One of the more interesting facts we learned during our large family vacation (from resident wilderness expert and tour guide extraordinaire, Mike) was the mistake behind the word "buffalo", as it is so often used. Buffalo are the animals from Asia and Africa, while "bison" refers to the American species. It is still allowable in common usage, given the prevalence of the term buffalo in American folklore, like historic songs ("...where the buffalo roam..." ) and mythic stories about the Old West.
It's an overwhelming and emotionally powerful experience to see them in their natural environment; how completely they fit into this big sky landscape! Given the abundance of food for them in their valley home, bison have exploded in population recently, giving us a sense of the originally massive herds that covered the land back then. Settlers once thought the bison of "The American West" were inexhaustible.
But dwindle from over-hunting they did, until finally (in order to re-populate Yellowstone), biologists replenished the wild herd we now see from private stock held in ranches. Those animals were crossbred with the few wild bison left, in order to create the large herds of Yellowstone roaming free that we see today.
It is a breathtaking wildlife preserve, as our very own "American Serengeti": a natural paradise for us here on Earth.
