To Lakota and other native plains people, the buffalo is sacred and a cultural keystone. It was official government policy to exterminate the buffalo as a means of controlling the largely nomadic populations to make room for Euro-American economic development. An estimated 30 million bison once made the plains, "black with innumerable herds" according to an army officer. In the span of a century the largest land mammal on the continent was reduced to just 1000 by 1889, surviving mostly in zoos and private ranches. The native cultures that were intertwined with the animal were also largely destroyed. [photo credit: WWF]
Once, native Americans on the plains were among the tallest people on the continent, a fact scientists attribute to the presence of buffalo. Anthropological data collected in the late 19th and early 20th century show Sioux and Crow men were a half inch to an inch taller than Euro-Americans on average. This remarkable stature was achieved through a rich and varied diet, modest disease loads, and egalitarian social structures. “It seems clear that the Plains tribes, particularly those in the mid to northern latitudes, had adequate protein and energy from buffalo, and that this diet typically reached the poor,” the research team wrote. Trade with tribes from other regions likely provided the Sioux with the nutrients necessary for their chart-topping height, in addition to the wild berries, onions, turnips and other produce they gathered from the plains. After the bison were wiped out by whites, this success story tragically and abruptly ended. Plains nations were forced to end their hunter-gatherer lifestyle, accept poor quality government rations, and adopt often unsuitable crop agriculture.
Modern native societies have not thrived, and are dismissed by dominate white society as concentrations of poverty, drug addiction and unemployment. In fact, a 20th century Secretary of the Interior, charged with stewardship of native peoples said first nations were an object lesson in the failure of socialism, a remark that is mind-boggling in its inaccuracy, bigotry, and arrogance. Projects like the Walokota Buffalo Range are intended to allow native plains peoples to re-connect with their lost culture and former prosperity. The tribal members will decide what they want to do with their new buffalo herd on the land, a self-determination of a hopeful future that has been missing for decades. Other reservations have reintroduced buffalo herds, such as nearby Fort Peck and Pine Ridge.
The buffalo at Rosebud were provided by the US Park Service, a part of the same Interior Department that allowed the speicies' near extermination in the 19th Century. Its Bison Conservation Initiative aims to build up “large, wild, connected, genetically diverse and healthy bison herds.” Perhaps in the not too distant future, buffalo herds will once again darken the Great Plains with their numbers, bringing peace and prosperity to their kin once again.
Park authorities are making concerted efforts to protect habitats and their residents in partnership with international conservation organizations. The work is paying dividends: elephants are returning to the park in large numbers from Queen Elizabeth National Park in neighboring Uganda. 580 savannah elephants appear to be reoccupying Virunga, joining the 120 elephants that never left. They are quickly transforming the landscape, returning it to the savannah it once was, which is good news for the other ungulates that share the 2 million acre park. In the 1950s there were about 8,000 elephants in Virunga, but the Great Elephant Census in 2014 found only 300. If the elephants can be protected from increased poaching and human conflict, they may regain their former numbers and Eden will have returned to Virunga.