Plains Bison

The bison, commonly called ?buffalo? (which is actually a different species not found in North America), is the largest land mammal in North America. There are two subspecies: the wood bison in northern Canada, and the plains bison which once roamed across much of the continent. Bison are considered a keystone species: they once roamed the continent in great herds, and their grazing pressure helped shape the ecology of the Great Plains.

Historically, bison numbered an estimated 20-30 million. Unregulated shooting of bison, which culminated in mass slaughters during the 1870s, reduced the population to 1,091 in 1889. Today, fewer than 30,000 bison are in conservation herds, and fewer than 5,000 are free-ranging and disease-free, they are ecologically extinct throughout most of their historic range, except for a few national parks and other small wildlife areas.

The herd of bison that lives on Paynes Prairie is not actually native to the Prairie at all, but was brought from Oklahoma in the 1970?s as part of an ecological restoration project, in hopes of restoring the Prairie to its pre-European settler conditions (it was then that bison roamed free on the prairie, and their numbers being decimated by the Europeans and Seminole Indians living there). Today, the bison are thriving, with several babies having been born through the years.

This is not, technically, one of my better photographs, (they were a long way off, which is where I like them to be at this time of year), but I was delighted to spot them, so they had to be my blip today.