American Bison driven to extinction

It would be regarded as one of the greatest mass extinctions of all time, and end up commonly taught in schools as an example of how human activity can make species go extinct in little time. But the size of the bison, their importance in many cultures, and the rate of extinction (even if it was actually closer to 10 million bison in 1800) might give a slight edge to the conservation movement in the end.

And worst of all, modern generations would never taste the delicious wonder that is bison steaks. The horror.
 
Wow thats quite a bottleneck. With only an ancestral population of 300 the genetic diversity of the current population of Bison probably has pretty limited genetic diversity so who knows, they could all be wiped out by a disease in the future. Btw did they crossbreed the decadents with European bison to mitigate this?
 
Wow thats quite a bottleneck. With only an ancestral population of 300 the genetic diversity of the current population of Bison probably has pretty limited genetic diversity so who knows, they could all be wiped out by a disease in the future. Btw did they crossbreed the decadents with European bison to mitigate this?

I remember reading that only a very small minority of modern American bison are purebred, but have been interbred with other (sub?)species of bison as well as cattle.
 
OTL there were only about 300 bison in 1900, down from about 60,000,000 in 1800. What if the species had been completely wiped out?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison#Hunting

They'd be held up as a prime example of how unregulated human activity can lead to animal extinction. There might be an earlier start to conservation projects such as parks and limits on what species you could hunt. Perhaps this might butterfly the extinction of the passenger pigeon.

Side Note: I wonder if the 60,000,000 bison reached such great numbers due to the population crash of the Native Americans?
 
Side Note: I wonder if the 60,000,000 bison reached such great numbers due to the population crash of the Native Americans?

It was because their main competitors like the North American horse and bison antiquus went extinct along with the other Pleistocene megafauna, allowing the population to explode.
 

Driftless

Donor
Historic Range of the American Bison
(warning - this image is really large)

Now days we think of the Bison as a Great Plains animal, but it's historic range was immense: from Alaska to Central Mexico and from west of the Appalachians into parts of Oregon & California.

It's very difficult to imagine the numbers of animals that had to be killed to bring about near extinction - just as with the Passenger Pigeon.
 
There might be an effort in the late 20th century to introduce European Bison from Poland and the former USSR to North America. Of course, that species came back from an even worse genetic bottleneck (less than 50 individuals). Apparently, there's even a herd in Russia that was the result of hybridization between the European and American species (though I'm not sure if that one came about before or after WWII, so it might not exist ITTL).

Since the process of reintroduction only began in the 1950 IOTL, I don't think that would occur in the US until either Detente or the end of the Cold War.

If both species are wiped out ITTL...maybe there would be an effort to back-breed cattle into a more Aurochs-like form and release them into the wild?
 
Creationists would insist that American and European bison are the same and that they aren't really extinct because Gawd would never let species go extinct.
 
Wow thats quite a bottleneck. With only an ancestral population of 300 the genetic diversity of the current population of Bison probably has pretty limited genetic diversity so who knows, they could all be wiped out by a disease in the future. Btw did they crossbreed the decadents with European bison to mitigate this?

There are AmericanxEuropean crosses but they only live free in the Caucasus IIRC. The European bison has it worse than the American anyway. All current 4000 European bison descend from 22 animals in the 1920s.
 
There are AmericanxEuropean crosses but they only live free in the Caucasus IIRC. The European bison has it worse than the American anyway. All current 4000 European bison descend from 22 animals in the 1920s.

Shit, what bottleneck. :eek: Can this population even be genetically healthy enough to survive? I could imagine that any kind of large nature disaster, climate change or epidemic could wipe these away easily.
 
Imagine, only 2 of those 22 were males (or, every male back then was descended from one of 2 males, something like that. There are only two different Y cromosomes in living European bison, in any case). They are very vulnerable to foot and mouth disease and probably others. But I don't think they are ill suited to live in their natural environment or deal with their natural predators. Fortunately they were never domesticated. It's to be seen if they can cope with colonizing areas that don't have a strict central European climate like some of the ones they are being introduced in, right now.
 
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