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On November 10, 2016, the Eastern Shoshone Tribe brought wild bison back to the Wind River Reservation. They set ten young wild bison loose on 300 acres. Dick Baldes spent his entire career as a biologist working to bring wildlife back to the reservation. And it was his son, Jason, who helped make the bison release a reality. Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards attended the release ceremony.
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Starting in 2006, the state of Montana granted permission to a couple of tribes to hunt on federal public lands near Yellowstone National Park. That was due to a treaty that was agreed upon in 1855 that included tribes from the Pacific Northwest. The Yakama nation was the first tribe from Washington state to join in on the hunt. As tribal members drew tags and traveled to Yellowstone in 2018 to exercise their rights to hunt buffalo on public land for the first time, Wyoming Public Radio's Kamila Kudelska joined in.
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Since 2019, Yellowstone National Park has been sending bison to tribes across the nation. Known as the quarantine program, it took a lot of negotiations between stakeholders for it to go forward. Back in 2020, Kamila Kudelska explained why it's so hard to simply move the animal outside of Yellowstone.
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The name Ken Burns has become synonymous with American history documentaries. You probably know some of them like “The Civil War,” “Country Music,” and “The Roosevelts.” Now Burns has done something he’s never done before: released a new PBS series that traces the history of an animal. It’s called “The American Buffalo.” Wyoming Public Radio’s Melodie Edwards talked to Burns about why he chose this subject and why now.
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By the late 1880s, less than twenty-five bison remained in Yellowstone National Park. Currently, the bison population in the park is between about 4,800 to 5,000. The size of the bison herd in Yellowstone and how to maintain that number has been a source of conversation, conflict, and collaboration over the decades. This August, the National Park Service released a 137 page draft of their Environmental Impact Statement for how to manage the shaggy creature within the park boundaries.
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This month, award-winning director Ken Burns will release a documentary showing how bison were nearly driven to extinction before an unlikely group of people preserved the species. His two-part series is called "The American Buffalo."
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On a bright Wednesday morning, forty or so sleepy-eyed high school students from Wyoming Indian High School sit at folding plastic tables. They’ve got journals and pens in front of them, but they’re not in your typical classroom. Instead, they’re in an open field of sagebrush that’s currently home to the Eastern Shoshone bison herd.
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Since the late nineties, Yellowstone National Park has sent thousands of bison to slaughter. They did it in keeping with a legal agreement with the state of Montana to control populations and keep the animals from leaving the park in search of food in the spring. Yellowstone officials and the Intertribal Buffalo Council, which represents 83 tribes, celebrated an expanded holding facility that will reduce the slaughter, and send more live animals to tribal lands across the country.
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A white bison calf was recently born at a state park near Evanston. The calf has received a lot of national attention, as white bison are somewhat rare, but maybe not quite as rare as some might think.
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Federal officials will spend $25 million to grow and conserve bison herds on tribal lands. A recent order from Interior Secretary Deb Haaland also calls to integrate Indigenous knowledge in efforts to restore bison across the U.S.