Buffalo will act as seed stock

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – Buffalo thought to be as genetically pure as the first herds of Great Plains bison will be seed stock for two nonprofit conservation groups.

It’s the first time since 1987 that live buffalo from Wind Cave National Park have gone somewhere other than to another park or an Indian tribe.

The Nature Conservancy received 20 buffalo and the American Prairie Foundation received 16 animals culled this week as part of a management plan to keep around 400 head in the park.

Another 117 Wind Cave bison will be distributed to American Indian tribes through the Intertribal Bison Cooperative, park officials said Thursday.

The tribes and conservation groups receive the animals in exchange for paying the costs of the buffalo roundup on the 29,295-acre park in southwest South Dakota.

The five bulls and 15 cows going to the Nature Conservancy will be kept temporarily at its 600-acre Lame Johnny Creek ranch adjacent to Custer State Park, said Bob Paulson, director of the group’s Black Hills area program.

Within a year or two, the group hopes to have obtained property elsewhere that will become a permanent home for the bison.

“This is unique because they’re both disease free and genetically pure,” said Paulson. “That’s not to say other herds are or aren’t – they just have not been tested. We would hope to supplement this start with future roundups at Wind Cave.”

The Nature Conservancy already has a 250-head bison herd near Leola and has seven herds totaling 2,080 head in North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Colorado.

“They’re an important tool for grassland conservation in this part of the world and are part of the original ecosystem,” Paulson said.

Representatives with American Prairie Foundation, based in Bozeman, did not return phone calls Thursday. President Sean Gerrity was accompanying the shipment of the bison from South Dakota to Montana, according to his voice mail system.

The Wind Cave Park herd originated from 14 animals donated by the New York Zoological Society in 1913 and six from Yellowstone National Park in 1916.

“A lot of people through the years have liked to make cattle bigger and better and there’s been a lot of hybridization of bison with cattle through the years,” said Dan Roddy, resource management specialist at Wind Cave Park

Testing by Texas A&M University found no hint of cattle genes in the Wind Cave herd, he said.

“As the National Park Service we felt we had done something good and want to protect what we have,” Roddy said. “Both groups are interested in starting up new herds, and they have a similar philosophy as the National Park Service – do it right, so they came to a known source where they knew what they are getting is pure Great Plains bison.”

Wind Cave tries to cull 80 yearling buffalo annually but removed 153 this year because the 2004 roundup was canceled after the company that provides the helicopter for the roundup went out of business at the last minute, he said.

The park would occasionally ship live buffalo to private ranchers before 1943. Shipments were canceled from 1943 to 1987 because of the threat the buffalo could spread brucellosis to domestic cattle, said Tom Farrell, a park spokesman.

Shipments of live animals resumed when the park was declared brucellosis free in 1987.