In America's 250th Birth Year, Anti-Conservation Feds Go After America's National Mammal—the Bison
Second Trump administration abandons first Trump administration's bison conservation policies, plus mourning a true bison conservationist
“BLM lawfully approved these permits after a thorough environmental review and defended them for years. Abruptly rescinding them now—under political pressure—creates immense uncertainty and sends a chilling signal to Tribes, ranchers, and conservation partners who depend on fair and predictable public land management.” - Alison Fox, CEO of American Prairie
On a spring morning six years ago, with much of the country locked down by a pandemic, the Trump administration announced a surprisingly and unusually hopeful conservation project. Yes, you did read that right. That project, however, has been entirely forgotten by now—cast aside, really.
The animal at the center of it was not obscure, fragile, endangered, or little known.
It was the American bison—the continent’s largest land mammal, the national mammal of the United States, the living emblem stamped onto the seal of the Department of the Interior itself, as well as on the famous National Park Service Arrowhead logo.
The announcement, made on May 7, 2020, was filled with the language of restoration and conservation. Then-Interior Secretary David Bernhardt unveiled what the department called the Bison Conservation Initiative, a 10-year plan to coordinate federal agencies, tribes, states, conservation groups, and private partners around the future of wild bison.
Before continuing, I must point our that, although the Bison Conservation Initiative was ambitious and showed promise, Bernhardt himself doesn’t exactly have a pro-conservation track record.
He’s worked on behalf of oil and gas interests before and—arguably most noteworthy—his lobbying firm, the Bernhardt Group, has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Twin Metals to help get the Boundary Waters mining ban rescinded. They, as we all know, succeeded.
The goal of Interior’s Bison Conservation Initiative was not just to keep scattered herds alive behind fences, but to think more ambitiously: genetic diversity, healthier public herds, low-stress handling, transfers among conservation herds, tribal partnerships, ecological restoration, and what the department called “cultural restoration.”
“The next steps of DOI bison conservation will be to synergize the science, on-the-ground manager experience, bureau and Department leadership with partners from states, tribal nations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to implement coordinated conservation action,” a PDF summary of the initiative said. “DOI remains uniquely positioned to play an active role in developing the next stage in bison conservation by working with others to accomplish linked ecological and cultural restoration goals that are both broader and more meaningful than DOI could accomplish on its own.”
The plan acknowledged a complicated American truth. Bison had once moved across North America in herds almost too huge to imagine, before market hunting, settler expansion, and federal policy helped drive them to near extinction in the late 19th century.
By 2020, Interior said, roughly 11,000 plains bison lived in 19 DOI-managed conservation herds across 4.6 million acres of public land in 12 states—a remarkable recovery from the abyss, but still a faint shadow of the old herds.
The first Trump administration’s own framing was expansive. Bison were not regarded as just livestock, just wildlife, or just part of the scenery. They were described as animals with ecological power and cultural meaning—as “ecosystem engineers” capable of shaping grasslands, and a species inseparable from the traditions and food systems of Native nations.
