I drove up to Afton, Minnesota, to see the annual release of a bison herd onto a restored prairie owned by the Belwin Conservancy. The thirty-five yearling bulls made sure that the event went quickly:
I loved watching them barrel out of the trailers and head to the far, far, far corner of the prairie, where they continued to run back and forth for a while before calming down. They’re the tiny brown-black specks off in the furthest distance here:
Yeah, you can’t see them. Imagine how hard it would have been for Indians to see them, even in the teeming herds before the Great Slaughter.
Owned by Northstar Bison in Rice Lake, Wisconsin, these buffalo spend the summer at the conservancy to fatten up before being “harvested.” I don’t have much problem with that, since a) bison is delicious and b) their eating and roaming on the Conservancy’s prairie helps accelerate the restoration of the land. And they look great doing it.
After watching the release, I daringly posed for a picture with one bison:
