American buffalo

The bison just became the country’s national mammal

The Obama administration recently declared the bison America’s “national mammal,” placing the animal in the same pantheon as, but somewhere just below, America’s official national animal—the bald eagle. Giving the status of “national mammal” to anything other than the human is a little suspect—THANKS OBAMA—but leaving that oddity aside, the designation is a good thing for Oklahoma.

Several years ago I was alone in a truck, stopped on a road in the largest tract of protected tallgrass prairie left on earth, the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, near Pawhuksa in Osage County. A gang of bison sat near the road in silence, placidly hanging about, tails swatting, basically doing what they used to call “cold chilling.” Without warning, two of the herd stood up, locked eyes, kicked up a cloud of dust, cocked and loaded their bodies then lunged into one another, their skulls crashing together with a disgusting crack. They tussled for a moment, then sat back down, whatever tiff there was between them having apparently been settled. It remains one of the most terrifying, majestic things I’ve ever seen. 

Weighing up to two tons and standing six feet tall, the bison is North America’s largest land animal. It’s official scientific name, genus to subspecies, is Bison bison bison, which says something in a poetic, indirect sort of way about the animal’s sheer obstinate will. The beast’s ability to evoke a sense of majesty and awe is immediately clear to anyone who has been close to one in a near-wild setting. A YouTube search for “bison attack” will yield results displaying careless people for whom a bison also became a frightening reminder of nature’s unrelenting indifference to human concerns. The bison is enormous but agile, ferocious and destructive but also lethargic and at times, somehow, extremely chill. It is often eerily quiet, even secretive, but its presence is never unnoticed. It is unquestionably cool—a fitting animal to represent the United States. 

The bison once ranged freely from Alaska to Mexico but was driven nearly to extinction in the 19th century by humans who were intent on doing the same thing to Native Americans, or who were simply hunting them for sport. Bison were brought back from the brink through a last minute effort that began in New York City of all places and came right to Oklahoma. 

The United States’ first national bison preserve was established near Cache, Oklahoma, at what is today the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge. In 1907, with less than 1,000 bison left in existence (down from about 60 million), 15 were transported by train from the New York Zoological Park—now the Bronx Zoo—to the refuge, where that tiny herd of pioneers (six bulls and nine cows) spearheaded the reintroduction of bison to the Great Plains they once dominated, rescuing the species from annihilation. 

Today there are about 350,000 bison in the U.S., living, according to the Department of the Interior, on both public and private lands in all 50 states. Though one wonders what those bison are doing in New Jersey and Rhode Island (and Hawaii, for that matter), having bison in every state is surely better than having none in any of them.

For more from Denver, read his article on Harriet Tubman's new place on the $20 bill.