Bison Restoration and the Tribes Bringing Buffalo Home

Teachers, students and supporters often ask a simple question: if the buffalo were nearly wiped out in the 1800s, who is bringing them back now, and why does it matter beyond the animals themselves? Bison restoration on tribal land is one of the most hopeful environmental stories in North America, and it is led far more by Native nations than most news coverage suggests.

This piece explains what happened to the herds, how tribes are rebuilding them today, and what supporters can do that actually helps.

What bison restoration is undoing

Before European colonization, somewhere between 30 and 60 million bison lived across the Great Plains and well beyond. For the Lakota, Blackfeet, Cheyenne, Kiowa, Comanche and dozens of other nations, the buffalo was food, shelter, clothing, tools and ceremony. Many of these nations describe the buffalo as a relative, not a resource.

The destruction came fast. Commercial hide hunters, railroads and army policy combined to kill tens of millions of animals between roughly 1870 and 1885. Some officers and officials said openly that destroying the herds would force Plains nations onto reservations. By 1889, a survey by naturalist William Hornaday estimated that fewer than 1,100 bison were left in the whole of North America.

That was not an accident of overhunting. It was the removal of the base of an entire way of life, and tribes have always understood restoration in those terms.

How tribes are rebuilding the herds

In 1990, a group of tribes formed what is now the InterTribal Buffalo Council, a federally chartered organization that helps member nations start and grow their own herds. Its membership has grown to more than 80 tribes across about 20 states. Together, tribal herds now number in the tens of thousands of animals.

Moving Yellowstone bison to tribal land

Yellowstone National Park holds one of the few herds that descends directly from wild bison and has never been crossbred with cattle. For years, animals that wandered out of the park were often sent to slaughter because of fears about the disease brucellosis.

The Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Reservation in Montana changed that. They built their own quarantine facility so that Yellowstone bison could be tested and cleared, then moved to tribal land rather than killed. Through this transfer program, hundreds of bison have been sent from Fort Peck to dozens of other tribes.

Large tribal ranges

Some nations are aiming big. On the Rosebud Sioux Reservation in South Dakota, the Wolakota Buffalo Range set out to restore around 1,500 bison on about 28,000 acres, which would make it one of the largest Native-owned herds in North America. The Blackfeet Nation's Iinnii Initiative has worked for years to return free-ranging buffalo to land along the Rocky Mountain Front near Glacier National Park.

In 2014, nations from both sides of the US and Canada border signed the Buffalo Treaty, a pledge to cooperate on bringing buffalo back to the land and into their cultures. It was the first treaty among those nations in more than a century.

Why buffalo matter for the land

Bison are often called a keystone species, meaning the whole grassland system leans on them. Their effect on the prairie differs from cattle in specific ways:

• They roam. Bison move constantly, grazing an area hard and then leaving it to recover, which keeps grasses healthy.
• They favor grasses. By grazing grasses more than flowering plants, they leave room for wildflowers that pollinators need.
• They wallow. Rolling in the dirt creates shallow dips, often 3 to 4 metres across, that hold rainwater and support different plants and insects.
• They handle the climate. Bison cope with harsh winters and drought with far less human support than cattle.

Grassland scientists now study this kind of grazing, but the knowledge is old. It lives in the same body of understanding described in our piece on traditional ecological knowledge and why it matters, and it works alongside practices like cultural burning and Indigenous fire stewardship, since fire and grazing shaped the prairie together.

Herd size is the wrong scorecard

Much of the public conversation measures success by numbers. How many bison are there now? Has the population recovered? There are around 400,000 bison in North America today, so on paper the species looks safe.

That number hides more than it shows. The vast majority live in commercial herds raised for meat, fenced and managed much like cattle, and many carry traces of cattle genetics from crossbreeding in the early 1900s. A herd on a private ranch counts the same as a herd on tribal land in the headline figure, but it does very different work.

The better questions are who controls the land, whether bison can move and behave like wild animals, and whether the community gets to hunt, eat and hold ceremony with them again. Tribes often describe restoration as restoring the relationship, not just the population. By that measure, the work has a long way to go, and it is closely tied to food sovereignty and Indigenous farming, because buffalo meat is returning to school lunches and elder programs on several reservations.

The hard parts that remain

Bison restoration still faces real obstacles:

1. Land. A self-sustaining herd needs large, connected range. Many reservations were broken into checkerboard ownership by allotment policy, which makes that hard.
2. Disease politics. Brucellosis fears still drive strict rules on moving bison, even though transmission from bison to cattle in the wild is rare.
3. Neighbors. Some ranchers oppose free-ranging bison because of fences, grass competition and disease concerns.
4. Funding. Fencing alone can cost thousands of dollars per mile, and water systems, staff and veterinary care add up quickly.

How supporters can help

If you want to support this work, follow the lead of the nations doing it. Donate directly to tribal buffalo programs or the InterTribal Buffalo Council rather than to general wildlife charities. When you buy bison meat, look for tribally raised products. Teachers can bring tribal voices into lessons rather than presenting the slaughter as a closed chapter of history. And when policies on Yellowstone bison come up for public comment, add yours in support of transfers to tribes.

Frequently asked questions

Why were the bison killed off?

Commercial demand for hides, the spread of railroads and deliberate government and military policy all played a part. Some officials saw destroying the herds as a way to force Plains nations onto reservations. Within about 15 years, tens of millions of animals were killed.

What is the InterTribal Buffalo Council?

It is a federally chartered organization of more than 80 tribes that work together to restore buffalo to tribal lands. It helps members start herds, move surplus animals from national parks and share management knowledge. It was formed in 1990.

Are bison still endangered?

Bison are not listed as endangered as a species, since commercial herds keep overall numbers high. Wild, genetically pure, free-ranging herds are much rarer, though. Conservation groups list plains bison as near threatened for that reason.