i get a daily news summary from the Boston Globe and several other newspapers.
This arrived this morning:
“In the late 1700s, there were more than 60 million bison roaming North America, but because of commercial hunting and slaughter, there were just 541 animals left 100 years later. Thanks to preservation and rescue efforts, there are about 31,000 in existence today, in national parks and on reserves. The bison is the national mammal of the US. Another fun fact to know and tell.”
First I was horrified. Then I wondered who conducted the buffalo count in the late 1700s. Inquiring minds want to know.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Paul Bunyan?
Don’t know who did the counting, but I’m sure if they counted buffalo they were wrong about the number of bison.
Then I wondered who conducted the buffalo count in the late 1700s. Inquiring minds want to know.
Historians with inquiring minds want to know who counted the buffalos in the 1700s and perhaps also how was the area of their roaming determined.
Here’s one consideration of the available information: https://journals.uair.arizona.edu/index.php/rangelands/article/viewFile/11258/10531
It was related to the Indians……we wanted to disrupt them so we disupted the bison(buffallo) to curtail them
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bison_hunting
And here is a Snopes report on a famous photo of a man standing on an enormous pile of bison skulls:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pile-bison-bones-photo/
An excellent essay on this topic by the nature and science writer David Quammen, who for years wrote the “Natural Acts” column for Outside magazine: http://bclearningnetwork.com/LOR/media/Eng10/course_files/course_material/unit4/U04L07.htm
But this is, sadly, just one example of a general phenomenon of the disappearance of mega-fauna on the arrival of humans. In the case of the bison, ofc, it was on the arrival of European humans.
Economists refer to this as a common resource problem or “the tragedy of the commons”. Here is a good video explaining the problem: https://mru.org/courses/principles-economics-microeconomics/tragedy-of-the-commons-examples-economics
Yes, but as was typically the case of common lands before enclosure in Europe, social sanction was sufficient to keep any such tragedy of the commons from occurring. So, Hardin erred pretty grievously in that original article.
So, private ownership is not the only way to prevent such a tragedy. If some jerk in the tribe decides he’s going to put a net across the river and catch all the salmon, you catch him doing that, and you drown him.
Certainly cultural norms can help avoid this problem. Alex Tabarrok pointed out in the video that Elinor Ostrom was awarded the Nobel Price in Economics in 2009 for her work on how cultural norms help societies avoid over exploiting a common resource. Generally it works best among small stable groups, as Alex also stated in the video.
I think cultural norms will not evolve fast enough to save creatures like the blue fin tuna. Fish farming of the blue fin tuna, which does establish property rights over individual fish might save them, if it can be done successfully. If not, their future looks much more like that of the passenger pigeon rather then that of the cow, pig, chicken, or any other animal that is safe from over exploitation because it has been domesticated.
Today I read an article in the local paper about the outstanding results achieved in Florida charter schools. White, African American, and Latinx students all do better in charter schools in Florida according to a recent “study” from the DOE. Corcoran and DeSantis are setting the stage for their latest assault, “Schools of Hope.” Legitimate researchers need to take a look at the so-called study. Again, I would like to know who is doing the counting as well as how they are counting.
Here’s a post from Accountabaloney questioning the authenticity of the research. http://accountabaloney.com/index.php/2017/05/07/ethical-questions-arise-regarding-fldoe-charter-school-report-more-accountabaloney/
Exterminating the bison became US policy as a way of eliminating the creatures on which indigenous people’s depended for their livelihoods: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2016/05/the-buffalo-killers/482349/
Not official policy, mind you, but policy nonetheless
Unofficial official policy.
But probably never written down.
Politicians were smarter in the days before emails.
Just finished reading the various items you linked, painful to see the detailed narrative of the buffalo extermination. Yes, millions of buffalo sustained an enormous native American population in the West, so exterminating the herds also exterminated the Native resistance to white conquest. Various sources report as well that perhaps 90% or more of native Americans died from European diseases brought by white colonists, so it has always amazed me to consider that the ferocious native fights against the guns, germs, and steel of Europeans went on for for about 250 years with only a 10% remnant confronting the invasion. The most legendary battle may have been the attempt of Chief Joseph(1840-1902)who defeated the US Cavalry in 17 consecutive engagements in a desperate flight to cross the Canadian border in 1877 and join Sitting Bull who took refuge there with the last of his tribe. Chief Joseph’s band had about 200 warriors who fought as a rearguard to hold off the soldiers while the women and children made their way north until finally being surrounded about 40 miles from Canada, forced to surrender. Sitting Bull returned 4 yrs later and surrendered as well, both great chiefs incarcerated on reservations with no buffalo.
Perhaps the finest one-volume treatment of this sordid history that I know of is Ronald Wright’s Stolen Continents: The Americas through Indian Eyes Since 1492. Houghton, 1992. Highly recommended.
And thank you, Ira!
The part of the Boston Globe article that I did not cite pointed out that the American species is not buffalo, but bison.
Another great book is called Killing Custer by James Welch.
“Custer’s Last Stand” ( condensed version)
Custer couldn’t stand
Whenever he was beat
And natives lent a hand ✋
Which led to his defeat
So, yes, how many? We don’t know. Tens of millions.
I have never studied this particular estimate, but it is important to note that as early as the Lewis and Clark expedition, Jefferson was sending them there for the purpose,of cataloging biological species in the Louisiana Purchase. Given the early nature of their scientific examination of the area, I would be sure that following footnotes to estimates of bison numbers would land you in the writings of early naturalists.
Diane wrote, “I wondered who conducted the buffalo count in the late 1700s.”
I wondered who conducted the count 100 years later as well! Maybe there was a question in the census about their citizenship…
Ha ha ha.
Yes, maybe they sent out census forms addressed to Mr. and Mrs Bison across the land asking about the number of bison in the household.
Not sure how the government tracked them down, since bison roam around, but maybe the post office kept track of the changes of address.
SDP,
Thank you for the clarification.
That explains the bison census in 1690.
Anyone interested in a fictional treatment of the slaughter of the bison might consider reading John Williams’ sublime novel “Butcher’s Crossing.”
Thanks for the suggestion, Mark!
This reminds me of last night’s NPR Newshour interview with a long-time penguin-counter on the Antarctic peninsula. He says drones do the estimates now, but they still need intrepid souls like him, cooing & sidling up to penguins with his clicker-counter, to verify.
He studies 3 diferent species. Two of them have dwindled by 35% & 50% due to the disruption of krill populations & nesting conditions caused by rapid climate warming. But the 3rd group has multiplied several times. They have adapted by beginning to eat fish, and by adding a second nesting period to the year.
Sadly, many of the bison left today are in private herds, not public ones. The two largest public bison herds are at Yellowstone, and at Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake.
These issues continue, with the annual hunting of bison that migrate out of Yellowstone Park and are killed so they won’t go on private cattle ranches. Also, the Fort Peck Tribes in NE Montana have been trying for years to get some of these bison, but roadblocks are thrown up by white rancher organizations.