SAVED FROM EXTINCTION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21578, 25 February 1932, Page 12

SAVED FROM EXTINCTION

NORTH AMERICAN BUFFALOES REARED IN CANADIAN PARK. A century ago the buffalo roamed the great plains of central North America in uncounted millions. There are records of them massed 50 miles deep on a front of 25 miles in the days before the white man came. ; ' , L The destruction of these vast herds before the westward -rolling wave of settlement is one of the great tragedies of the animal world; in 1870 they were still plentiful; in 1880 they were becoming scarce. At the turn of the century there was no wild buffalo in existence save in a small herd which had its feeding grounds in that almost inaccessible country couth of Great Slave Lake in the sub-Arctic.

That the species is not now extinct probably is due to the efforts of the Canadian Government. Nearly 60 years ago an Indian captured four young buffalo calves in what now is Southern Alberta, and they came into the possession of a mission settlement. The herd grew and presently part of it was acquired by a half-breed Indian in Montana, where it continued to multiply until, in 1906, the settlement of that State forced its dispersion. The Dominion Government bought 716 of the animals, and created for them a national park at Wainwright, Alberta, where a stout steel fence 95 miles long encloses 195 square miles of land. There the last pitiable remnant of once tremendous herds found refuge from the hunter, peace and good pasturage.

This venture in buffalo conservation has been -n great success. The population of the park is maintained at about 6000 animals. Nearly 7000 have beeit transported northwards to join the Great Slave Lake colony in another vast national park, and in the past niitc years 7500 animals have been slaughtered, their carcasses sold as beef amt their hides for coats and robes. The preservation of the species is assured.