Word: bison
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This year usda-inspected slaughterhouses will kill approximately 50,000 bison for human consumption. In 2000 the figure was just 17,674. Although bison consumption remains minuscule compared to beef eating--Americans ingest the meat of 90,000 cattle every day--bison is by far the fastest-growing sector of the meat business. We like bison because it's much leaner than beef but still satisfies that voluptuary jones for red meat. (Market research shows that men in particular enjoy bison, which Americans have long called buffalo even though the species known zoologically as Bison bison is not a true...
...this be good news for the mythic, native (and rather dim) kings of the American plains? And now that we have revived bison as a species, can we figure a way not to screw it up again--to manage and slaughter them sanely and humanely...
...answers to these questions must begin by correcting a misapprehension: that the 19th century white man's greed for hides and virtual policy of genocide toward Native Americans led to the extermination of tens of millions of bison. Not exactly. As the late bison expert Dale Lott demonstrates in his acclaimed natural history American Bison (2002), the bison population often shrank dramatically in preindustrial times when the jet stream moved south and brought dry air to the plains. In 1841, before William Cody (the most famous of several men known as "Buffalo Bill") was even born, a freak cold snap...
...climate changes alone weren't enough to wipe out 30 million bison. Humans played a big role. By 1700 Native Americans were riding horses, which allowed them to kill prey much more efficiently than by approaching on foot, as they had done for the previous 9,000 years. Steam power allowed for the cheap transport of bison hides, and in the 1870s tanners learned to make useful leather from them. Demand soared, and the new Sharps "buffalo rifle" allowed hunters to meet that demand. The last significant bison hunt ended in 1883, when there were almost none left...
Conservationists saved a few--there were probably more bison at the Bronx Zoo in 1900 than there were in all of Oklahoma--and gradually bison were reintroduced to natural habitats like the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge. But it wasn't until the '70s, when ranchers began acquiring bison with an eye toward encouraging a boutique meat market (Native Americans, Old West enthusiasts, health nuts), that the species rebounded in numbers significant enough to ensure genetic diversity and protection against disasters like that 1841 freeze. Today private owners care for 97% of the world's bison population, according to Cormack Gates...