THE GREAT BISON TREK

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 79, 3 April 1926, Page 20

THE GREAT BISON TREK

FROM THE UNITED.STATES TO THE ARCTIC BELT.

Up in the Canadian north-west just now is happening the most interesting event in the world of zoology for many a long year, writes •'A Naturalist" in the "Daily MaiL" After having been almost exterminated during the building of the first trans-continental railways, the American bison has again become so plentiful as to constitute a problem. Ten thousand are being sent up from the great T. ainwright preserve in Alberta on a journey of about 1000 miles to make new homes for themselves in the forests along the Arctic Circle. At least, that is the idea. What may happen is a terrific bison war and* the dispersal of victor and vanquished all over Canada. Two distinct races of bison exist. There is the big European fellow, otherwise called the aurochs, who may reach a height of 7 feet at the shoulder hump and a length of 13 feet. He has 14 pairs o£ ribs, a blue tongue, a musky smell, and a fighting disposition. The war wiped out the Lithuanian herd, but there are still small herds ia a certain densely forested part of the Caucasus. Elsewhere on this Contin- [ ent he has been exterminated. He ought still to survive in the Siberian north, but I failed to find any tidings of him up there. But the branch of the family which got cut off in Alaska and the Canadian north, when a split in the earth's crust cut off its retreat by forming the Behring Strait, had better luck. Hunted i it has always been, but it has kept its end up pretty well in the forests of the j Mackenzie Biver basin, aided latterly ! by Canadian Government protection. The American bison is about 20 per cent, smaller and' 100 per cent, more sluggish. When the United States -Government about 50 years ago took over for farms the Flathead Indian Reserve in Northern Montana, the last sizeable herd, owned by Mike Pablo, lost its home. Pablo sold it to the .Canadian Government, which turned it loose in the big natural wild park at Wainwright. It numbers now more than 10,000 head, and there is no grazing for more; So, annually, for the next five years a couple of thousand are being sent up to the European bison preserves around Fort Smith, north of Lake Athabaska, nearly on tho Arctic Circle. They are going up to the Arctic in parties of 200, the first of which was 1 recently unloaded from barges into the forest near La Putte, on the Slave . Kiver. More than 600 miles of the long journey from Wainwright is by train, and 350 miles is by water. The Wainwright cowboys in charge of this little job are having the time of their lives. What will happen next is the question that is being heatedly debated by American and Canadian zoologists. Will the plains (or American) bison absorb the woods (or European) bison, or vice versa, after years of inter-breeding? Will both species disappear and a new cross arise! Or will the fighting northerners split up the ten thousand into a large number of' scared herds and disperse them all over the sub-Arc-tic farming belt—to the very pronounced, detriment of the crops, and the nerves of men, women, children, and farm stock?