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Yeah there's almost no way that's true. Maxmimum bison population in North America was never more than 50 million. US alone has 90M head of cattle, Canada and

Yeah there's almost no way that's true. Maxmimum bison population in North America was never more than 50 million. US alone has 90M head of cattle, Canada and Mexico have ~10 million each. Also Bison grew at natural rates and lived for 20+ years... Beef cattle are slaughtered around 2/3 years - so you're turning over ~2,000lbs of mass per head every few years. Just an unfathomably massive industry.

philwelch 5y ago
So that's about twice the population for about 1/10th the lifespan, so about a 20x increase in scale. Which seems...not entirely unreasonable compared to near-complete wilderness supporting a hunter-gatherer population?
- mekkkkkk 5y ago
  You're saying ~1 billion freely roaming bison in the US seems like a manageable and reasonable solution?
  - philwelch 5y ago
    No; I’m saying it seems reasonable to get 20x the bovine field from the same land through active ranching and agriculture than it would naturally support.