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With a New First Nations Treaty, Buffalo Find a Whole New Home on the Range

The Northern Tribes Buffalo Treaty establishes a new alliance committed to restoring buffalo to native lands.

Earlier this week, leaders of 11 First Nation and Native American tribes from Montana and Alberta signed the Northern Tribes Buffalo Treaty, establishing an international alliance committed to restoring buffalo to First Nations and tribal lands in both the U.S. and Canada. While the idea is appealing for reasons ranging from the deep-seated and cultural to the more shallow and romantic, is it at all practical?

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The first thing that strikes when looking up "buffalo range" is that North American bison, also called buffalo, were once found from Alaska to Mexico. While the buffalo's North American range peaked around 2,000 years ago, the population really started dropping once modern Europeans arrived in the 1600s.

Starting with the introduction of the horse to indigenous populations, continuing through the division of the North American herd by the transcontinental railroad, and, finally, accelerating with a US Army-backed slaughtering campaign in the late-1800s, the buffalo population dropped from 50 million to fewer than 1,100 individuals by the early-20th century.

Image: Cephas

The numbers have been climbing since, and today there are more than 500,000 buffalo, although 96 percent of them are being raised as livestock. Fair enough, buffalo burgers are lean and delicious, after all. North America just isn't what it used to be, and neither is the wild buffalo population; there are only around 20,000 wild buffalo out roaming, mostly in wildlife preserves, state, and national parks.

The idea behind the buffalo treaty is that reintroducing the buffalo will restore some ecological balance to the region, as well as restoring a valuable cultural link to the past for Native American and First Nations tribes.

"More than any other species, the buffalo—American bison, or iiniiwa in Blackfoot—linked native people to the land, provided food and shelter, and became a central figure in our ancient cultures," explained an op-ed from tribal leaders that appeared on LiveScience.com.

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As iconic of a Great Plains animal as ever there was, is there enough prairie available for buffalo to live? The answer to that question might lie in the only place in the contiguous United States that has been inhabited by buffalo continuously since prehistoric times: Yellowstone National Park.

Ironically, the US Army was administering Yellowstone in the early 20th century. Quickly, the Army went from the bison's antagonists to its protectors, as the number of wild bison in the United States dwindled to just 23, all living in the park's Pelican Valley.

In one of the most noteworthy American conservation stories of all time, the number of bison in Yellowstone has grown to somewhere between 2,300 to 5,000, in two different populations. The bison are able to move down from their summer ranges in winter, with some venturing north of the park's barriers during especially harsh winters, while the other herd tends to head toward the park's western boundary.

And this is the good news: The signatories to the buffalo treaty own and manage approximately a Vermont's worth of grassland and prairie, or 6.3 million acres. That's three times the size of Yellowstone. Even compared to the historic range of Yellowstone bison, which was 7,720 square miles, this 9,375 square mile potential habitat is very promising.

The ranchers in Montana, near Yellowstone, weren't crazy about the introduction of more wild bison to the area, and it's likely that the ranchers near Glacier National Park will feel much the same way. But with a now-unified large group that is sympathetic to their plight, the buffalo may just find another home on the range.