Re-Bisoning the West: Restoring an American Icon to the Landscape - Softcover

Repanshek, Kurt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1937226980 ISBN 13: 9781937226985

Verlag: TORREY HOUSE PR, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

"A much–needed look at the exceptionally fraught relationship between bison and people…engaging and comprehensive."
—BOOKLIST

"A fascinating perspective…Re–Bisoning the West demonstrates the complex relationships the species maintains with the earth and humanity itself."
—FOREWORD REVIEWS

Award–winning journalist Kurt Repanshek traces the history of bison from the species' near extinction to present–day efforts to bring bison back to the landscape—and the biological, political, and cultural hurdles confronting these efforts. Repanshek explores Native Americans' relationships with bison, and presents a forward–thinking approach to returning bison to the West and improving the health of ecosystems.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kurt Repanshek, an award–winning journalist whose career stretches into four decades, is well–versed in public lands, wildlife, recreation, and environmental issues. His writing has appeared in Smithsonian, Audubon, National Geographic Traveler, and numerous other periodicals. He is the founder of NationalParksTraveler.org, the only editorially independent media organization that is dedicated to daily coverage of national parks and protected areas.

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Prologue
It was late September, and the night was growing colder in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park. And growing darker, as well. We had a campfire burning, and a reasonable pile of sticks and branches to feed it until we were ready to call it a night and crawl into our tent. Flickering shadows danced skyward against the lodgepole pine canopy overhead, and a faint glow from the campfire was cast out across the forest floor.
Though not our first backpacking trek through the park, there were still the understandably nervous thoughts of grizzlies clacking teeth in the middle of the night.
What we didn't count on was the bison.
As the animal ambled along the edge of firelight, we couldn't make out in the fading twilight whether it was a bull or a cow. But at a weight of 1,000 pounds or more, male or female, it didn't matter. If it were so inclined, it could inflict serious injuries to us and trample our tent just by turning around. Feeding a few more sticks of wood into the flames, we watched the bison linger at the edge of firelight, and then settle down. For the night.
Bison are deceptive. They seem ponderous in their bulk and movements, and their expressionless demeanor lends the notion that they are doltish. But they are quick to defend their young, always conscious of nearby predators, and can turn on a dime and accelerate to 40 mph if needed.
The individual next to our campsite was an ancient animal, figuratively.
The bison genus stretches back some 2 million years to Asia. It somewhat recently arrived in North America, about 200,000 years ago during glacial periods that dropped sea levels and connected Asia to the land we know today as Alaska via Beringia, a 1,000–mile–long strip that now has been underwater for about 20,000 years.
Today's bison don’t look too much different from their ancestors. But they are smaller, more compact. We know that because of Walter and Ruth Roman. The couple literally scraped a living from the land with their Lucky Seven Mining Co. Summer into early fall 1979 found the Romans at their placer mine in Pearl Creek above the Chatanika River 16 miles northeast of Fairbanks, Alaska . There they wielded a pressurized hose that spit out a nearly six–inch wide torrent of water used to cut through frozen muck and, hopefully, expose gold–bearing rubble. Known as "hydraulicking," the practice dates to the Roman empire. Miners during the California Gold Rush of the 1850s greatly improved the technology by adding a nozzle that helped create the forceful fountain of water that tears into hillsides.
What the modern–day Romans found as they slowly eroded the hillside into muddy torrents in 1979 was not gold, but not entirely invaluable, either . Under their watchful eyes, and the slowly turning hose, the jetted sluice of water raked back and forth across the slope, thawing and then washing away the sediments, pulling rocks and soil and debris from the past 36,000 years away. No gold, but what did appear mired in the muck were the hindquarters of a steppe bison (Bison priscus), jutting out like some massive tree trunk with a tail affixed.
