American Bison Destruction and Conservation

During the nineteenth century, railways, commercial hide markets, sport hunting and expanding settlement reduced the vast bison herds of the Great Plains to a few remnant groups. United States officials and military officers often welcomed the destruction because Plains nations depended upon the bison for food, shelter, trade and cultural life.

By the 1880s, naturalists and reformers began campaigning to prevent complete extinction. George Bird Grinnell used scientific networks, journalism and political lobbying to support protective laws, national parks and captive breeding, while Theodore Roosevelt and other elite sportsmen helped make conservation a national political cause.

The movement preserved the species but developed within a frontier order created through conquest and Indigenous dispossession.