Response To “A Rebuttal To 'Reinterpreting The 1882 Bison Population Collapse'”

Abstract

The generally accepted ancestral bison herd size, the existing records and estimates of bison slaughter, and the contention that bison were hunted to extinction do not add up. Defending the hypothesis that bison were slaughtered to extinction requires adding unreasonable millions to the slaughter estimates or reducing the projected ancestral bison herd to about five million. A more reasonable approach is to assume bison were also dying at a high rate because of other factors, such as disease. I believe the disease rate was exacerbated by the loss of intelligent human grazing management practiced by the Original American First Nations.