Word: buffaloes
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Sometimes you have to eat an animal to save it. That paradox may disturb vegetarians, but consider the bison: 500 years ago, perhaps 30 million of these enormous mammals inhabited North America. By the late 1800s, several forces--natural climate changes and Buffalo Bill--style mass killings among them--had slashed the bison population to something like 1,000. And yet today North America is home to roughly 450,000 bison, a species recovery that has a lot to do with our having developed an appetite for them...
...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 buffalo.) An entire restaurant chain, Ted's Montana Grill (named for one of its founders, Ted Turner, former vice chairman of Time's parent, Time Warner Inc.), has largely defined itself through bison offerings, which include burgers...
...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 left a layer of ice over the Wyoming prairie so thick that even the biggest bison bulls--which can weigh a ton--couldn't break through to eat grass. Millions of bison perished, and the species never returned to that state...
...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...
...Which I'm afraid," he continued, "is practically the entire extent of my German, which I acquired in Buffalo. Haben sie von Buffalo...