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3 Gerald WaringReports from OttawaTHE wood buffalo, discovered alivt after 20 yearn in which scientists mourned it an extinct, will be net up In businesa again on land ita ancestors roamed.Government wildlife officials like Dr. W. E. Stevens are excitedly scouting the northwest for new buffalo range, determined not to muff a second chance to save the wood bison, •.The range must be large enough to support a good sized herd; must be wild, unsettled cjntry with no farms to complicate matters, and must be far enough from the herds of plains buffalo that there will be no Interbreeding.One possibility is the aspen parkland of northern Saskatchewan, where no buffalo have lived for 75 years. Another area Stevens has in mind Is in the Northwest Territories, west of Great Slave Lake.When the sites have been selected, the Wildlife Service intends to send a winter tractor-train expedition to the northwestern comer of Wood Buffalo National Park, where a herd of purebred wood bison has been found, and bring out enough young bulls snd cows to start the new herds.The wood buffalo, for size and weight the king of his species, would not have faced extinction if, 35 years ago, some Ottawa bureaucrat had remembered about the bees snd the flowers.The story starts In 1906, when Interior Minister Frank Oliver persuaded the Laurier cabinet to l^t him buy 250 head of plains buffalo for $200,000 from the Walking Coyote herd on the Flathead Indian reservation in Montana. Many Americans were furious when tha deal went through, for this herd was the largest in the State*. At the shipping point this resentment all but eruptod into violence when the buffalo weft loaded into cattle cars for the 1,200-mile railway trip to Walnwright,Alta- *By 1925 the herd at Watnwrtght had so Increased that the range fttert could not support it But in northern Alberta the 17,300 square miles of Wood Buffalo National Park supported only a couple of thousand wood bison—the descendants of some 300 that were the last survivors of the subspecies when the government banned hunting them in 1891.With ill-considered conservationist zeal the government moved 6.673 plains buffalo into the park. The native wood buffalo were swamped by the influx. It is estimated that by ItMO there were no pure-blooded wood buffalo left — only plains bison snd hybrids that today total about 16,000.4 * * *' Vj r'For years government zoologists hoped that maybe in some remote valley some of the wood bison had escaped the intermingling of genes— but none was ever found. ’Then, in 1957, wildlife officers taking an aerial census of the park buffalo spotted some bison In a remote area where none had been reported beforeMloreover, they were 75* miles from the nearest hybrid herd — and the terrain between was muskeg, a natural barrier that buffalo could cross only in winter, when the animals travel least. -With hope renewed, wildlife officer N. S. Novakowski of Port Smith led a party across the frozen muskeg early last year. They found a herd of 200 animals, shot five for study, and from the size and coloring of the beasts—20 per cent larger and much darker than the plains bison—Novakowski was almost certain he was witnessing s miracle. Back in Ottawa, caliper measurements of the skulls of the five specimens shot confirmed the mirscle—the wood buffalo (Bisonbison Athabascae Rhoads) still lives.But only .marginally. Thia is his last stand. Tht only retreat is intooblivion.
Newspaper Details
Victoria Daily Colonist
Victoria, British Columbia, CA
Sat, Sep 24, 1960
Page 29
Full Page
Clipped by
Kevin S.
CA 28 Jul 2021
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Victoria Daily Colonist
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