7 July 2019 National Bison Range

It was a beautiful day here in Missoula today. After watching the streaming church service on YouTube, and driving into Missoula to get our Mexican Food Sunday fix, we drove up to the National Bison Range about an hour north of us. The National Bison Range was initiated by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1908. It is one of 566 national wildlife refuges across the US managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and one of 6 refuges dedicated to Bison. Created to save the American Bison from extinction, it works with the other 5 Bison refuges, national park system and BLM to maintain, improve and manage a public herd of over 2000 bison. The American Bison is also called a buffalo, but in reality it is not really part of the buffalo species, but is a popular name given to them that has stuck. The National Bison Range had a herd of between 325 and 350 bison at any one time. They exchange bison with other refuges and the national park system to maintain the gene diversity. They estimate that prior to the coming of the Europeans to the west, there had been over 30 million Bison. By 1900 there were less than 1000 in public and private hands. The herd in the National Bison Range was started from private herds here in Montana and eventually cross bred with Bison from other refuges and the NPS. They estimate that the current Bison population is over 250,000 but not all are true Bison since some were crossbred with cattle. 

We drove the Red Sleep Mountain Drive, an 18 mile loop through the refuge. The first 5 miles we did not see any wildlife. But then we started running into individual male Bison that were close enough to the road to see. They don’t want you to exit your vehicle, and hiking in the park is limited to only a couple short hikes. We ended up seeing a few dozen Bison. Most were so far away from the road that you needed binoculars to see them but there were a few that were close enough to get some good pictures. One of the more interesting aspects is this area was once a huge lake, caused by glaciers cutting off the natural drainage through three canyons to the southwest. The water would build up, flooding the area under hundreds of feet of water until it would break through the glacier cause a massive flash flood through the canyons all the way to the pacific ocean. Apparently this happen multiple times during the last ice age, the last time being around 15,000 years ago.

National Bison Range Entrance Sign

Bison #1

Bison #2