Interior Secretary David Bernhardt on Thursday announced a ten-year extension of the government's Bison Conservation Initiative/NPS

Efforts to better understand genetic pools held within the Interior Department's roughly 11,000 bison and to bolster conservation and ecological efforts with states and tribes were boosted Thursday when Interior Secretary David Bernhardt announced a decade-long initiative to support that work.

"It gives us -- the professional, non-political appointees  -- durable direction for the next 10 years, as written by the professionals and supported by all the bureaus," said Brendan Moynahan, who chairs Interior's Bison Working Group. "We'll now develop and implement a metapopulation plan, a shared stewardship strategy for continental scale partnerships, and institutionalize low-stress handling, and strengthen mechanisms for delivery of live bison to Native American tribes.

"It certainly springboards off the 2008 initiative and stands on others' shoulders, but also has a lot of meaningful new direction and support," he said in an email.

It was back in October 2008 when then-Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne launched the Bison Conservation Initiative.

"While the days of millions of free-roaming bison are gone, our initiative acknowledges the important role of bison on the landscape, in tribal culture and in our national heritage and will work in partnerships to sustain a strong and well-coordinated conservation effort throughout this country, throughout this century," Kempthorne said at the time. 

It's been estimated that when Columbus reached the new world in 1492 that there were as many as 60 million bison in North America, roaming from Canada to Mexico and as far east as Virginia. But they were almost driven to extinction in the later half of the 19th century by "buffalo hunters" who worked to feed railroad crews, provide hides to merchants, and for the military in its efforts to drive native cultures onto reservations by eliminating their "commissary," the bison that provided them with food, shelter, tools, and more.

By the turn of the 20th century there were thought to be only 400 or 500 bison left in the United States. The majority of those were in private hands, such as with ranchers Charles Goodnight and Charles "Buffalo" Jones. No more than two dozen bison were thought to remain in the wild, and they were deep within the interior of Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone bison are considered to have the most robust genes of all bison/NPS file, Neal Herbert

Today's Yellowstone bison are viewed as the most pure, without any cattle genes, though a majority of the park's 4,000-odd bison carry brucellosis, a disease that causes female bison, elk, and domestic livestock to abort their fetuses. Though it's been proven that elk are the greatest transmitters of brucellosis, the disease most often is associated with bison.

In Montana, concerns about brucellosis spreading to that state's cattle herds have long impeded efforts to allow Yellowstone bison to move into that state and to be shipped to tribes that want to grow their own bison herds for cultural benefits as well as to produce a healthier protein for tribal members.

Work in recent years involving the National Park Service, states, tribes, and other stakeholders has produced a process for identifying brucellosis-free Yellowstone bison and allowing limited transfers to tribes. Last summer, 55 park bison were shipped to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in north-central Montana, and another 33 were shipped there in December.

This past January, the state of Montana announced it would allow wild bison to roam its state. However, state officials also announced it will take them some time to determine just where in Montana bison will be allowed to roam.

Under the conservation plan Bernhardt announced Thursday, bison from the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge in Colorado will be transferred to Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, and another transfer will send bison from Interior's herds to the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota.

The shipment to Theodore Roosevelt is to be part of an on-going Park Service genetics study to measure the extent of their integration into an existing herd, while the bison going to the Rosebud Sioux Wolakota Buffalo Range will support ecological restoration, cultural practices, economic development, food security and public education on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, an Interior release said.

“We are doing something that has never been done. It shows what is possible when business, philanthropy, and government work together to create multiple bottom line initiatives supporting the environment, people, fiscal responsibility, and Native nation building,” said Rosebud Economic Development Corporation’s CEO, Wizipan Little Elk.

From his Montana office, Moynahan said the extension the secretary announced "moves DOI in a thoughtful direction toward ecological and cultural restoration."

"The prior (Kempthorne) initiative, appropriately, had a strong focus on conservation genetics. This initiative carries that forward, but establishes a strong recognition of value of an eco-cultural approach to bison restoration," he said. "It encourages and recognizes a key role for tribes and states in bison restoration, and invites proposals from states to establish new wild and huntable herds - in the model of the Book Cliffs and Henry Mountains herds in Utah."

Interior currently holds 19 bison herds in a dozen states ranging from Kansas to Alaska. While there are an estimated 500,000 bison in North America, most of those are in commercial herds, while the 11,000 or so animals under Interior's jurisdiction are managed to conserve the species' genetic line.

Interior Department wildlife biologists have for some years been working to decipher all the genetic lines in their herds. It's generally thought that coming out of the "great slaughter" of the late 19th century most remaining bison were held in five or six herds, ranging from Goodnight's bison in Texas to a private herd in New Hampshire and even one held in New York City by the New York Zoological Society, the predecessor to today's Wildlife Conservation Society.

Under the 2020 Bison Conservation Initiative, one goal is to develop "an interagency, science-based approach to support genetic diversity across  DOI  bison conservation herds." Such work would ensure that when Interior creates new herds, such as one envisioned for Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve in Colorado, bison from several herds offering a robust mix of genes would be used to establish the herd and so avoid inbreeding.

The initiative also calls for:

• Shared Stewardship: A  commitment to shared stewardship of wild bison in cooperation with states, tribes, and other stakeholders.
• Ecological Restoration: A commitment to  establish and maintain  large, wide-ranging  bison herds on appropriate large landscapes where  their role as ecosystem engineers  shape healthy and diverse ecological communities. 
• Cultural Restoration:  A commitment to restore cultural connections  to honor  and promote  the unique status of bison  as an American icon for all people. 

“The National Park Service remains dedicated to the conservation of wild bison, and this initiative provides the framework for collaboration and action over the next 10 years,” said David Vela, the acting director of the National Park Service.