Herd ‘coming home’ under treaty between North American tribes that seeks to return bison from Canada to Montana

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Descendants of a bison herd captured and sent to Canada more than a century ago will be relocated to a Montana Native American reservation next month, in what tribal leaders bill as a homecoming for a species emblematic of their traditions.

The shipment of animals from Alberta’s Elk Island national park to the Blackfeet reservation follows a 2014 treaty among tribes in the US and Canada. That agreement aims to restore bison to areas of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains where millions once roamed.

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“For thousands of years the Blackfeet lived among the buffalo here. The buffalo sustained our way of life, provided our food, clothing, shelter,” Blackfeet chairman Harry Barnes said. “It became part of our spiritual being. We want to return the buffalo.”

The 89 plains bison, also known as buffalo, will form the nucleus of a herd that tribal leaders envision will soon roam freely across a vast landscape: the Blackfeet reservation, nearby Glacier national park and the Badger-Two Medicine wilderness — more than 4,000 square miles combined.

Bison were hunted to near-extinction in the late 1800s as European settlers advanced across the once-open American west.

Most of the animals that survive today are in commercial herds, raised for their meat and typically interbred with cattle. The Blackfeet have a commercial bison herd established in 1972 that numbers more than 400 animals.

The lineage of Elk Island’s bison, which experts say are free of cattle genes, traces back to a small group of animals captured by several American Indians on Blackfeet land just south of Canada.

Those bison were later sold to two men, Charles Allard and Michel Pablo, who formed what became known as the Pablo-Allard herd. By the early 1900s, the Pablo-Allard herd was said to be the largest collection of the animals remaining in the US.

After US officials rejected a sale offer from Pablo, the Canadian government purchased most of the bison. The animals were then shipped by train to Elk Island, according to park officials and western historians.

“They’ve made a big circle, but now they’re coming home,” said Ervin Carlson, a Blackfeet member and president of the Intertribal Buffalo Council.

The relocation comes as the restoration of genetically-pure bison to the west’s grasslands and forests have gained traction. The efforts include the relocation of some genetically-pure bison from Yellowstone national park to two Indian reservations in eastern and central Montana.

The tribes — the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes of the Fort Peck reservation and the Assiniboine and Gros Ventre tribes of the Fort Belknap reservations — are signatories to the 2014 treaty. But ranchers and landowners near the reservations have strongly opposed the plan, driven by concerns over disease and the prospect of bison competing with cattle for grass.

Brucellosis, the disease found in Yellowstone’s bison herds, is absent from Canada’s Elk Island, according to the park’s superintendent, Stephen Flemming.

“The difficulty [with Yellowstone bison] is the stigma attached to them. In this case, the animals [coming from Canada] have never been exposed to brucellosis,” said Keith Aune of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which has been working with the Blackfeet on their bison programme.