It must have been a magnificent animal when breath filled its lungs and blood flowed through its veins and rippled muscles flexed as it walked. Standing almost seven feet tall at the shoulder, and weighing a ton or so, the bull had horns ranging more than three feet from tip to tip. The horns were designed for defense, not show, and, when driven forward by those 2,000 pounds of bone and brawn and fury, they could be particularly effective. The animal's size and strength enabled it to endure on the mammoth steppe of 36,000 years ago. It was a cold, somewhat arid place, covered with grasslands that rolled across the landscape then as they do today in the Great Plains of the United States. Here grew forbs, ground–hugging shrubs, and other forage the great beast could consume and, in turn, transform into muscle.
"Blue Babe" shared this landscape with other bison, of course, but also woolly mammoth, musk ox, and horses. And Ice Age American lions. These cats were some of the biggest apex predators on the landscape, much larger than today's relatives. They lacked the manes of African lions, but the males of 36,000 years ago weighed more than 900 pounds—possibly as much as 1,100 pounds. While females were smaller by several hundred pounds, their tendency to hunt in small groups enabled them to overwhelm their prey from all sides and so tilt the battle in their favor.
They'd stalk, and charge, take swipes and bites, always searching for a weakness, for an opening to launch a fatal attack. And for that, Blue Babe, the steppe bison, had no chance. It was, in the end, doomed, even though it was itself a formidable beast.
In that battle 36,000 years ago, you can envision the bull bison attacked from behind, either by surprise or caught in flight. Claws raked its flanks, teeth pierced the thick hide that bore scars from past battles survived. Even though the bison outweighed the lion by at least 1,000 pounds, and had those massive horns, it was no match.
Stumbling to the ground was fatal, as the lion, or lions, tore at the bison’s girth, determined to rip through the leathery hide to reach the muscle and organs shielded by the rib cage. It was a battle that attracted scavengers, who patiently waited their turn.
But R. Dale Guthrie, a University of Alaska paleontologist the Romans called in to examine their find, was not sure the battle was over so quickly.
During a necropsy on the remains, he "found a puncture mark on the snout and blood clot stains on the interior of the nose skin. This hemorrhaging indicated the injury had occurred while Blue Babe was still alive." He noted this in a book he wrote about the discovery, Frozen Fauna of the Mammoth Steppe: The Story of Blue Babe. "Because large bovids have exceptionally thick skin and large muscles on their necks, lions and tigers cannot use their regular neck bite to kill these animals; instead lions actually kill bovines by strangulation. Using claws for a secure hold, a lion will throw a buffalo down and clamp the buffalo's entire nose and mouth in a firm bite or clamp the trachea closed."
But the lion lost its grip, Guthrie speculated, and Blue Babe got away.
"I thought Blue Babe must have escaped because a large pride of lions would certainly have stayed with the carcass until it was totally eaten," the paleontologist noted. "The successful escape explained incomplete use of the carcass and signs of small animal scavenging."
But the damage was done, and the bison eventually collapsed and died. Because so much of the carcass was intact 36,000 years later for the Romans to stumble upon, the paleontologist surmised that Blue Babe died in winter, when bitterly cold temperatures hardened the bison's skin "almost like sheet steel; a heavy, frozen hide is difficult for a predator or scavenger to penetrate."
Before spring thaw could soften the skin, bloat the carcass, and spew the odors that would bring the predators and scavengers back, sediments buried Blue Babe, very possibly in one large swoosh by a muddy torrent unleashed by snowmelt. More layers were added and then frozen, a process that was repeated, locking the bison's remains in permafrost, out of reach of predators and scavengers.
When the Romans reached out to Guthrie in July 1979 to determine what they had found, he was astounded by the find.
"Like all good things, the frozen bison was a mixed blessing. It certainly caught me at an awkward time," he said. "I was getting ready to leave for a year's sabbatical in Europe, and other constraints made the time seem terribly short. Roman was near the end of his summer cleanup, and he needed to finish sluicing before water ran out or froze up. Frozen silt surrounding the bison was in the way, but Roman...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: TORREY HOUSE PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1937226980
• ISBN 13: 9781937226985
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 200
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar