US government encouraged an all-out slaughter

Bison graze in a pasture at Zapata Ranch in San Luis Valley, southern Colorado I’m riding a sure-footed black and grey Appaloosa named Chip through a natural obstacle course of greasewood brush, rabbit holes and hummocks of stirrup-high yellow grass in southern Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Somewhere in this 20,230-hectare pasture on Zapata Ranch, where I’m staying, a herd of 2,500 bison is roaming. Ranch hand Dan Lorenz and I stand in our stirrups to scan the high desert plain that stretches towards more than 200-metre tall sand dunes swirling at the base of the 4,260m Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Before the US Civil War, North America’s wild bison numbered in the tens of millions, with individual herds so large that they kicked up dust clouds that could be seen for miles. Zapata bison tend to split up into sub-groups, and locating them is a bit like trying to find a needle in the proverbial haystack. Lorenz thinks we may find a few grazing beside a marsh fed by mountain snowmelt. We turn to follow the yips of coyote pups hidden deep in the grass, hoping they may be hunting rodents that passing bison hooves stir up.Wild bison once ranged over a fenceless prairie that stretched from Texas to Canada and from Minnesota to Colorado, Dan tells me. After the Civil War, the US government encouraged an all-out slaughter to open up grazing for cattle and to force nomadic tribes that relied on bison hunting onto reservations.By 1883, bison had become so scarce that when US president Theodore Roosevelt went to the South Dakota Badlands to hunt a trophy bull, trackers couldn’t find one for him to shoot. Roosevelt, a conservationist and big game hunter, spearheaded a programme to capture and breed 88 of the last remaining animals, bringing the population back from the brink. But today, apart from the 20,000 or so roaming Yellowstone National Park, the vast majority of the nation’s 500,000 bison are raised for meat.
In the 1990s, bison were ­reintroduced on Zapata Ranch by a ­Japanese investor who wanted to sell the meat for profit and turn part of the 41,680-hectare former cattle ranch into a convention centre and golf resort. In 1999, Zapata was purchased by Nature Conservancy, a non-profit organisation that has obtained conservation easements on millions of hectares of private ranchland to prevent subdivision and the extraction of water and minerals for industry. The golf-course idea was abandoned, old stables and bunk houses were conserved and, to diversify income, the ranch launched a guest programme and diverted half its land to raising beef cattle.
The US frontier was ever a balancing act between old ways and the new, and Zapata has joined the ranks of progressive ranches across the west attempting to marry tourism and conservation, looking beyond dude ranch clichés and the beef industry’s obsession with carcass yields and USDA grades towards the holistic state of the range.
For most of the year Zapata’s bison roam free, a breathtaking if melancholy sight for guests, 60 per cent of whom come from overseas to ride horses on what is the equivalent of an American Serengeti. Though much has been irretrievably lost over the past 150 years, the habitat manages to support 500 plant, bird and animal species, including bobcats, endangered sandhill cranes and even the occasional cougar. But the operation can’t survive on visitor fees alone, so each October, Dan tells me, the bison herd is rounded up and two-year old bulls and non-pregnant cows are culled for their low-fat, grass-fed gourmet meat.
I’ve seen bison before, from a car in Yellowstone National Park. So I’m surprised when a first glimpse of about 80 bison cows and their shaggy yearling calves, a dark line moving along the edge of a slender, spider flower meadow, makes my heart catch in my throat. It’s September. Summer rain is infrequent and the big-headed creatures appear startled by a sudden spectacle of lightning, rain sheets and brilliant sun shafts alternating between towering grey clouds. The skittish herd stampedes in a rumbling crescendo of footfalls whose vibrations pass from the earth through Chip’s body and up into my bones. Dan has warned me that bison are faster and more agile than horses, but they are also curious. Spying us, they stop to sniff the wind, whirl and flee, only to change their minds and run back towards us.
From / The National