{"id":153672,"date":"2025-08-17T17:46:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T17:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/153672\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T17:46:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T17:46:12","slug":"buffalo-almost-officially-wildlife-on-some-2m-new-acres-of-wyoming-a-step-toward-roaming-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/153672\/","title":{"rendered":"Buffalo (almost) officially wildlife on some 2M new acres of Wyoming, a step toward roaming free"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Mike Koshmrl<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

In late April, Jason Baldes sat at a table at the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative\u2019s headquarters processing a setback to his\u00a0vision of restoring<\/a>\u00a0free-roaming bison to the Wind River Indian Reservation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Baldes, the initiative\u2019s executive director, is a member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe, which had\u00a0recently voted to reclassify buffalo<\/a>\u00a0as wildlife. They had been deemed livestock before. But he hit an impasse in persuading the Northern Arapaho Tribe, which shares the reservation, to do the same.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a bump in the road \u2014 it\u2019s not anything in stone \u2014 but it\u2019s a challenge,\u201d Baldes said in the spring.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Baldes remained sanguine that he could bring the Northern Arapaho Business Council on board: \u201cI think that the [tribal] people overwhelmingly support it,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Jason Baldes, right, and his father Richard, left, check out newborn bison calves at the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative\u2019s pastureland near Morton in spring 2025. (Mike Koshmrl\/WyoFile)<\/p>\n

Winning over the Northern Arapaho\u2019s leadership would be a necessary step to achieve the initiative\u2019s goals: Amending the tribal game code so that the\u00a0burgeoning buffalo herds<\/a>\u00a0along the eastern slope of the Wind River Range could be classified as wildlife \u2014 a key step in helping the herds eventually roam free and thrive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWith two tribes making that distinction, we could get [bison] in the game code,\u201d Baldes said. \u201cOnce they\u2019re in the game code, then we can protect that population, we can grow it, and designate more habitat.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The vision is for those changes to continue to occur slowly \u2014 and in collaboration with the reservation\u2019s cattle ranching families, so as not to alienate the industry. \u201cWe are trying to create win-win solutions to change land use to something more holistic,\u201d Baldes said.<\/p>\n

\"\"Bison graze outside of the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative headquarters in Morton in 2023. (Mike Koshmrl\/WyoFile)<\/p>\n

Four months after the impasse, the\u00a0National Geographic award-winner<\/a>\u00a0and son of a\u00a0U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist<\/a>\u00a0saw the Northern Arapaho Business Council change its mind. This week, the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative shared\u00a0a resolution<\/a>, signed by the unanimously united council on July 15, that called for designating buffalo as wildlife.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The resolution states support for the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative and its own tribal buffalo restoration efforts and recognizes that bison \u201cwere and remain central to the culture, health and welfare of the Northern Arapaho Tribe since time immemorial.\u201d Further, it states that the large mammals shall be \u201cmanaged in accordance with wildlife management principles to expand the herd and support the establishment of Buffalo within their traditional homelands.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Baldes, the pieces are now in place to actually change how bison are classified and, in turn managed, on a Yellowstone-sized swath of west-central Wyoming.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next step will be to go to the Inter-Tribal Council, show the two resolutions, and provide the language that could be inserted in the game code,\u201d Baldes said Thursday. \u201cI think that\u2019ll be a pretty smooth step.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"Range units on the Wind River Indian Reservation. (Mike Koshmrl\/WyoFile\/photo of physical map)<\/p>\n

The change of classification won\u2019t necessarily flip a switch overnight, be emphasized. As wildlife, bison will only roam designated habitat \u2014 and acquiring that land remains a work in progress. Of the reservation\u2019s 54 range units, only two have been designated for buffalo by tribal leadership, Baldes said.<\/p>\n

Still, a change to managing bison as wildlife is important because it\u2019ll mark the end of an era of treating the native species as a farmed, domestic animal \u2014 the standard today. After the reclassification occurs, the Wind River Indian Reservation could eventually be among the few places in Wyoming and the West where\u00a0the United States\u2019 national mammal<\/a>\u00a0is allowed to roam the landscape with the protections offered by the wildlife tag. In the 19th century, the American bison was hunted to near extinction as part of the genocide of Indigenous peoples, who depended on the migratory mammals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Although brought back from the brink primarily at Yellowstone National Park\u2019s\u00a0Lamar Buffalo Ranch<\/a>, the overwhelming majority of bison alive today are farmed, and many states classify the species as livestock. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, only about 19,000 American Plains bison broken into 20 herds are large and free-ranging enough to be \u201csubjected to the forces of natural selection.\u201d It\u2019s a tiny fraction of a percent of the tens of millions that existed before Anglo settlement of the West.<\/p>\n

In Wyoming, buffalo roam free as wildlife in the\u00a0roughly 5,000-animal Yellowstone bison herd<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the largest such population in the country.<\/p>\n

\"\"Some older cow bison lead the herd in the breakout from Grand Teton National Park pastureland to U.S. Highway 191 in early 2019. (Angus M. Thuermer Jr.\/WyoFile)<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the late 1980s, the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission also created regulations that classified bison as a wild big game species, so long as they dwelled in a designated area for the roughly 500-animal Jackson Herd that now encompasses Teton, Lincoln and Sublette counties. But elsewhere in the state, with the exception of the unoccupied Absaroka herd unit east of Yellowstone, bison aren\u2019t considered wildlife but instead \u201cprivately owned or bison running at large.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former bison-are-livestock classification on the reservation was similar. Now, it\u2019s likely soon to change on tribal land within the Wind River Indian Reservation, which encompasses about 2.2 million acres.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Baldes is excited: \u201cIt\u2019s a big deal,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s substantial that we\u2019re able to reconnect, restore and bring that reciprocal relationship back to our people and communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, once again he cautioned that any on-the-ground changes would occur methodically and slowly \u2014 and bison wouldn\u2019t roam free overnight.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will pertain to the buffalo in designated areas,\u201d Baldes said. \u201cWe\u2019ll have to continue working with [grazing] permittees and the tribes and [the Bureau of Indian Affairs] to continue retiring cattle permits.\u201d<\/p>\n

There have been no cattle permits retired to create buffalo range to date, he said, and much work remains.<\/p>\n

Editor\u2019s note:<\/strong>\u00a0Jason Baldes is married to Patti Baldes, who\u2019s a member of WyoFile\u2019s board of directors. The volunteer positions have no say in WyoFile\u2019s editorial process. This story has been amended with additional information about the implementation of managing bison as wildlife on the Wind River Indian Reservation.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published by\u00a0WyoFile<\/a>\u00a0and is republished here with permission.\u00a0WyoFile<\/a>\u00a0is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By\u00a0Mike Koshmrl In late April, Jason Baldes sat at a table at the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":153673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[159,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-153672","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-science","9":"tag-united-states","10":"tag-unitedstates","11":"tag-us","12":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115045360473352781","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}