|
Bison Range
American Bison
©WCS/J.Maher | Just inside the Bronx Zoo gate where the Bronx River runs free, a herd of bison roam on a range they have occupied since the Zoo’s earliest days. You can visit these shaggy icons of the North American wilderness on their piece of the prairie all year round.
Once numbering in the millions across the southern plains, American bison were teetering on extinction due to hunting and westward expansion by the early 20th century. The founding of the American Bison Society at the Bronx Zoo’s Lion House was an attempt to reverse the species’ fate. In 1907, 15 Bronx Zoo bison boarded railway cars and wagon trains headed for Oklahoma’s Wichita Mountain Preserve. These early pioneers helped their species to recover on the plains; today, 20,000 wild bison live out West, many of them descendents of that original zoo herd.
The American Bison Society continues as a WCS program with a new and even grander mission. Conservationists are working to restore the wild landscape that enables bison to roam freely and other populations of American wildlife, such as black-footed ferrets and prairie dogs, to flourish alongside them.
|
