Preserving an Icon

Preserving an Icon. . , For millennia, American Bison Herds roamed the Great Plains by the millions , until overhunting drove them nearly to extinction. Colorado State University, partnering with institutions like the Cape May County Zoo are helping to return this native icon to the shortgrass prairie of Northern Colorado., Hunted to near extinction in the 1800's, and then accidentally and intentionally bred with cattle, bison herds without some level of cattle ancestry are rare. A large, genetically pure herd can be found at Yellowstone National Park, but moving those individuals out of the park boundaries is difficult because they carry the disease brucellosis, which can be devastating to domestic cattle and can infect people., Colorado State University has developed processes that allow genetic material from Yellowstone National Park bison to be cleansed of brucellosis and used to create embryos that are then transferred into surrogate bison (currently housed at facilities on CSU's Foothills Campus). The result is brucellosis-free calves that are genetic descendants of Yellowstone bison. The project aims to restore Bison to the Soapstone Prairie in Northern Colorado. These bison form the "Laramie Foothills Bison Conservation Herd" and will be used as a seed herd to then send calves to other conservation herds in the U.S., The initial release, in November 2015, saw 10 Bison returned to the Soapstone Prairie, an area that has been devoid of Bison for 150 years!, The Cape May County Zoo is proud to be a contributor to this outstanding program. A young female Bison, along with an annual monetary donation, was donated to Colorado State University. She will be a surrogate Bison and will produce pure genetic and disease free calves for re-introduction back into the wild.