October 13, 2023

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hundreds of bison, sometimes known as buffalo, are slaughtered outside of Yellowstone National Park every year. It's a population control measure. But as Wyoming Public Radio’s Savanna Maher reports, some tribal nations are intervening.

The bison, also known as the American buffalo, is an iconic animal of the West. But its path has been a fraught one. We’re going to take a look back at reintroducing bison in Wyoming. We look at why the bison quarantine program started. We go back to when we attended the first bison release on the Wind River Reservation - a long time goal for both the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes. We look at what the current management of the bison looks like now and its plan for the future. And we’ll wrap up with an exclusive interview with filmmaker Ken Burns on his most recent documentary, "The American Buffalo." Those stories and more.