Wood Bison To Be Reintroduced To Alaska After 100-Year Absence
BY: Daniel Xu + POSTED: 3/30/15

For the first time in over a century, Alaska will be home to a wild herd of wood bison. According to KTUU, a group of 100 bison have safely arrived in Shageluk from the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, where the animals were kept since they were first transported to the state in 2008. Now, the herd is awaiting release into the wild.

“We’ve been at this project for more than 23 years, for all practical purposes, but we only got the go ahead last October,” said Cathie Harms, a biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (DFG).

Wood bison are the largest land animals in North America and can weigh up to 2,000 pounds, beating out even the plains bison. Despite all their bulk, the animals were incapable of dealing with human expansion and by the start of the twentieth century became locally extinct in Alaska. Now the DFG is undergoing a grand experiment to bring them back, hoping to duplicate the department’s success with musk oxen—which now number in the thousands.

“Many Alaskans hope the same thing can happen with wood bison. These oversize cousins to the plains bison are the largest land animal in North America and still inhabit a few areas in western Canada,” the DFG wrote on its website. “Bob Stephenson, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game Yukon Flats area biologist, began work on wood bison reintroduction in the early 1990s, in partnership with tribal councils and others. ADFG has found that wood bison restoration has broad appeal and is supported by Native groups, hunters, conservation organizations and biologists outside the department of Fish and Game. But times have changed since the days of the musk oxen restoration, and reintroducing wood bison to Alaska has met some surprising hurdles.”

Those hurdles, which included concerns from landowners who feared their property would be listed as critical habitat, locked up a small Canadian herd behind fences for years. According to the Associated Press, state and federal governments compromised by agreeing to label wood bison under an “experimental” status instead of as endangered, which means that land will not be listed under federal oversight. With that settled, the bison were cleared for transport.

The journey was a bumpy one, especially since the bison had to be stuffed inside cargo planes where trampling was a concern. Each C-130 Hercules could only fit just about a dozen adult wood bison and it took two flights a day for half a week until the bison arrived in Shageluk on Tuesday.

“Some of them trotted out,” Harms told the AP. “Some of them galloped out. Some of them made it all the way to the opposite end of the pen, as far away from people as they could get. Some of them stopped 15 feet from the box and started eating hay.”

The bison are slated to be released into the wild over the next few weeks.

Some anti-hunter will probably get an injunction against this.

I know it has been a huge fight for a long time. The antis don't want them reintroduced as they will be hunted.

Don't worry they stuck these bison in a area that's about as far from any one as they could. Plenty of timber, horrible ground access, super spendy to get to, they won't be hunted legally for a long time. That's not saying someone who lives out there don't snatch one up next fall or whenever they are released from their pens.

That is good news ,its so annoying that the antis would rather not see them there at all, if they are to be sustainably hunted in the future ,they just cannot comprehend, that sheep and cattle are not endangered because they are Managed !! and used !

wish you guys the success we had in Yukon.

They've been released in the Innoko area. No stopping them now. It's expected a limited hunt will be offered in 10 years.

Brett

It'll be cheaper to take the ferry to kodiak and just buy a bison.

They've been in captivity for a long time and are unafraid of people. Hopefully, poaching will not prevent growth of the herd.

quote:

Originally posted by vicvanb:
They've been in captivity for a long time and are unafraid of people. Hopefully, poaching will not prevent growth of the herd.

You don't really think the locals would pick them off do you?.....

quote:

Originally posted by vicvanb:
They've been in captivity for a long time and are unafraid of people. Hopefully, poaching will not prevent growth of the herd.

wait two years of legal hunting and you will see how the pen raised bison will move ...

quote:

Originally posted by Snellstrom:

quote:

Originally posted by vicvanb:
They've been in captivity for a long time and are unafraid of people. Hopefully, poaching will not prevent growth of the herd.

You don't really think the locals would pick them off do you?.....

I don't really, at last not in good numbers.

The buff have been dropped off out in Timbuktu. There are some or a few native villages out that way, but the area already has abundant big game, i.e., moose. Theres no one out there starving for game meat. In that area, the Fish and Game has done quite a good job of getting folks to accept good game management policies, so the idea of not poaching today in order to legally tag one in the future is already settled ideology. Additionally, poaching penalties are fairly steep, the villages are small and word travels fast, so most nobody wants to hazard something of that magnitude.

