[HN Gopher] The return of the buffalo is reviving portions of th...
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The return of the buffalo is reviving portions of the ecosystem
Author : geox
Score : 40 points
Date : 2025-02-10 19:24 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nativesunnews.today)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nativesunnews.today)
| OptionOfT wrote:
| That's absolutely amazing news. I've seen them (at a distance) in
| Yellowstone.
|
| The photo of the giant pile of bison skulls invokes such a
| feeling of pure doom. The fact that this happened not because the
| animals are a nuisance, but to eradicate the people who relied on
| them is... insane.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison_hunting#19th-century_bis...
|
| As per the history books, only ~100 remained at the end. And what
| I cannot find a definitive answer on is: are the current bison
| (not the ones for meat) all descendants of those 100?
|
| I do wonder, apart from money, how can a sw engineer contribute
| to this restoration effort?
| itronitron wrote:
| You might be interested in the book "Empire of the Summer Moon"
|
| >> https://scgwynne.com/product/empire-of-the-summer-moon
|
| Although I will strongly caution you that there are some very
| disturbing details in the book that relate to how some people
| have mistreated/dehumanized other people. Definitely not okay
| for children to be reading.
|
| The book touches on how the buffalo were hunted, and the types
| of 'characters' that excelled at it.
| margalabargala wrote:
| There has been a fair amount of interbreeding with cattle,
| which means that the current genetic diversity is not as
| bottlenecked as you would expect, but also means that most
| existing bison are not "pure bison".
|
| While the population was thought to drop to 100, there were
| several other herds discovered, the lowest the population ever
| got was probably closer to 1000 than 100.
| dabluecaboose wrote:
| > The fact that this happened not because the animals are a
| nuisance, but to eradicate the people who relied on them is...
| insane.
|
| A little of Column A, a little of Column B. The railroads
| sponsored a lot of bison hunters because the giant herds would
| block railroad tracks for hours (or days!) at a time. The famed
| "Buffalo Bill" Cody was one of these hunters. This largely
| predated General Sherman's bison eradication plan.
|
| > I do wonder, apart from money, how can a sw engineer
| contribute to this restoration effort?
|
| It may sound counter-intuitive, but eat bison! The bison's
| rebound in the most recent 25 years (~30k in 2000 vs ~500k in
| 2017) is due in large part to ranchers realizing they're
| profitable.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Glad to hear it. Where was I reading that, in dry, infertile
| places on the prairie where buffalo have been released, you see
| new plants growing up wherever they go, almost like they're
| leaving life in their wake? This is one of the arguments for de-
| extincting mammoths (in addition to it being one of the most
| metal things modern genetics puts us in reach of).
| jandrese wrote:
| It makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint that animals
| that eat grasses should also fertilize the grasses so their
| food supply remains abundant.
| HarHarVeryFunny wrote:
| Sounds like bullshit to me.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| The necessity of vast herds of large ungulates have long been
| recognized as a critical part of the North American ecosystem.
| Either bison or cattle will demonstrably work. Regions that have
| largely been abandoned by cattle ranchers, whether due to
| economics, environmental destruction, or regulation, have been
| ecologically devastated in the absence of wild bison to fill the
| ecosystem gap. Bootstrapping new herds of bison in these areas
| will transform them in a positive way. In the Mountain West, the
| introduction of free range cattle in areas that were previously
| off-limits has had a similar effect.
|
| This is related to why eliminating beef agriculture in large
| parts of North America would have limited impact on ungulate
| methane emissions. Without replacing them with vast herds of
| bison, which similarly emit methane, the ecosystems die.
| upghost wrote:
| I wish the article dove into this a little. Very interested in
| _why_ the large herds are so important. Seems counter-
| intuitive, you know? Like they would consume lots of resources?
| Would be very interested in understanding the ecology better.
| Do you (or anyone) happen to have some resources on this?
| sethammons wrote:
| you can regenerate soil with these large herds. It is the
| trampling of soil under hoof. Millions of tilling animals.
| This builds up soil. Topsoil in the plains used to be 16+
| inches. Now it is under 4. Gone on some places. We removed
| the way it was re-built when eroded (or in our case, farmed
| away)
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Topsoil in the plains was many feet prior to the dustbowl.
| Probably not everywhere but many prairie plants have roots
| down to 15-20 feet.
|
| Topsoil is what we call the upper "living" aerobic portion
| of soil. It is the portion of soil that participates in
| nutrient cycling. Roots into subsoil turn it into top soil
| over time. Tilling kills topsoil. So, its not that all the
| dirt flew away. Some did, but mostly it just died and
| turned back into subsoil.
| throwup238 wrote:
| In addition buffalo form wallows that collect rain water
| and support many amphibians and plant species:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_wallow
| Aromasin wrote:
| I don't disagree with the sentiment of returning ecosystems to
| their balanced ideal, however it should be pointed out
| alongside your statement that overgrazing is by far and away
| more common as it stands than undergrazing, and there is a
| concerted effort by the cattle industry to change the narrative
| to one where they become "land custodians" rather than
| exploiters. Large ungulates are a keystone species, however
| they are more often than not grazed in herds far larger than
| the land they are on can sustain. Illness, famine, water
| shortages and predatation (by many species long extinct now)
| kept these herds in check - they don't so much now. This
| article summarises it better than I ever could:
|
| https://westernwatersheds.org/the-history-of-public-lands-gr...
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(page generated 2025-02-10 23:00 UTC)