BLAKE NICHOLSON / The Associated Press | Posted: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 6:00 pm
BISMARCK, N.D. — The federal government is taking a new, holistic approach to bison management, one that treats animals at various national wildlife refuges and preserves more as a single unit than separate herds.
The goal is to propagate more bison with a wilder genetic makeup similar to their Great Plains ancestors, and to use the animals to help manage ecosystems.
Next month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service plans to move bison among wildlife refuges and preserves in North Dakota, Montana, Nebraska and Iowa.
The effort is aimed at taking advantage of 38 bison at North Dakota’s Sullys Hill National Game Preserve that DNA testing at Texas A&M University has shown to be close to genetically pure — or free of cattle genes.
Starting on Dec. 5, the entire Sullys Hill herd will be moved to the Fort Niobrara refuge in Nebraska, said Matt Kales, a regional Fish and Wildlife spokesman in Denver. Seven bison from the National Bison Range in northwestern Montana will be moved to Sullys Hill and 25 to the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa, where some of the existing bison have cattle genes.
Twenty bison currently at Neal Smith will go to the Meskwaki tribe in Iowa, and 20 will go to the Spirit Lake Nation in North Dakota, said refuge manager Nancy Gilbertson. The Spirit Lake tribe’s reservation is in the same region as Sullys Hill.
Roger Hollevoet, the Fish and Wildlife manager of the Devils Lake Wetland Management District, said the outgoing Sullys Hill bison should be in Nebraska in a matter of days. Incoming bison likely will arrive in late December.
“In a month’s time, we’ll have everything transported out of Sullys Hill and new herds transported to Sullys Hill and … Iowa,” Hollevoet said.
The Sullys Hill preserve has only about 1,000 acres of bison habitat. “In order to expand the herd we have to find a larger, more suitable piece of ground,” Kales said. “Fort Niobrara has the capacity for several hundred (animals).”
Niobrara already has about 315 bison.
The Sullys Hill herd will be expanded at Niobrara over time, and animals from it likely will be dispersed to other federal herds and to federal land where officials believe bison would help with habitat management. There are about 10 federal herds in the United States.
“We want to make sure over time all of the good genetic material … are distributed such that if we lose one of those herds to (a catastrophe such as disease) we have other sources of material,” Kales said.
He said increasing the number of genetically pure bison is important now that ranchers are commercially raising the animals.
“The idea is to get these (federal bison) to a point and place so they behave like wildlife and function as a part of the ecosystem,” he said. “The bison were one of the key drivers of a prairie ecosystem.”
Kales said the increased focus on genetics-based management is “the new phase of bison conservation.”
Lee Jones, wildlife biologist at the National Bison Range, said the change will enable officials to do “more intelligent mixing.”
“We’ve gotten into an era where we have the technology to start learning what the genetic value of our herd is,” she said.
Hollevoet said going from 38 bison to seven at Sullys Hill was a choice made locally “to make the best habitat for incoming bison as well as other species we’re entrusted to take care of.”
The preserve is home to a variety of wildlife, from deer and elk to hundreds of bird species. It has been threatened with budget cuts, but officials have said they plan to keep it open seven months of the year.