Last Stand

During the late nineteenth century, commercial hunting and federal expansion reduced the great bison herds of the Plains to a few scattered survivors. Michael Punke follows George Bird Grinnell—naturalist, editor and hunter—as he documented the destruction, campaigned for protection and helped organise the political alliances that turned wildlife preservation into a national cause.

Grinnell’s work connected Yellowstone, scientific institutions, sporting organisations and Washington politics. His relationships with military figures, Indigenous communities and reformers reveal the contradictions of early conservation: many advocates opposed unrestricted slaughter while still accepting assumptions produced by conquest and dispossession. The book traces the near-eradication of the bison and the emergence of an American conservation movement capable of influencing law and public policy.