February 22, 2025

Can you imagine being struck by lightning? Sparky, a bison at Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa knows exactly what it's like! Sparky was struck in 2013 and is doing surprisingly well.

January 25, 2025

Just like cows and elk, bison have four stomachs. While you may think this means that bison can eat four times as much as animals with one stomach, this is not the case.

Their four-chambered, ruminant digestive system allows for the absorption of cellulose—a fibrous plant material that is hard to breakdown. With this ability to digest cellulose and their selective grazing habits, one of bison's greatest influences to the prairie ecosystem is based on their foraging ecology.

December 28, 2024

After four years of outreach to Congress and the White House, by the Wildlife Conservation Society, its partners the InterTribal Buffalo Council and National Bison Association and 60-plus Vote Bison Coalition members, the National Bison Legacy Act was signed on May 9, 2016, officially making the bison our national mammal. This historic event represents a true comeback story, embedded with history, culture, and conservation.

November 23, 2024

Every year when mid-winter arrives, snow can blanket the northern Great Plains, temperatures can drop well below zero and the winds can howl unmercifully and yet bison remain alive and well on the hostile landscape. Indeed, bison have evolved digestive, physiological, and behavioral strategies that allow them to survive some of the harshest weather in North America.

October 26, 2024

Healthy Prairie Relies on Bison Boop

One story, the legend of the White Buffalo Calf Woman, or Ptesan Wi, is a very sacred story for the American Indians. Many American Indians, such as the Sioux, Cherokee, Navaho, Lakota, and Dakota, celebrate the white buffalo calf and incorporate Ptesan Wi'steachings in their prayers.

September 28, 2024

One story, the legend of the White Buffalo Calf Woman, or Ptesan Wi, is a very sacred story for the American Indians. Many American Indians, such as the Sioux, Cherokee, Navaho, Lakota, and Dakota, celebrate the white buffalo calf and incorporate Ptesan Wi'steachings in their prayers.

August 31, 2024

Along the Utah-Colorado state border sits a mountain range resembling a shelf of books. This 1.2 million acre range, known as the Book Cliffs, is home to magnificent sandstone buttes, pinyon-juniper filled arroyos, and a herd of roughly 400 bison. This bison herd is only constrained by the steep and rugged canyons found in the Book Cliffs: it truly is a free-ranging and wild population.

July 27, 2024

As the summer flowers begin to appear and the days start to warm, the prairie ecosystem is soon dotted with newborn bison. These young calves, born mostly between March and June, are born with an orange-brown to reddish-brown "buff" color, which slowly darkens to adult coloration by four months.

June 29, 2024

As the summer flowers begin to appear and the days start to warm, the prairie ecosystem is soon dotted with newborn bison. These young calves, born mostly between March and June, are born with an orange-brown to reddish-brown "buff" color, which slowly darkens to adult coloration by four months.

May 29, 2024

Older and more dominant males display more aggressive behaviors than younger makes during the rut.

As the seasons change throughout the year, the size and herd dynamics of the American bison vary.
These herd variations are known as seasonal aggregation or seasonal segregation---depending on the time of year.

April 29, 2024

There will always remain uncertainty about historic temporal and spatial variability of bison occupancy and movement patterns across the full extent of the species historic range. What we do know is that there were regional areas within the historic range where:

March 29, 2024

On April 4, 2016, 87 plains bison calves from Elk Island National Park in Alberta, Canada made their way back home to the Blackfeet Reservation near Browning, Montana.
This transfer of bison symbolizes a monumental homecoming of bison whose ancestors once lived on the reservation.