population only had 23 individuals left. Interbreeding is bad insofar as it increases the chances of passing harmful recessive genes to younger generations.

thrance
Compared to the alternative of the species not surviving at all, it seems like the better option :)

Besides, it seems like they think it's genetically healthy, so doesn't seem like a problem. I'm assuming they've verified this somehow.

> Today, the Texas A&M researchers report that the Yellowstone bison population appears to be functioning as a single and genetically healthy population that fluctuates between 4,000 and 6,000 individuals.

diggan
> Compared to the alternative of the species not surviving at all

How about compared to two distinct herds?

nonethewiser
Getting that "living on top of a volcano" risk feeling :-)
casenmgreen
Biology is not my area of expertise, but: Interbreeding is bad when it’s a small population interbreeding for a long long time. From the article it sounds like they aren’t worried about the genetic diversity of this 6k bison herd. I’m sure it would be better to have more diversity, but that’s hard to achieve with animals brought back from near-extinction.
pinkmuffinere
There are a lot of private herds. But a lot of them have been bred with domesticated cattle and do not have the pure bison DNA in them. They can be used as a last resort. The solution here would be to slowly start separating herds to more locations away from Yellowstone. Over generations, the genetic makeup will separate enough to be considered separate populations.
darth_avocado
At least two groups are now breeding as a single population. The genetic diversity might be more spread out over the population. As I understand the article there were two functionally separate groups as late as 20 years ago (already 100 years after the introduction of the Texas bison to the original Montana heard) and now they are recorded as being a single population.
gavindean90
There are some bison on Catalina Island. Maybe they should swap some animals.
pmdulaney
The Catalina bison (like many bison in other places) have interbred with cattle. They’re not purely bison anymore.
kaikai
Thanks - I didn't know that was possible.
pmdulaney
The Catalina bovine mixer
thehappypm
That sounds like a cocktail you might order in Avalon!
pmdulaney

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