
Can Bison Ever Reclaim Their Historic Range East of the Mississippi?
On a hot July afternoon in western Pennsylvania, the dark, shaggy outline of a bison appeared briefly before slipping into pale grass. At first glance, his home, the thousand-acre International Conservation Center—an extension of the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium—looks like many pastoral landscapes in the Laurel Highlands. But here, four young bison (culturally referred to as buffalo) represent some of the “purest bison stock” in North America, say the zoo’s conservation team. Earlier this year, biol...