Buffalo in a majestic setting

By Jeff Mitton

When Native Americans first arrived in North America about 15,000 years ago, they found two species of bison or, more colloquially, buffalo.

The ancient buffalo, Bison antiquus, was the larger of the two. It was over 7 feet tall, 15 feet long and weighed up to 3,500 pounds. It was the most common large herbivore in the La Brea tar pits, which trapped and preserved wildlife between 40,000 and 11,000 years ago.

The ancient buffalo went extinct about 10,000 years ago, and while Native Americans hunted them, it is not clear whether hunting, climate change or a combination of the two caused their extinction.

The American buffalo, Bison bison, evolved from ancient buffalo and lived in similar environments when Native Americans arrived. Two subspecies of buffalo, plains and wood buffalo, are recognized today.

The plains buffalo is slightly smaller than and has a more rounded hump than the wood buffalo. Buffalo are 5 to 6 feet tall at the shoulder and adults are usually in the range of 700 to 2,000 pounds, though the largest wild bull ever recorded weighed 2,800 pounds. They grow larger in captivity, up to 3,800 pounds. For a large animal, buffalo are surprisingly agile and fast; they can jump over a 6-foot fence and run up to 40 mph.

While Native Americans may have contributed to the extinction of the ancient buffalo, immense herds of American buffalo lived beside Native Americans until several hundred years ago. Lewis and Clark commented that the buffalo were so abundant that they darkened the entire Great Plains; estimates of the number of buffalo ranged from 30 to 75 million.

As new settlers from the East moved West, they systematically and purposefully exterminated the buffalo from most of its native range, reducing them from many millions to a few hundreds in 1883. Today, about 500,000 buffalo live in national parks, conservation preserves and ranches, though most of them are tainted by past hybridization with domesticated cattle.

Buffalo can still be seen in natural settings in a few places: Yellowstone National Park, Wind Cave National Park and Wood Buffalo National Park in northern Alberta. However, one of the most spectacular sites to view buffalo in a natural setting is here in Colorado, beside the Great Sand Dunes and beneath the Sangre de Cristo.

Zapata Ranch, adjacent to Great Sand Dunes National Park, combines the historic Medano and Zapata ranches, each established about 150 years ago. The Nature Conservancy acquired Zapata Ranch in 1999 and in 2004 formed a partnership with the Duke and Janet Phillips family, fourth-generation ranchers, who manage the lodge and ranch. Guests can stay in historic ranch buildings and enjoy fine dining in the restaurant.

It is a prime site for a ranch, not only for mountain vistas but also because the pastures are watered by snowmelt running in Medano and Sand creeks and bubbling from several natural springs. It is a propitious site for birding and a unique site for photography and watching buffalo without a fence in sight. Occasionally, the buffalo stretch their legs by climbing up the sand dunes.

Zapata Ranch blends conservation biology, education, recreation and ranching. The 2,000 buffalo are managed as a wild herd, free to move about, with herds coalescing and splitting over the seasons. While some buffalo are harvested each year, some are allowed to grow very large and to die of old age. I was thrilled to see three large bulls, grey from watching many seasons pass. The largest of the grey bulls weighed just shy of 2,000 pounds.

Zapata Ranch is truly a natural site for buffalo, for they have come to the site for thousands of years. The oldest buffalo remains on the ranch are at a Clovis kill site and are estimated to be 11,000 years old.

Jeff Mitton (mitton@colorado.edu) is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado. This column originally appeared in the Boulder Camera.

September 2012