There will be some poaching and we'll probably read about the crime and convictions, but not on a herd eliminating scale.

I'd guess the area villages are pretty excited about the idea of at least potentially being able to ride out somewhere via skiff or snowmachine and see a herd of buffalo.

That's great news Scott, I really hope so.
I hear that they are releasing them in the Innoko. My brother and I did a drop Moose hunt on the Innoko several years ago I wonder where they would be released is it downstream from the Innoko Wildlife Refuge, Sleetmute?

quote:

Originally posted by Snellstrom:
That's great news Scott, I really hope so.
I hear that they are releasing them in the Innoko. My brother and I did a drop Moose hunt on the Innoko several years ago I wonder where they would be released is it downstream from the Innoko Wildlife Refuge, Sleetmute?

Shagaluk apparently. I recently saw a video of the herd chasing a snowmachine loaded with bags of alfalfa pellets.

Don't get me wrong, I'd expect or assume some poaching. Hypothetically, 2 or 5 teenagers out running Dad's skiff outta gas, come around a corner, there's 50 of them standing there and they've 7 AR-15's between the 5 of them,...........

The locals are likely very, very excited about the introduction. There's bound to be mass quantities of youtube video's posted, obnoxiously redundant Facebook posts, Instagram pictures that after the first hundred dozen all look the same. New babies born in the village will now have some serious internet competition.

quote:

Originally posted by Scott King:
Shagaluk apparently. I recently saw a video of the herd chasing a snow machine loaded with bags of alfalfa pellets.

Scott,

They needed to get them across the Innoko asap before it melts. One of the potential challenges with if the herd failed to cross and ended up on USF&W land it could cause problems.

Brett

quote:

Originally posted by BrettAKSCI:

quote:

Originally posted by Scott King:
Shagaluk apparently. I recently saw a video of the herd chasing a snow machine loaded with bags of alfalfa pellets.

Scott,

They needed to get them across the Innoko asap before it melts. One of the potential challenges with if the herd failed to cross and ended up on USF&W land it could cause problems.

Brett

No doubt, you of course see the obvious in "wild animals" chasing snowmachines loaded with alfalfa pellets.

I'm certain pheasants started the same way, turkeys and elk too, but it does seem awkward to present wild bison that rally to the dinner bell.

I think I'd rather see Kevin Cosner chasing our buffalo over the prairie than the buffalo chasing pell mell after an Arctic Cat.

Bison in a Hercules ? Now that could be an interesting experience.

Grizz

Nothing but best wishes for these magnificent animals.

I seem to recall in Charley Askin's book, him taking woods bison with a M1 Garand while on Northern duty. ?
Don't have the book at hand to look it up.

On June 17, 2008, 53 Canadian wood bison were transferred from Elk Island National Park in Alberta, Canada, to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center near Anchorage, Alaska.[10] There they were to be held in quarantine for two years, and then re-introduced to their native habitat in the Minto Flats area near Fairbanks, but this plan was still on hold[11][12] until 7 April 2015.[13] In May 2014, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published a final rule allowing the reintroduction of a "non-essential experimental" population of wood bison into three areas of Alaska. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game expects to start introducing the first animals to the Innoko River area in western Alaska in spring 2015. The new regulation will take effect June 6.

Feel free to send us a thank you card. But then, we sent you wolves and you're still bitchin.

Grizz

Yes, Thank You for the Wood Bison. Very generous of you.

Actually you sent Yellowstone the wolves, not Alaska. A few years back, our distinguished Congressman, Don Young, offered to export a bunch of our Alaskan wolves to any place that wanted them, but there were no takers. I can't figure out why?

quote:

... offered to export a bunch of our Alaskan wolves to any place that wanted them, but there were no takers ...

When I suggest ideal locations for wolf repopulation are Griffith Park in Los Angeles, and Central Park in New York people think I'm kidding. If you claim to be an "environmentalist", then you need to put up or shut up.

BTW, Thank you for the Wood Bison.

Knowing wolves as we north Americans do, picture them in Germany. They're still in the awe struck stage.

Grizz