Natural History Wanderings

From National Audubon

Standing six feet high at the shoulder and weighing as much as 2,400 pounds, an American bison is a force of nature on its own. In a herd? “They’re ecosystem engineers,” says Jason Baldes, tribal buffalo program manager for the National Wildlife Federation and a member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe from the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.

A healthy source of disturbance to dynamic grasslands, American bison—or buffalo, a name traced back to French fur trappers and used by the Lakota, the Shoshone, and other Native nations who have lived alongside the animals for centuries—alter the landscape in myriad ways.

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