Yellowstone National Park is where we saved the American bison from extinction. But each year, we slaughter hundreds of animals from this prized herd. Why?

How did we go from more than 50 million wild bison in the United States to just 23 free-roaming animals today? And how does the decimation of the herds relate to the oppression of Native Americans?

Many cattle ranchers view wild bison as a threat to their livelihoods. But some think cattle and bison can coexist. In this episode, you'll meet two cattle ranchers with different perspectives on wild bison.

We'll also take you on a controversial bison hunt happening at the boundary of Yellowstone National Park.

In episode four, we meet Robbie Magnan of the Fort Peck Tribes. He believes his community can prosper in the future by reconnecting with their roots as the Tatanka Oyate, the buffalo people.

Magnan has built a quarantine facility that could be an alternative to the Yellowstone bison slaughter, but right now it sits empty while more than a thousand bison are being killed from the herd every year. Why? We'll learn more about Magnan's vision for bison restoration, and investigate why some people are opposed to it.

"We have fallen heirs to the most glorious heritage a people ever received, and each one must do his part if we wish to show that the nation is worthy of its good fortune."

~ Theodore Roosevelt

In 1908, the National Bison Range was created by carving 18,000 acres out of Montana's Flathead Reservation. Now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it is willing to transfer the land back to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. But a lawsuit has been filed to stop the proposed transfer. In this episode we meet tribal members who feel they are the rightful stewards of the land and the historic bison herd, and others who are trying to stop the transfer.

In this episode we travel to the American Prairie Reserve - a conservation project in the heart of Montana that could eventually be home to 10,000 bison. The vision is to stitch together 3.5 million acres of public and private lands to form the largest wildlife park in the lower 48. But some nearby ranchers feel the push to build the APR is pushing them off their land, and they're mounting a resistance.

We also try to solve the Great Elk Mystery: why are elk that have been exposed to brucellosis allowed to roam free in Montana, while bison are not?

In the last episode of season one, we travel to the Blackfeet Nation and the Oakland Zoo, and we return to Gardiner, Montana, to we meet some of the only people in America who are growing up with wild bison.

We also tackle some of the big questions driving this whole investigation: what is our future with this animal? How does that connect with our history? Can America ever have wild, free-roaming bison again? Should we try? Why, or why not?

Yellowstone National Park recently released a new plan for managing the bison herd. It’s in draft form, and maps out three alternatives for how to manage the herd in the future. Before it gets finalized, the public has a chance to read it and weigh in on which path is best. We talked with Morgan Warthin, chief of public affairs at Yellowstone National Park, to learn what this could mean for the future of the bison.

What questions do you have about bison, bison science, bison history, and bison management? Send your questions to us at outreach@thresholdpodcast.org and we’ll try to answer as many as we can in an upcoming dispatch.

Yellowstone National Park recently released a new plan for managing the bison herd. It’s in draft form, and maps out three alternatives for how to manage the herd in the future. In this dispatch, we answer your questions about the plan and what it could mean for the future of the herd.

In Season 1 of Threshold, we reported on the decades-long fight to get the federal government to transfer the National Bison Range, and the bison, back to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. In 2020, it finally happened. Stewardship of the herd was returned to the people who had helped to save these animals from extinction more than a century before. It’s one of just a few cases where the U.S. government has actually returned a piece of land to the Native American people it was taken from. Earlier this year, we came back to the Bison Range to find out how things are going for the herd and what the restoration of this land has meant to the Tribes.