Wind Cave Bison: A Living Rescue
Near Custer, South Dakota
The bison you may see grazing across Wind Cave National Park are not a remnant population that survived the nineteenth-century slaughter. They are a reintroduction, and the story matters. When the park was established in nineteen oh three, there were no bison here at all.
In nineteen thirteen, the American Bison Society and the New York Zoological Society donated fourteen animals to the park. Today the herd numbers in the hundreds and is recognized as one of only a handful of genetically pure wild bison populations remaining in North America. Periodically, animals are transferred to tribal nations and restoration projects across the Great Plains, making Wind Cave an ark of sorts for a species that was very nearly gone.
