Bison Stories 4. Saving the Buffalo Saves the Prairies

Bison made headlines recently with TV specials from 60 Minutes to National Geographic and Ken Burns as herds are growing and prairies are becoming rejuvenated.

Seemingly endless prairie like this bit of American Prairie in Montana once covered a third of North America. Now only about 5% remains.

Boundless Prairie

Before white settlement, wild prairies covered the middle third of North America, all the way from southern Canada into northern Mexico. These lands were home to a huge variety of life, from grasses and wildflowers to butterflies, and wildlife from prairie dogs to pronghorn and enormous herds of bison.

This blue penstemon on American Prairie in May brings springtime beauty to the landscape.

A swallowtail butterfly gathers nectar from a prairie wildflower in Montana.

This prairie dog is digging its burrow on the prairie. These animals are important to the prairie ecosystem, creating homes and food for dozens of other prairie inhabitants.

A pronghorn buck rests. The pronghorn is a unique North American prairie animal, with no close relatives. These fleet creatures can run up to 60 miles an hour!

Along with the other prairie inhabitants, countless millions of bison in giant thundering herds roamed the prairies. By the late 1800s, only a few hundred bison survived.

Taking Care of the Prairie and its Inhabitants

Saving the iconic bison, called buffalo by Native Americans and the general public, became a goal for individuals, organizations, parks, and Indian reservations starting early in the twentieth century. And saving the bison meant saving their natural environment, the prairie, home to thousands of species of living things.

Today, thousands of bison cows and their brightly colored calves live peacefully on many reserves, parks, and Indian reservations today like these on American Prairie in Montana.

I’ve been lucky to associate with American Prairie since its beginnings. I’d already written a couple of books for young readers about prairies, and I lived in Montana. So Sean Gerrity, an AP founder, visited me at my home in Missoula years ago to let me know that an effort to help the prairie was underway. I was hooked. Since then I’ve visited the AP land many times while working on various projects and becoming acquainted with new properties that became part of the AP landscape.

Along the way, AP supporters decided a book about the land for young readers would be a good idea. A lot of thought went into the process of deciding that a book for the whole family would be educational and most of all, fun. “Camas & Sage: A Story of Bison Life on the Prairie” was born.

The book tells about the life from birth to one year of age of a bison calf growing up on American Prairie. I used the names Camas and Sage because these two plants are very prominent members of the vegetation on the mixed grass prairie.

A Visit with a Purpose

Yes, I’d already spent lots of time on the prairie, but for this book I needed to know more about the way the bison actually lived from day to day. How big were their groups? How did the animals interact with one another? How did they use the landscape? I also needed photos for the artist to work with while illustrating Camas and Sage.

In May of 2013 I made the long drive from my home in Missoula across the mountains and into the middle of Montana, then northward to the AP. I wanted to visit early in the bison life cycle so I could see how the herds deal with new youngsters each year. At that time, the bison are living in small mixed bands consisting of cows with their new calves and young bulls. The older bulls live on their own or in small groups.

My guide across the landscape, Dennis Lingohr, was an expert on this landscape and its inhabitants. Dennis knew where to find the bison bands and how to observe them without interfering with their activities.

Here I am, eager to head out with Dennis to get a feel for the lives of bison when they are living in their natural habitat.

As you can see from the photo, there’s lots of open prairie landscape on American Prairie. You may tend to think of the prairie as flat and monotonous, but as we rode and bumped up and down heading to check out a band of the bison I could experience just how varied this landscape is.

This band of cows, calves, and young bulls—notice the mature bull just outside the band towards the right side—is quietly grazing on the greening plain. Notice the trees to the far right corner, the stream to the left, and the slope in the foreground.

When we came across a band with quite a few cow-calf pairs, we stopped and slowly walked closer to the bison, but still quite a distance away. You don’t want to get too close! The young bulls stay with the band for a few years as they mature. Their job is to protect the cow-calf pairs.

I zoomed in on these three young bulls who are giving us a clear message not to get close to the cows and their calves. We are actually quite a distance away. Most of the band are further away toward the upper right of this image, but you can see one cow/calf pair and another young bull top center.

We stayed just long enough for me to get a few photos, then walked back to our vehicle and bounced our way back to the headquarters building. I had gotten lots of good photos, and combined with others I’d taken at different times, we had plenty of material for the illustrator, Christina Wald, to work with.

We created the book with an unusual layout. I wrote a story about an imaginary calf I called Camas, after a common prairie plant. Her mother became Sage, named after a different prairie plant but also a word meaning wisdom. In the story, Sage is the head cow in a band of American Prairie bison. The story follows this pair through Camus’s first year of life.

Here’s a sample page, just after Camas is born:

Camas’s story for young readers about life as a bison calf is in large type at the top of the page. The box next to the image, for older readers, discusses the two names for these powerful creatures. In this way, young readers can read an accurate story of bison life while older readers can learn about other bison topics such as social behavior and how the bison’s complex digestive system, which is similar to that of cattle, is put together.

As time passes, American Prairie and other prairie refuges continue to expand their lands and help restore this long neglected American ecosystem that’s home to thousands of species of animals living things, from spiders and beetles to birds and to at least hundreds of different plants, from grasses and wildflowers to sagebrush, willows and cottonwoods.