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Big bison
Describes the lives and habits of a bison herd, including where they live and what they eat.
Book
Imagining Head Smashed In: Aboriginal Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains
At the place known as Head-Smashed-In in southwestern Alberta, Aboriginal people practiced a form of group hunting for nearly 6,000 years before European contact. The large communal bison traps of the Plains were the single greatest food-getting method ever developed in human history. Hunters, working with their knowledge of the land and of buffalo behaviour, drove their quarry over a cliff and into wooden corrals. The rest of the group butchered the kill in the camp below. Author Jack Brink, who devoted 25 years of his career to “The Jump,” has chronicled the cunning, danger, and triumph in the mass buffalo hunts and the culture they supported. He also recounts the excavation of the site and the development of the Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump Interpretive Centre, which has hosted 2 million visitors since it opened in 1987. Brink’s masterful blend of scholarship and public appeal is rare in any discipline, but especially in North American pre-contact archaeology. Brink attests, “I love the story that lies behind the jump—the events and planning that went into making the whole event work. I continue to learn more about the complex interaction between people, bison and the environment, and I continue to be impressed with how the ancient hunters pulled off these astonishing kills.”
eBook
Bison
Did you know that bison are the largest mammals in North America or that they've lived in Yellowstone since prehistoric times? Learn fascinating facts like these and more, all in the pages of this book!
Book
Assessing Potential Habitat and Carrying Capacity for Reintroduction of Plains Bison (Bison bison bison) in Banff National Park
Interest in bison (Bison bison, B. bonasus) conservation and restoration continues to grow globally. In Canada, plains bison (B. b. bison) are threatened, occupying less than 0.5% of their former range. The largest threat to their recovery is the lack of habitat in which they are considered compatible with current land uses. Fences and direct management make range expansion by most bison impossible. Reintroduction of bison into previously occupied areas that remain suitable, therefore, is critical for bison recovery in North America. Banff National Park is recognized as historical range of plains bison and has been identified as a potential site for reintroduction of a wild population. To evaluate habitat quality and assess if there is sufficient habitat for a breeding population, we developed a Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) model for the proposed reintroduction and surrounding areas in Banff National Park (Banff). We then synthesize previous studies on habitat relationships, forage availability, bison energetics and snowfall scenarios to estimate nutritional carrying capacity. Considering constraints on nutritional carrying capacity, the most realistic scenario that we evaluated resulted in an estimated maximum bison density of 0.48 bison/km2. This corresponds to sufficient habitat to support at least 600 to 1000 plains bison, which could be one of the largest 10 plains bison populations in North America. Within Banff, there is spatial variation in predicted bison habitat suitability and population size that suggests one potential reintroduction site as the most likely to be successful from a habitat perspective. The successful reintroduction of bison into Banff would represent a significant global step towards conserving this iconic species, and our approach provides a useful template for evaluating potential habitat for other endangered species reintroductions into their former range.
Journal Article
Bison
\"A basic exploration of the appearance, behavior, and habitat of bison, shaggy beasts of the plains and woods. Also included is a story from folklore explaining why bison have humps\"--Provided by publisher.
Book
Group-size-mediated habitat selection and group fusion-fission dynamics of bison under predation risk
For gregarious animals the cost-benefit trade-offs that drive habitat selection may vary dynamically with group size, which plays an important role in foraging and predator avoidance strategies. We examined how habitat selection by bison (Bison bison) varied as a function of group size and interpreted these patterns by testing whether habitat selection was more strongly driven by the competing demands of forage intake vs. predator avoidance behavior. We developed an analytical framework that integrated group size into resource selection functions (RSFs). These group-size-dependent RSFs were based on a matched case-control design and were estimated using conditional logistic regression (mixed and population-averaged models). Fitting RSF models to bison revealed that bison groups responded to multiple aspects of landscape heterogeneity and that selection varied seasonally and as a function of group size. For example, roads were selected in summer, but not in winter. Bison groups avoided areas of high snow water equivalent in winter. They selected areas composed of a large proportion of meadow area within a 700-m radius, and within those areas, bison selected meadows. Importantly, the strength of selection for meadows varied as a function of group size, with stronger selection being observed in larger groups. Hence the bison-habitat relationship depended in part on the dynamics of group formation and division. Group formation was most likely in meadows. In contrast, risk of group fission increased when bison moved into the forest and was higher during the time of day when movements are generally longer and more variable among individuals. We also found that stronger selection for meadows by large rather than small bison groups was caused by longer residence time in individual meadows by larger groups and that departure from meadows appears unlikely to result from a depression in food intake rate. These group-size-dependent patterns were consistent with the hypothesis that avoidance of predation risk is the strongest driver of habitat selection.
