In general people under-estimate the capability of humanity to eradicate other forms of life. We've managed to eliminates organisms as plentiful as things like rinderpest for example. Large animals are actually easier. Were it not for a last minute change, almost all forms of whales would have been extinct in the 20th century. We've been the most advanced life form on Earth for a long time, possibly even before modern humans arrived. But in the past 1000 years or so we really became the most dominant life form. Our population has exploded and we can pretty much push out any other form of life we choose.
The mental picture of a wild Earth on which humans live is now outdated. The Earth has become a human place, with essentially some open-air zoos containing the few wild animals we have chosen to not kill.
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-global-combined-weight-insects...
> Eukaryotes are the method that Prokaryotes use for space travel.
No, it was not. The bison population collapse was not something expected or planned. One year the bison simply disappeared (1882).
The bison ecosystem in North America was deeply unnatural. Bison are fast-replicating herbivores that don't have any natural predators! This only happened because Natives exterminated almost all the large predators.
Such systems almost always go through boom-bust cycles, and that's exactly what happened. The migration patterns were disturbed by railroads, and that likely led to the spread of the Texas tick fever and anthrax among the bison population. They have around 90% death rate, and that's what caused the population collapse.
However, this time the population did not recover by itself.
> But if you can eliminate a major source of food for them, it's possibly even more effective.
It's the same nonsense as giving smallpox-impregnated blankets used to exterminate populations.
There was overhunting of bison, but normally overhunting leads to a gradual decline of the population (and we've seen that with overfishing). The bison near-extinction happened within _one_ year. The hunters in 1883 were waiting in vain for the bison to come.
Removing 840,000 animals from 4.5 million leaves them a good 3 million short of extinct. But Texas tick fever has an 81% death rate.11 Removing 81% from 4.5 million leaves just 855,000. Shooting b 840,000 of them leaves N 15,000, which is a lot like b 25,177 (Fig. 1)
Their own conclusions was that absent hunting, there would have been around 855,000 bison that year. Hunting reduced the remaining population after tick fever by 99.2%! Ignoring this is the equivalent of suggesting it was not an iceberg that sunk the titanic, but a lack of buoyancy.
I'm just saying that bison near-extinction was not a result of a directed action to exterminate them.
It's more fair to say that bison went through a normal bust cycle and hunting prevented them from bouncing back.
I do not believe this is what you intended to get across, since the evidence you have presented doesn’t support it. Please be careful about how you share information. It is as important as the information itself.
The buffalo did not just disappear and the extermination was most definitely planned. Regardless of the logistical impossibility of that goal via hunting alone, this was the goal and the goal was achieved. This is well documented. The technicality between “preventing a bounce back” and “seeking extermination” does not matter, because the goal was extermination.
Well, yeah. They created an unhealthy ecological situation with abysmal biodiversity, where one species dominated an entire ecological niche without natural predators.
And it's not like the North American Natives are special. Humans have been causing large-scale extinctions since the Ice Age: https://ourworldindata.org/quaternary-megafauna-extinction
> this was the goal and the goal was achieved.
Care to provide the proof? Contemporary official documents, large-scale official plans, etc.?
Furthermore, the National Park Service, part of the Department of the Interior, quotes the Secretary of the Interior of 1873 stating that "[t]he civilization of the Indian is impossible while buffalo remain on the plains”.[2] In fact the DOI secretary in 2023 said verbatim that "bison were nearly driven to extinction through uncontrolled hunting and a U.S. policy of eradication tied to intentional harm against and control of Tribes". [3]
This is not hard to believe at al. There were centuries of war between the natives and the settlers. Presidential campaigns slogans focused on defeats over the Indians[4]. The U.S. absolutely hated the Natives from the start. One of the cited grievances in the Declaration of Independence is the fact that Britain would deal with the Natives.
It is both plausible and proven that extermination was the goal. If you still don't believe this here is the most detailed timeline I've ever seen on the subject from the US Fish and Wildlife service. [5]
[1] https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-... [2] https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/what-happened-to-the-bison.... [3] https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/interior-department-announ... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tippecanoe [5] https://web.archive.org/web/20200210033215/https://www.fws.g...
Because it sure sounds like that wouldn’t have happened without the diseases eliminating well over 80% of the population already
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison_hunting#Government_inv...
In general, predators need to be overwhelmingly more powerful than their prey (or use pack tactics, like lions).
It's sad to think about, but it's also hopeful in a way. Humanity as a whole nearly killed these species, but a few dedicated individuals were able to save them.
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nazi-super-cows-e...
[0] https://www.gov.pl/web/srbija/poljski-bizoni-u-nacionalnom-p...
Wonderful documentary.
Not claiming he was the only one, but possibly the only one with enough guns, soldiers T his command, the backing of an executive order, and a dim enough view of human life to move the needle as much as he did.
I need to go research this again and erase this comment if I’m talking trash or update it if I’m not.
The us government culls bison from the Yellowstone herd every year, to discourage them from leaving them park and competing with cattle grazing on public lands.
Bison are managed completely differently than other wildlife in the area like moose and elk, because they compete with cattle. They’re forced to stay inside the higher elevation park boundaries, even when the snow is too high for them to forage effectively. They get hazed by helicopters, chased by DOL agents and rangers on horseback, and forced to run miles through snow to cross that invisible line back in Yellowstone. I’ve seen newborn bison calves with broken legs from getting hazed back into the park.
If they were allowed to migrate seasonally and breed normally, they would have a much larger range and population.
Source: I used to live on the park boundary and was part of a group documenting bison management.
And yes, that’s the Department of Livestock. There’s an interagency management group that handles bison in the area, including the Department of Livestock and at times Homeland Security. They also run catch pens near Gardiner, where they round up wild bison and send them to slaughter houses.
Genuine question.
Is it interbreeding in a way like all bisons present now are sharing the ancestors or is it like it's all a single family of 6k bisons now ?
AIUI with small populations, more variation in breeding between groups is a good thing, because it spreads genetic diversity across the whole population.
Anyway, for mammals an initial population of a couple dozen individuals (assuming they're reasonably genetically diverse in the first place) is plenty enough to produce a population of any size without problems.
So at their worst this particular population only had 23 individuals left. Interbreeding is bad insofar as it increases the chances of passing harmful recessive genes to younger generations.
Besides, it seems like they think it's genetically healthy, so doesn't seem like a problem. I'm assuming they've verified this somehow.
> Today, the Texas A&M researchers report that the Yellowstone bison population appears to be functioning as a single and genetically healthy population that fluctuates between 4,000 and 6,000 individuals.
How about compared to two distinct herds?