Preserving an Icon

For millennia, American bison herds roamed the Great Plains by the millions until overhunting drove them nearly to extinction. Hunted to near extinction in the 1800's and then accidentally and intentionally bred with cattle, bison herds without some level of cattle ancestry are rare. A large, genetically pure herd survives at Yellowstone National Park, but moving those animals out of the park is difficult because they carry brucellosis, which can devastate domestic cattle and infect people. Colorado State University developed processes to cleanse genetic material from Yellowstone bison of brucellosis and use it to create embryos transferred into surrogate bison housed at CSU's Foothills Campus, producing brucellosis-free calves that are genetic descendants of Yellowstone bison. Partnering with institutions including the Cape May County Zoo, the project aims to restore bison to Soapstone Prairie in northern Colorado, where the Laramie Foothills Bison Conservation Herd will serve as a seed herd for other conservation herds in the U.S. In November 2015, 10 bison were returned to Soapstone Prairie after 150 years, and a young female bison donated by the Cape May County Zoo, along with annual monetary support, became part of the surrogate program to produce pure genetic and disease-free calves for reintroduction into the wild.

Cape May Court House, New Jersey · United States