PRINT THIS PAGE | E-MAIL THIS PAGE

Wednesday, December 10, 1997

Historic bison herd being relocated to state park

By MICHAEL HOLMES / Associated Press Writer

AUSTIN (AP) -- A herd of bison, whose lineage can be traced back more than a century to the last of the great Southern Plains herds, is getting a new home on the range.

Fourteen animals have been relocated to Caprock Canyons State Park near Quitaque, about midway between Lubbock and Amarillo, with more scheduled to arrive there on Monday.

"This is really historic," Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesman Tom Harvey said Tuesday.

The herd is being moved from the JA Ranch near Amarillo. It was started there by pioneer cattleman Charles Goodnight in 1876, when the bison were rounded up for preservation.

The bison being moved are descendants of those animals, a herd that has supplied stock for Yellowstone National Park and the Bronx Zoo.

"Of all the bison alive today, the JA Ranch bison are uniquely important because they have been kept isolated at the site where they were caught in the 1870s and not crossbred with other bison," said Andrew Sansom, executive director of the Parks and Wildlife Department.

"They are a potent symbol of the American West, and their addition to the Texas state park system means the heritage they represent will be preserved for future generations," he said.

Wildlife officials say the animals are the purest-blooded bison left in North America. Harvey said officials believed there were about four dozen bison on the JA Ranch when the project began.

The animals are being moved to a temporary home, a 330-acre holding area surrounded by what parks and wildlife officials have dubbed a "Jurassic Park" fence.

The 10-foot-tall, steel pipe fence strung with high-tensile steel cable is located near a Native American archaeological site where prehistoric hunters processed bison kills.

For safety reasons, park visitors can't approach the bison now and won't be able to view them until appropriate methods are devised sometime next year, Harvey said.

The Parks and Wildlife Department is working on plans for a visitor program to interpret the ecology of the Plains bison and their relationship with native tribes.

Historical estimates suggest that bison herds numbered between 40 million to 60 million at one point, but dwindled to about 500 because of buffalo hunters.

Parks and Wildlife officials said there are few pure wild bison remaining in the world. The 14 bison moved so far were confirmed pure through DNA testing.

Over the next few decades, the department hopes to develop a herd of several hundred and acquire or obtain access to enough land within the bison's historic Panhandle range to allow the animals to roam free in a natural prairie ecosystem.