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BANFF — As final preparations are made to bring back plains bison to Banff National Park, one of the world’s top experts on the animal says they will immediately change the environment in the area once they return.

Wes Olson, who has more than 30 years of experience working with bison, gave a talk Friday at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies in Banff on the ecological effects of having bison on the landscape.

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“Bison are considered a keystone species,” he said in an interview before his speech. “The term keystone is a masonry term. If you visualize it as a stone arch in a fireplace or a door, it’s always a wedge-shaped stone at the top — that’s the keystone. If you take the keystone out of that arch, the entire structure collapses.

“In wildlife ecology, there are species that are keystone species. If you take them out of the system, the system collapses. Bison are a keystone species. They have an inordinate effect on every other species that live there.”