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COPYRIGHT 2005 Smithsonian Institution
A bison's death "is now such an event that it is immediately chronicled by the Associated Press and telegraphed all over the country," conservationist William T. Hornaday wrote in 1889. Fifty years earlier, bison by the tens of millions had ranged across North America in herds so vast that observers compared them to roaring avalanches, grand armies and thunder. But even then, overhunting, loss of prairie habitat and diseases spread by domesticated cattle were ravaging the species. By the time Hornaday organized the American Bison Society in 1905, one of the nation's first environmental organizations, only a few hundred of the animals remained.
A century after the society began working to save the species from extinction, bison are an environmental success story. Numbers are up to around 400,000 across North America, mostly on private ranches. Now a new generation of advocates wants to restore the prairie habitat that bison once dominated. Some, including Plains...
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