Talk:American Bison
From Academic Kids
The herds formed the basis of the economies of local plains tribes who would attack the trains for plunder or during native vs. settler warfare.
I changed the above sentence, because I thougth it presented the Native Americans in racist fashion, making them look like a natural hazard, like the bison herds, instead of active participants of a political dispute over the land they inhabited. I also put it first in the list because I think that destroying the Native economy was the primary reason for the extermination of the bison herds. The political context of white colonialism should not be left out, though it probably would need an article of its own.
--Timo Honkasalo
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=282720
Buffalo
It is perfectly proper to refer to the American bison as buffalo. Check any dictionary. These animals were called buffalo long before the taxonomists gave them the name bison (which incidentally is not an English word but the Latin spelling for the Germantic word wisent).
- "Bison" is more precise; it refers only to the North American animal.
- the Bison bison, and to the European bison, Bison bonasus.
Yellowstone's bison herd
The article implies that Yellowstone's herd was formed from transplated animals from the Bronx Zoo. That is only partially accurate. The animal never became extinct in the park; there was a small herd living there in 1890, but as its numbers were threatened, it was decided to stock the park with some zoo transplants as well. (I made a small edit to reflect this.)
