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Fri 7 Oct 2005 11:13
by Kevin McGehee
in Coweta County, GA
[Out West]
[Our Times]
[Yippee-Ki-Yay!]
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Bison May Return to Reservation
Brodie Farquhar, Casper Star-Tribune
FORT WASHAKIE—It’s probably years away, but a free-ranging, wild herd of bison might be re-established on the Wind River Indian Reservation.
The Wind River Alliance hosted two meetings Thursday—one in Ethete for Northern Arapaho tribal members, the second in Fort Washakie for Eastern Shoshone members—to discuss the possibility.
The alliance, a cross-cultural conservation group, invited guest speakers Steve Torbit, a biologist and tribal lands program director for the National Wildlife Federation, and Fred DuBray, director of the Intertribal Bison Cooperative of Rapid City, S.D., which represents 57 American Indian tribes that seek to return bison herds to their homelands.
The two speakers shared their experiences of how other Indian tribes have re-established bison herds on tribal lands.
DuBray, a Cheyenne River Sioux, said his tribe has about 3,000 head of bison on its reservation in South Dakota. All told, some 45 tribes of the Intertribal Bison Cooperative have bison herds of varying size, totaling 15,000 animals.
“Ted Turner has 40,000 bison,” DuBray said, “but we’re catching up.”
Both men said their organizations stand ready to help the Arapaho and Shoshone re-establish wild bison on the Wind River reservation.
» Read the rest.
The tribes have said they don’t want to have the herd for commercial purposes, but I think they’ll find as they learn more about the notion that even a free-range herd can be hard to keep healthy without expending resources, and there is a growing demand for bison meat as an alternative to conventional beef.
And frankly, the more sources there are for buffalo meat, the better I’ll like it. I won’t dine at Ted Turner’s restaurant, but I can’t help but suspect his herd supplies at least some of the bison meat used by Smokey Bones and Ruby Tuesday.
More meat, more sources—and if it helps raise the standard of living on Indian reservations, I won’t gripe.
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