Bison Conservation: A Lesson in Patience
Rob Mansheim, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Mountain Prairie Region
Monitoring Bison Health and Wellbeing
Every year, staff at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge (RMA) engage in a bison roundup to evaluate the health and wellbeing of the bison herd that call the refuge home. To do this, they need to move the herd into a corral where a number of different diagnostic tests are conducted.
Logistics: Ways to Move Bison
So how do you move a thousand pound animal? With as little stress as possible. RMA uses a very low stress form of herding that allows animals to casually move into different holding pens. The RMA corral is designed to cause the least amount of stress for the animals while providing a safe environment for staff. Staff initiates movement in the herd to start moving into smaller more manageable numbers like ten, five, two and eventually a single bison moving through the corral chutes. Once in the chutes they are scanned for a Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) tag and released back out to the pasture or moved on in the chutes to the veterinarian for their checkup.
Managing a Herd — Why Do the Roundup?
The main two reasons RMA is conducting this roundup is for the health and wellbeing of the animals and to get a more accurate head count. This is typically the first time new calves will have been able to be rounded up and brought in for these types of tests. The tests include pulling a hair sample for genetics, blood work, vaccinations, disease surveillance, and PIT tags.
The hair sample is a key component to managing our bison populations, not just on RMA but our other refuges that maintain bison herds. Genetic diversity is crucial to the survival and adaptability of a species, so the Service monitors this in a random sampling of the bison population to make sure the animals are in the best shape as possible. Disease surveillance is another very important factor that comes into play with the roundup. Just like the genetic test, disease surveillance is one more way we are making sure our conservation efforts are working. One of the major non-native diseases that impact bison is bovine brucellosis (Brucella abortus). The RMA herd is brucellosis-free but RMA continues to monitor for it along with other non-native diseases that have the potential to affect bison health and restoration efforts.
Learning All We Can About Bison
While the annual bison roundup is a very hands-on day, it truly is just one step in RMA’s much larger goals for restoring native prairie. Bison are a very productive tool in this process. They graze keeping the landscape in check, their manure and urine supply important nutrients, and as they walk their hoofs act as a natural rototiller. Restoring native species is another important goal that RMA has for restoring native prairies. Bison are arguably the most iconic of the native prairies species.
