Signature Story
Last of the Herd
Great Plains · 9 min read
The bison were nearly lost. Their return is the quietest conservation story of our time.
Martography
Photograph Coming Soon
Last of the Herd — Great Plains
By 1889, there were fewer than a thousand American bison left alive. From something like thirty million.
The story of how we brought them back is one of ranchers and native nations and a handful of unlikely alliances. It is not a clean story. But it is one of the great conservation stories of the last century, and almost no one tells it.
This bull walks alone across restored prairie in Montana — land that was farmed, then abandoned, then bought and given back to grass. His ancestors nearly vanished from exactly this ground.
— Paul Marto
