Where the Buffalo Roam

Yellowstone park is famous for its buffalo (bison) herd, as you may know, and for good reason!

They are pretty incredible animals and I am always excited to see them whenever I visit the park. In fact, they are typically the first species of wildlife that I have the pleasure of seeing because there are usually so many of them.

Scenes like this are very common:

Unfortunately, the buffalo herd in the park this year is nearly half of what it was last year, due to a very bad winter and sadly, due also to a record number of legal cullings.

If you aren't familiar with the situation with the government sanctioned cullings due to the threat of brucellosis, here is an excerpt and a link to a recent article from CNN.com about the situation:

More than 700 of the iconic animals starved or otherwise died on the mountainsides during an unusually harsh winter, and more than 1,600 were shot by hunters or sent to slaughterhouses in a disease-control effort, according to National Park Service figures.

As a result, the park estimates its bison herd has dropped from 4,700 in November to about 2,300 today, prompting the government to halt the culling program early.

Government officials say the slaughter prevents the spread of the disease brucellosis from the Yellowstone bison to cattle on land near the park. Brucellosis can cause miscarriages, infertility and reduced milk production in domestic cattle.

Fortunately, the ones that did survive appeared to be very healthy, and there were many babies in the various herds that we saw:

Something that never ceases to amaze me, every time I visit Yellowstone, is the complete ignorance many of the tourists show toward these animals, despite the best efforts of the park rangers to give adequate warning as to how dangerous they are.

Buffalo are extremely dangerous, despite their seemingly docile nature. In fact, according to Wikipedia, they have been responsible for many more deaths than most people probably realize:

Between 1978 and 1992, over four times as many people in Yellowstone National Park were killed or injured by bison as by bears (12 by bears, 56 by bison). Bison also have the unexpected ability, given the animal's size and body structure, to leap over a standard barbed-wire fence.

Each time I go, I see people who are putting themselves in harm's way in one way or another, whether it is to get a better picture of a buffalo or just to get close enough to one to touch it.

One year, we watched in absolute horror as a man put what appeared to be a 4 or 5 year old girl up on the back of one and snapped a picture of her!! Luckily a park ranger also witnessed this and stepped in to deal with the situation.

I am always impressed by the quiet majesty of these magnificent creatures, and I felt very lucky to have gotten some really nice photos of this one in particular:

Chelle B.