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Bison return to Illinois' Kane County after 200 years
- pfdietz 10mo agoThere have been bison at Fermilab for some years, but they are just over the border in Dupage County, not Kane County. Kane Country has had cougars for quite a while. :)
- pushcx 10mo agoThere's a couple dozen at Midewin, too: https://www.fs.usda.gov/r09/midewin/animals-plants/bison-project-homepage https://www.fs.usda.gov/r09/midewin/animals-plants/bison-pro...
- sanex 10mo agoI honestly thought Fermilab was in Kane. I could see it from my front yard growing up west of Geneva.
- pfdietz 10mo agoI think the tiniest slice of it is in Kane, but that's not where they have the bison.
- mbreese 10mo agoThe Fermilab herd was always one of the highlights of visiting there. I always thought that was a really good use for the space inside the accelerator, a nice version of nature and science coexisting. I have it in my head that we used to be able to just drive through Fermi to see the Bison (late 80s/90s). More on the bison at Fermi: https://www.fnal.gov/pub/about/bisoncam/ https://www.fnal.gov/pub/about/bisoncam/
- rickcarlino 10mo agoLook at that our little midwestern county is on the front page of HN. Are they going to be able to free range, the way we commonly see whitetail deer roaming around the county?
- chrisco255 10mo agoIt's probably harder for bison to free range like deer these days. Deer are extremely agile and can leap most fences with ease. Deer are also pretty docile when they're not in rut. Outside of nature preserves it doesn't seem realistic.
- rickcarlino 10mo agoThat’s what I was wondering. Makes sense.
- flyinghamster 10mo agoAn additional data point is that Midewin's bison area is surrounded by a double fence - a barbed-wire one to keep the humans out and a stout steel one to keep the bison in.
- jjtheblunt 10mo agoThe Fermilab bison used to have (probably still do) a sign in their field that said, amusingly, not to jump the fence into the field unless you can cross it in 9 seconds, because the bull can do it in 10. (grew up on the DuPage county side of Fermilab, got to take physics there too, which was awesome)
- dylan604 10mo agoI don't think bison really care about fences either. While they don't leap over them, they just walk through them
- chrisco255 10mo agoI realize bison can force down many fences but thats what I mean. I've seen neighborhoods where deer thrive in the suburbs largely grazing in people's yards and medians on the roadway. They are sometimes even fed corn by the residents. Bison are not only much more destructive, they are sometimes quite violent and will charge and horn people without warning. They need to be on ranches with special fencing or preserves.
- nesarkvechnep 10mo ago[flagged]
- chrisco255 10mo agoI love American bison and try to eat bison burgers and steak as much as possible to reward the ranchers who choose to raise them over cows.
- hopelite 10mo agoUnfortunately there are apparently no real true American bison anymore. A sturdy a while ago showed that all American bison in all of North America have varying degrees of cattle DNA. They’re basically all “beefalo”. They are quite different from cattle in many ways, but they aren’t actually really American bison anymore. Those technically are extinct by objective measures, not all that different than if you breed one dog with a different one, the offspring is neither of the parents and also basically nothing at all until some defining characteristics are identified, reproduced and named at least as a sub-breed.
- dabluecaboose 10mo agoThere are several extant herds that have been genetically tested and proven "pure", although they're the minority
- hopelite 10mo agoDo you recall anything about where those herds are, because I’ve only seen research showing that all treated herds have identifiable cattle DNA, i.e., https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-09828-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-09828-z
- dabluecaboose 10mo agoI was told when I worked at Philmont Scout Ranch [1] that they had a pure herd. Other than that, I know Steven Rinella listed a few pure herds in his (excellent) book [2] on the American Buffalo, but I'd have to dig it out to find them for you. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzyMrBUys90 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzyMrBUys90 [2] https://www.amazon.com/American-Buffalo-Search-Lost-Icon/dp/0385521693 https://www.amazon.com/American-Buffalo-Search-Lost-Icon/dp/... ETA: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/wind-cave-bison-genetics.htm https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/wind-cave-bison-genetics.ht... "Wind Cave and Yellowstone National Parks are the only two federal herds to have population sizes large enough for sufficient testing. Both herds show no evidence of cattle introgression." So there are at least two
- 1123581321 10mo agoThis is good to see. Also, I didn’t realize until now that Burlington was Kane and not DeKalb!
- cwal37 10mo agoThat's cool to see, obiously Fermi has had them as someone else mentioned. I grew up in Kane County, in the 90s it was the edge of the suburban-rural interface of Chicagoland (used to be the last commuter rail stop from the city). Random fun tidbit is the WW1 code-breaking[0] that took place there as well, which today remains an acoustics lab[1]. [0]https://web.archive.org/web/20220521185943/https://northwestchicagoland.northwestquarterly.com/2018/11/21/codebreakers-on-the-fox-genevas-secret-role-in-world-war-i/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220521185943/https://northwest... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverbank_Laboratories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverbank_Laboratories
- toomuchtodo 10mo ago> obiously Fermi has had them as someone else mentioned. I highly recommend a visit if you’re ever in the area. https://www.fnal.gov/pub/community/ https://www.fnal.gov/pub/community/ https://www.fnal.gov/pub/community/hours.html https://www.fnal.gov/pub/community/hours.html
- lq9AJ8yrfs 10mo agoIf your schedule allows, try to time your visit around any of the science fairs that they sponsor and/or host. Top notch all around.
- rdiddly 10mo agoStuff like this gives a satisfying sense of restoring order. This is the way things were before dramatic human intervention. The ironic part is that the restoration itself requires human intervention. I always find myself wondering what would happen if humans just disappeared overnight. How things are now would be the starting point of the "new natural." Ecosystems probably wouldn't return to the way they were before Europeans arrived; they would proceed along some new pathway. Not least because of how much we've already changed the climate, and the species we've introduced. Then I think about a time 100,000 years after this hypothetical disappearance of humans and picture conservationists of whatever species, aliens maybe, concerned with protecting the indigenous species they found like wild cows, Himalayan blackberry and kudzu, that are now endangered by overdevelopment and global cooling. Anyway it would be really interesting to be able to chart the changes to this microcosm of a prairie ecosystem over thousands of years if there were no human intervention whatsoever.
- easywood 10mo agoYou should read "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman.
- soperj 10mo agoWild cows won't really happen, aside from them being easy prey, milk cows can't even feed their young because they produce so much milk that they drown them. They have to feed the babies with a bottle.
- Mistletoe 10mo ago
- proxysna 10mo agoFor a second I read it as a return to Illumos. Some GCC related story.
- bilsbie 10mo agoI’m mad we had a thriving heard in Florida and then they decided to sterilize them.
- ang_cire 10mo agoWhen you're walking around rural Illinois and you hear music start playing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72aSGvXeOTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72aSGvXeOTs
- renewiltord 10mo agoFor you, this is the day that Bison return to Illinois’s Kane County. For the bison, it’s Tuesday.
- msolli 10mo agoBuffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.