New York
As communities recover from the recent series of winter storms that battered the Western High Plains, the full costs and losses become more apparent.
Especially hard-hit were ranching communities and the region’s large cattle population. Authorities cite a figure of 3,500 cattle deaths from southeastern Colorado alone, with estimates for the entire region ranging much higher. The stress from continued exposure and cold is certain to drive the final mortality figure higher, and estimates from western Kansas indicate potential losses of $150 million to $200 million from lost weight on feedlots alone. Still, thanks to helicopter hay deliveries by the National Guard and other emergency interventions, the ultimate toll should not approach the 30,000 deaths from the October blizzard of 1997.
Without minimizing concerns for cattle ranchers and their herds, the cost in cattle lost and taxpayer dollars nevertheless raises interesting questions about ranching cattle versus bison.
Though bison are far less numerous than cattle across the affected region, there are no reports of significant mortality from the recent storms. This is largely a function of the bison’s natural adaptations to not only Western grasslands, but to Western rangeland weather. These include a massive head and the strength to use it as a snow-sweeper to expose buried grasses, a lower metabolism that reduces demand for food and fat reserves, and an ability to derive liquid needs from eating snow. In each of these respects, the bison is much better adapted for survival when winter storms sweep the plains. In fact, a five-year study found no significant winter mortality of a South Dakota herd of 500 free-ranging bison.
This past October, more than 170 bison experts from agencies, academia, industry, tribes, and conservation organizations gathered in Denver to discuss the potential for greater ecological recovery of bison. Unlike many conservation causes, the issue was not one of numeric recovery. Since declining to barely 1,000 head of bison – perhaps no more than a few dozen in the wild – in the early 1900s, the bison population now numbers nearly 500,000 more than a century, after the American Bison Society began restocking reserves with animals from the Bronx Zoo and other private herds. Of the estimated 500,000 bison, 20,000 are considered wild; the rest live on private ranches.
The Denver conference was the culmination of a series of workshops organized by the Wildlife Conservation Society to address several questions: Is ecological recovery of bison still possible? What criteria – population size, genetic purity, freedom to range – would define such recovery? Where is there sufficient land to meet these conditions? Many answers, more questions, and a draft vision emerged from this process. That vision called for a 100-year goal of “a transformed world in which viable herds of bison interact with a full diversity of other native species at multiple, large-scale landscapes across western North America.”
It will take many actors, major funding and ample amounts of goodwill, wisdom and dedication to make this vision a reality. One important role for private owners in this effort is the production of genetically pure, disease-free breeding stock for conservation herds, while also meeting their needs for economic return through production of an increasingly popular, healthful and environmentally friendly product.
There are many challenges in raising bison that should not be ignored, and many reasons why cattle will continue to rule the west. However, the high death toll and rescue costs resulting from recent storms indicate one great advantage of raising creatures adapted over millennia to the rugged conditions of the Western plains.
Bill Weber is a senior conservationist with the Wildlife Conservation Society. He recently completed a 10-year term as the director of the organization’s North America Program and is writing a book about that experience.
