Tens of millions of wild plains bison once roamed the grasslands of North America, but the slaughter of the late 1800s so devastated the famous herds that at one time only a few dozen animals remained in the wild, tucked away in a remote valley in Yellowstone National Park. Though they have since bounced back from the brink of extinction, today the vast majority of bison in the United States are raised as livestock on private property. But there is great potential for restoring wild bison to the landscape, and living with bison is possible. The Natural Resources Defense Council believes it is time to recover bison as a wildlife species and give wild bison more habitat—room to roam in the American West.
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