Badlands National Park, South Dakota, recently used a land swap to add about 31 square miles to its contiguous bison range. With 42 miles of new fence, this has allowed the plains bison herd to expand to about 1400 animals. Park biologists are analyzing recently obtained data and responses of the herd to new habitat to determine a new long-term goal for herd size. Available bison range is now about 125 square miles.
We recently visited Badlands Park. Although named for its picturesque, mostly bare badlands terrain, the Park includes much mixed-grass prairie, excellent habitat for plains bison. Some Park grasslands are large patches interspersed within the badlands; but extensive grassland also exists within the Park surrounding the badlands.
The Coalition’s position is that at least 1000 bison on at least 100 square miles of diverse natural habitat are needed to preserve the evolved wild characteristics of plains bison. (In addition, artificial management/selection must be minimized.)
Previous Park Service goals for Badlands bison were to hold the herd between 700 and 1000 bison, depending on variation in drought and range conditions. Hopefully, the Park will now maintain at least 1000 bison in the future. (Excess animals are periodically removed and most have been donated to various Native American Tribes.)
A goal of the U.S. Department of Interior Bison Conservation Initiative is to restore “large wide-ranging bison herds, subject to forces of natural selection on appropriate large landscapes.” However, within historic plains bison range, Interior manages only 14 bison herds with clear, legal mandates to preserve genetic wild integrity of the animals. Abundant other public (state and local), private and Tribal herds may contribute to retaining some genetic diversity of plains bison, but only the 14 federal herds have this clear, reliable mandate, and very few other herds have a demonstrated history favoring retention of wildness. The 14 Interior herds are managed as public-trust wildlife by either the Park Service or the Fish & Wildlife Service on National Wildlife Refuges.
Among these 14 Department of Interior herds, only Yellowstone and Badlands herds now have at least 1000 bison. Other more modest Interior herds are at Wichita Mountains Refuge, 680 bison, Wind Cave Park, about 400, Fort Niobrara Refuge, about 400, and Theodore Roosevelt Park South, with about 350 bison. Thus, only 2 plains bison herds even approach the Coalition’s standard for a large, wide-ranging, wild bison herd. The news of 1400 bison on Badlands Park is welcome indeed.
