American Bison
Bison bison
Thirty million in 1800. Three hundred in 1884. A republic learns slowly, and only after.
By the late 1880s fewer than a thousand wild bison remained, the low point of a slaughter bound up with the dispossession of the Plains nations. A famous photograph of the era shows a mountain of skulls awaiting the fertilizer plants. The American conservation movement was built on the lesson the buffalo paid for.