Journal Article
American bison
\"Simple text and full-color photography introduce beginning readers to American bison. Developed by literacy experts for students in kindergarten through third grade\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Pyric Herbivory: Rewilding Landscapes through the Recoupling of Fire and Grazing
Our understanding of fire and grazing is largely based on small-scale experimental studies in which treatments are uniformly applied to experimental units that are considered homogenous. Any discussion of an interaction between fire and grazing is usually based on a statistical approach that ignores the spatial and temporal interactions on complex landscapes. We propose a new focus on the ecological interaction of fire and grazing in which each disturbance is spatially and temporally dependent on the other and results in a landscape where disturbance is best described as a shifting mosaic (a landscape with patches that vary with time since disturbance) that is critical to ecological structure and function of many ecosystems. We call this spatiotemporal interaction pyric herbivory (literal interpretation means grazing driven by fire). Pyric herbivory is the spatial and temporal interaction of fire and grazing, where positive and negative feedbacks promote a shifting pattern of disturbance across the landscape. We present data we collected from the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in the southern Great Plains of North America that demonstrates that the interaction between free-roaming bison (Bison bison) and random fires promotes heterogeneity and provides the foundation for biological diversity and ecosystem function of North American and African grasslands. This study is different from other studies of fire and grazing because the fires we examined were random and grazing animals were free to roam and select from burned and unburned patches. For ecosystems across the globe with a long history of fire and grazing, pyric herbivory with any grazing herbivore is likely more effective at restoring evolutionary disturbance patterns than a focus on restoring any large vertebrate while ignoring the interaction with fire and other disturbances.
Journal Article
American bison
Introduces the American bison, describing their physical characteristics, life cycle, history, and the steps that were taken to protect them from extinction.
Book
Bison distribution under conflicting foraging strategies: site fidelity vs. energy maximization
Foraging strategies based on site fidelity and maximization of energy intake rate are two adaptive forces shaping animal behavior. Whereas these strategies can both be evolutionarily stable, they predict conflicting optimal behaviors when population abundance is in decline. In such a case, foragers employing an energy-maximizing strategy should reduce their use of low-quality patches as interference competition becomes less intense for high-quality patches. Foragers using a site fidelity strategy, however, should continue to use familiar patches. Because natural fluctuations in population abundance provide the only non-manipulative opportunity to evaluate adaptation to these evolutionary forces, few studies have examined these foraging strategies simultaneously. Using abundance and space use data from a free-ranging bison (
Bison bison
) population living in a meadow-forest matrix in Prince Albert National Park, Canada, we determined how individuals balance the trade-off between site fidelity and energy-maximizing patch choice strategies with respect to changes in population abundance. From 1996 to 2005, bison abundance increased from 225 to 475 and then decreased to 225 by 2013. During the period of population increase, population range size increased. This expansion involved the addition of relatively less profitable areas and patches, leading to a decrease in the mean expected profitability of the range. Yet, during the period of population decline, we detected neither a subsequent retraction in population range size nor an increase in mean expected profitability of the range. Further, patch selection models during the population decline indicated that, as density decreased, bison portrayed stronger fidelity to previously visited meadows, but no increase in selection strength for profitable meadows. Our analysis reveals that an energy-maximizing patch choice strategy alone cannot explain the distribution of individuals and populations, and site fidelity is an important evolutionary force shaping animal distribution. Animals may not always forage in the richest patches available, as ecological theory would often predict, but their use of profitable patches is dependent on population dynamics and the strength of site fidelity. Our findings are likewise relevant to applied inquiries such as forecasting species range shifts and reducing human-wildlife conflicts.
Journal Article