Commerce City – The truck trailer doors opened, as a crowd of about 100 waited, crouched behind a fence, but the 16 bison hauled from Montana failed to emerge Saturday.
Veterinarian Thomas Roffe tapped the trailer’s side, stirring the sound of scuffling hooves and forcing a female bison to saunter from the trailer to gasps and claps from the onlookers.
“It’s a homecoming,” said Matt Kales of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Wild bison have not roamed Colorado’s prairie for more than a century.
Their release Saturday at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge marked both a beginning and an end.
Twenty years ago, the arsenal 11 miles north of Denver was listed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as one of the nation’s most- polluted sites.
Beginning in 1942, the Army manufactured chemical weapons at the arsenal, including mustard gas and nerve gas.
Later, pesticides and herbicides were produced on the site by the Shell Chemical Co.
Chemicals contaminated the soil of the one-time farmland, and the site ended up on the EPA’s Superfund list in 1987.
About $1.3 billion has been spent on a cleanup.
As the property is cleared of contaminants, it is being turned over to the Fish and Wildlife Service as a wildlife refuge.
“How often can we say we have gone from weapons to wildlife, bullets to bison?” asked Randall Luthi, deputy director of the Fish and Wildlife Service.
More than 12,000 acres have been transferred – including 7,200 acres in October.
“It is a bellwether to how far we have come with this site,” Kales said. “Here we are with one of the nation’s premier urban wildlife refuges that is in such good health that we can re-establish bison here.”
Releasing bison will be the greatest accomplishment so far for the preserve, said Dean Rundle, supervisor for national wildlife refuges in Colorado, Montana, Utah, and Wyoming.
“When you’re putting back what is the keystone species, it really takes the Rocky Mountain Arsenal full circle,” Rundle said.
For the past two months, refuge employees have been working to build a 1,400-acre enclosure for the bison.
The 5-mile fence, with 5-inch-diameter posts that are 10 feet long and sunk 3 feet into the ground, was constructed to be sturdy enough to contain the beasts that can weigh a ton, Kales said.
The refuge could hold as many as 150 bison as more land is sectioned off for the animal.
Bison will graze naturally on prairie grass at the arsenal. Water will be trucked in to fill six metal tanks on the property.
“This is a wonderful step,” said Jonathan Proctor of Defenders of Wildlife in Denver. “They have been absent from eastern Colorado for more than 100 years. ”
The three bulls and 13 cows, four of whom are pregnant, were selected because of their age, gender and bloodlines – which show no detectable domestic cow DNA.
Researchers suspect that bison in private herds have over the years been bred with domestic cattle.
Scientists are trying to disperse the bovine-free bison throughout the country in an effort called “genetics conservation.” The idea is to spread the gene pool across the country so one disease or calamity won’t wipe out the species, said Roffe, chief of wildlife health for the Fish and Wildlife Service.
Bison being released at the arsenal also have been screened to make sure they are disease-free, said Steve Kallin, project leader of the National Bison Range.
In October, the animals were rounded up on the Montana range and corralled for several months before being hauled to Colorado in a 15-hour truck ride.
Lee Plenty Wolf, an Oglala Sioux Indian from Broomfield, gave a traditional blessing and sang an honor song – beating on a drum made of bison hide.
“We want to welcome back our special relative,” he said. “They kept us alive.”
After the bison cows emerged, they quickly sauntered off.
Three bulls charged from the trailer and lingered for a while beneath a Russian olive tree. After Plenty Wolf’s song, they walked west and out of sight.
“They will be wound up for a while and explore the place,” Roffe said.
“They’ll settle down to their own patterns. Eventually, they’ll get used to people driving by.”
The refuge will begin offering tours in April on Wednesday and Saturday mornings.
Wildlife officials hope the bison will become a draw at the arsenal, one of the nation’s largest urban national wildlife refuges.
“The latest challenge is keeping Americans connected to nature,” Kales said. “What better place for bison than in Commerce City, where people are surrounded by concrete?”
Staff writer Jeremy P. Meyer may be reached at 303-954-1367 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
Bison barely survived into 1900s
Commonly referred to as “buffalo,” the correct word for the animal is the American bison. Buffalo are Cape buffalo of Africa or water buffalo of Asia.
It is estimated there had been up to to 75 million bison in North America, which hunters cut to about 300 by 1900.
Today, it is estimated there are between 200,000 and 1 million bison in private herds and on public lands.
Bison bulls weigh about 2,000 pounds. Cows weigh about half as much.
Bison survive on prairie grass, have heavy horns and a large hump of muscle that supports their enormous heads.
Bison are able to sprint at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour.
The last recorded sighting of bison on Colorado’s Front Range occurred in 1889 in a study by William T. Hornaday, former superintendent of the National Zoological Park, which documented 20 bison around the Denver area.
The city of Denver has owned a bison herd for 93 years. About 50 bison are billeted in Genesee Park west of the city and in Daniels Park in Douglas County.
Source: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Denver Post.
This article has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, it reported an incorrect location for Daniels Park, which is in Douglas county.
