AmericanBison_BulletsPathogensBarbedWire_Derr_Jim_CollegeStationTX_17February2023_Reel4142.mp3

Jim Derr [00:00:00] Nobody knows how many bison existed before Columbus came to the New World, obviously. And nobody even has a really good idea how many bison existed in North America in the 1700s, or even early 1800s.

Jim Derr [00:00:15] But, from reports like from the Lewis and Clark expedition and others at the time, there clearly, across North America, were millions of bison. Some estimates say as high as 60 million bison, and others suggest maybe 30 million bison, but lots and lots of bison.

Jim Derr [00:00:37] But, when the hunters came through and they started shooting them, they, they killed millions of animals. There's no question about that.

Speaker [00:00:45] But, there have been historians go back and look, and look at the number of hides that were sold per year to major buyers that were buying and kept good records, or the number of tongues, or whatever that was sold from individual bison.

Jim Derr [00:01:01] And yes, there's evidence of millions of bison - you know, somewhere, maybe, in the neighborhood of upwards to 10 million bison over that time period from the late 1860s to the early 1880s.

Jim Derr [00:01:17] But not 30 million, certainly not 60 million bison. There's no evidence that that many bison were actually shot by hunters. Again, there were millions of bison shot by hunters, but 30 million bison, that's a lot of bullets.

Jim Derr [00:01:33] But it has been pretty clearly documented that bison, at the time and still today, are more or less naive to a number of different bovine diseases that were introduced with cattle when cattle were brought to the New World.

Jim Derr [00:01:52] And these diseases included a viral disease called malignant catarrhal fever, or MCF. MCF is absolutely a deadly viral disease for bison. It can kill cattle, but most of the time when cattle get MCF, they don't die. But most of the time when bison get it, they do die.

Jim Derr [00:02:16] And other diseases that were probably introduced early on by bringing livestock to the New World included things like brucellosis, which we still have a problem with today. It's a bacterial infection in bison, and basically it's not treatable. There are some vaccines for brucella, but no vaccines for brucella, or brucellosis, have been developed specifically for bison, and so we only have the cattle vaccine to use and it doesn't work very well on bison.

Jim Derr [00:02:54] So bison were exposed to bullets from hunters, and they were also exposed to pathogens that were brought with the cattle.

Jim Derr [00:03:03] And, you know, those, those two factors, combined with habitat loss - barbed wire fences were brought in at that time and restricted their movement. So the combination of all those things probably led to the demise of bison down to something less than a thousand animals by around 1880, early 1880s.

Jim Derr [00:03:27] 99.99% of the bison that existed in North America were killed.