Posts Tagged ‘Custer State Park’

12
Oct

Biologists in South Dakota strive to preserve bison bloodlines

   Posted by: admin    in Cheynne River Reservation, bison

A bull takes a dust bath while watching as this herd of buffalo, including young calves, grazes at Custer State Park. (Patrick Springer/Rapid City Journal)

A bull takes a dust bath while watching as this herd of buffalo, including young calves, grazes at Custer State Park. (Patrick Springer/Rapid City Journal)


The bison herds in South Dakota’s Custer State Park and neighboring Wind Cave National Park are separated by a fence – and by something even more imortant.

Those at Custer can attribute their existence to Fred Dupree, a rancher on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation, who rescued five bison calves in 1882, when bison were on the brink of extinction because of slaughter by white hunters. The offspring of those calves became the foundation of the Custer State Park herd.

The Wind Cave park herd’s roots come from 14 bison donated in 1913 by the New York Zoological Society in the Bronx. Six more buffalo were imported from Yellowstone National Park in 1916. The herd is one of several conservation herds established by the American Bison Society.

Now, scientists are newly interested in the Wind Cave herd because of a recent discovery involving their pedigree – the Wind Cave bison are one of only two public herds in the nation that lack evidence of cattle genes, according to this story in today’s Rapid City Journal. (The other is in Yellowstone National Park.)

“It’s the closest thing to what used to wander the prairies for thousands of years,” says Tom Farrell, chief of interpretation for Wind Cave National Park. “This is the closest in going back in time and seeing what the Great American Desert was like.”

Meanwhile, Gary Brundige, a wildlife biologist and resource program director at Custer State Par, notes that herd also is historically significant, since it stems directly from one of five “founder herds” from which most buffalo today descended.

Gwen Florio

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11
Oct

Indian Country Sunday Brunch: Bison roundups; H1N1 danger; drilling on sacred sites; spring training on reservations

   Posted by: admin    in Black Hills, First Nations, Flathead Indian Reservation, Gila River Tribe, Piikani Nation, Pima, bison

Cowboys and pickup trucks push the herd of buffalo across Lame Johnny Road during last month's Buffalo Roundup at Custer State Park in South Dakota. (Kristina Barker/Rapid City Journal)

Cowboys and pickup trucks push the herd of buffalo across Lame Johnny Road during last month's Buffalo Roundup at Custer State Park in South Dakota. (Kristina Barker/Rapid City Journal)



Where are the Indians in Black Hills bison roundup?
Tim Giago’s column here in the Native Sun News addresses something we wondered about when we read this Rapid City Journal story about lat month’s bison roundup in Custer State Park in South Dakota. Something seemed missing. Giago addresses that something.


And speaking of bison roundups …
The one last week at the National Bison Range on western Montana’s Flathead Indian Reservation went off without a hitch, the Char-Koosta News reports here. Crowds were down from previous years, but that’s probably because the temperature took a precipitous dive last week.

Indigenous communities around the world face extra H1N1 flu threat
People on Indian reservations in the United States and on Canada’s reserves aren’t the only ones being hit extra-hard by swine flu. (See previous posts here and here.) Australia’s aboriginal people and Peru’s Matsigenka tribe are among indigenous communities reporting disproportionate numbers of cases of swine flu, according to this story in London’s Sunday Independent.


Piikani Nation asks Shell Canada to hold off on gas drilling
Tribal elders of the Piikani Nation held a prayer ceremony yesterday and performed a traditional offering in the hopes of persuading Shell Canada not to drill at the base of Mount Backes in southern Alberta. The First Nation considers the site sacred, but Shell Canada wants to explore there for sour gas, CTV Calgary reports here.

Gila River Tribe seeks to woo Chicago Cubs for spring training
So reports the Arizona Republic, here. The tribe is offering to build a new training facility if the Cubs do their spring training on the Gila River Reservation, rather than in Mesa. The The Gila River community also tried to land the Arizona Diamondbacks, who eventually opted for a site near Scottsdale on the Salt River-Pima Indian Community.

Gwen Florio

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