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Until the closing decades of the nineteenth century, huge buffalo herds numbering in the millions, dominated the plains. Prior to that, a relatively small trade in buffalo robes prevailed among the white traders, including the earlier fur traders, and before that among the Indians themselves. Once the whites learned to tan the buffalo hides to produce an especially desirable and durable leather, a wholesale slaughter began in 1871, reaching its crescendo in 1881-82. By 1883, the herds had been virtually exterminated - a survey made that year found only two hundred animals left out of an estimated 13 million when the great hunts had begun scarcely a dozen years before. The Indian tribes dependent on buffalo suffered horribly; their entire way of life and means of livelihood suddenly wiped out. Cattle replaced the buffalo on the range, but as part of the white man’s economy. A few hundred animals is well below a number needed to assure survival of a species of large mammals even under protection, and for a long time it was touch and go. But since that time, under careful, if belated management, the buffalo herds have slow- ly recovered in a modest way to the point where scattered buffalo ranches now flourish, supplying meat and leather for specialty markets. There is even such a free range buffalo herd in Alaska. But they are still wild animals, and methods of caring for and managing them are very different from that of the more docile and far more numerous domesticated bovines. “ Grazing buffalo” courtesy @ Shutterstock 80