Schullery and Whittlesey PB Greater Yellowstone Public Lands Proceedings 135 Greater Yellowstone Bison Distribution and Abundance in the Early Historical Period

Bison management in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, as well as on other public and private lands in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE), has long been controversial. Both professional management and popular advocacy relating to bison are routinely based on presumptions about the historical distribution of the species in the region that have not yet been fully evaluated by ecological historians. In an exhaustive review of published and unpublished first-hand accounts of the GYE prior to the creation of Yellowstone National Park in 1872, we compiled all observations, accounts, and references to bison, including tracks, hide, meat, and other parts and evidence. Based on this substantial body of information, we describe the presence of bison in the first decades of Euro-American contact with Greater Yellowstone. We also provide and analyze anecdotal evidence of the decline of bison numbers and the contraction of bison distribution in the period before the famous industrial slaughter of the mid-1870s. Bison were spectacularly abundant in lower river valleys and prairie habitats, and were all but exterminated from those areas by the close of the study period. Contrary to still-popular belief, bi-son and other large herbivores were not “driven into higher country ” by settlement, but inhabited those higher regions as environmental conditions permitted prior to the arrival of Euro-Americans. Key historiographical is-sues relating to this body of evidence and its use include: conflicting and incomplete previous interpretations o