I was shocked by Pete Geddes’ words in 2020: “I bet Yellowstone doesn’t have genetically pure bison. Nobody knows. They have never tested them.”
The vice president of American Prairie told me this while we were chatting inside the conservation organization’s headquarters in Bozeman, Montana, roughly 80 miles from Yellowstone National Park. The park has long been the gold standard for genetic purity in American bison (Bison bison). It is home to the only bison herd in the U.S. that has continuously grazed the same landscape since America’s national mammal flirted with extinction a century ago.
Yellowstone’s founding animals — two dozen bison that squeaked through the species’ low-point — were thought to be some of the last genetically pure animals in existence. This belief, together with the fact they roam such a large and wild landscape, has earned them widespread notoriety. The bison in Yellowstone occupy a sacred place in American conservation lore, championed by a die-hard advocacy group, The Buffalo Field Campaign. Geddes’ claim flew in the face of the conventional wisdom.
