What America Lost When It Lost the Bison - The Atlantic

By migrating in huge herds, bison behave like a force of nature, engineering and intensifying waves of spring greenery that other grazers rely on.

Chris Geremia was surprised. After considerable effort, and substantial risk to life and limb, he and his colleagues finally had the results from their decade-long experiment, and those results were both clear and unexpected: Bison do not surf. Specifically, bison (or buffalo) don’t follow the waves of new shoots that burst from the ground every spring. This phenomenon, known as surfing the green wave, allows animals to eat plants at their most nutritious, when they’re full of nitrogen and proteins and low in indigestible matter. Such freshness is fleeting, and so grazers undertake large migra

related reading

• Sergey Zimov's Manifestoreviverestore.org
• Mapping out a future for ungulate migrationsstatic1.squarespace.com
• Nicholas McMillan | Department of Agronomy and Horticulture | Nebraskaagronomy.unl.edu
• Rethinking livestock encroachment at a protected area boundarystatic1.squarespace.com
• Montana Tribe Slaughters Bison to Make Up for Shutdown SNAP Cuts - The New York Timesnytimes.com
• Themes | Animal movement in social-ecological systems — Translational Movement Ecology @ UMASSxuology.org
• International Experts Partner with UN to Launch First Global Initiative to Map Ungulate Migrations | Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animalscms.int
• Restoring Mobility and Connectivity for Livestock, Wildlife, and Peoplelink.springer.com
• Crop Cultivation and Wild Animalsreducing-suffering.org
• How Civilization Started | The New Yorkernewyorker.com
• Scientific Background | Pleistocene Parkpleistocenepark.ru
• Where’s the Beef?harpers.org