Bison Return to Illinois' Kane County After 200 Years

Posted8 days agoActive19h ago

bikenaga

157 points

48 comments

phys.orgNewsstory

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Environment | NewsBison ReintroductionIllinois Ecosystem

Key topics

Environment | News

Bison Reintroduction

Illinois Ecosystem

As bison make a triumphant return to Illinois' Kane County after a 200-year absence, locals are buzzing with excitement and curiosity. Some commenters point out that bison have already been thriving in nearby areas, such as Fermilab in Dupage County and Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie, with one noting that Midewin's bison are safely contained behind a double fence. The discussion turns to whether Kane County's bison will be able to roam freely like the area's deer, with some arguing that bison are less agile but more determined, capable of pushing through or knocking down fences. The exchange highlights the complexities of reintroducing a powerful and iconic species to the region.

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Discussion (48 comments)

Showing 58 comments

pfdietz

8 days ago

3 replies

There have been bison at Fermilab for some years, but they are just over the border in Dupage County, not Kane County.

sanex

2d ago

1 reply

I honestly thought Fermilab was in Kane. I could see it from my front yard growing up west of Geneva.

pfdietz

2d ago

I think the tiniest slice of it is in Kane, but that's not where they have the bison.

pushcx

3d ago

There's a couple dozen at Midewin, too: https://www.fs.usda.gov/r09/midewin/animals-plants/bison-pro...

mbreese

2d ago

The 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/

rickcarlino

3d ago

1 reply

Look 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

3d ago

4 replies

It'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.

flyinghamster

3d ago

1 reply

An 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

3d ago

The 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

3d ago

1 reply

I don't think bison really care about fences either. While they don't leap over them, they just walk through them

chrisco255

3d ago

I 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.

dhosek

3d ago

1 reply

Deer have become almost a nuisance species closer in to Chicago. I’ve seen them in Oak Park about 2 miles away from the nearest forest land. In River Forest, which actually contains forest preserve, things got so bad the village wanted to hire a firm to shoot the deer, but the residents were too shocked by that proposal and it never happened.

gerdesj

2d ago

1 reply

"Deer have become almost a nuisance species closer in to Chicago."

Bloody locals, pissing around as though they own the place. Let's blast them to Kingdom Come ... hmmm tree huggers and kumbaya.

You've actually seen wildlife? Soz!

razeh

2d ago

4 replies

I’m in River Forest and the deer are a pain to deal with. They eat your plants, they’re not afraid of people (because they get hand feed) and they get hit by cars.

They’re lacking their natural predators — and the logical solution of introducing them is ruled out because the local forest preserves aren’t large enough to support wolf packs.

Maybe the coyotes will figure out how to take them down.

lostlogin

2d ago

1 reply

Maybe the suburban apex predator (the car) will be enough to sort it out.

chrisco255

2d ago

1 reply

It's not, the deer that learn to live in suburbs learn to avoid traffic.

nick49488171

2d ago

1 reply

There are so many deer overpopulating in the eastern US that now they are getting weird prion diseases.

lostlogin

2d ago

> they are getting weird prion diseases.

Aren’t those from cannibalism?

gerdesj

2d ago

1 reply

You need to shoot the people who are feeding them - that's the logical solution to the problem you posed 8) Their natural predators are now cars because that is how things are now.

An environment is whatever it is at a point in time. You have described how things are around you and that is the current normal. You may not like it or even understand it but that is how it is.

You have to decide whether deer should live within your domain or not. At the moment it sounds like they are a negative factor for you. When you have run out of deer, will you start on the coyotes? When you have run out of creatures with backbones, will you start on arthropodia or amphibians?

chrisco255

2d ago

1 reply

Not really. The deer that thrive in suburban areas learn to watch for traffic. Even where deer vs car collisions are common, deer multiply well beyond what car traffic takes out. Really, hunting is the only way to thin the numbers.

Deer eat grass, they can thrive almost anywhere in North America just fine with or without people feeding them.

In suburbs they probably need to capture and slaughter some number of them to keep the numbers reasonable.

pfdietz

2d ago

1 reply

Deer can eat grass, but it's not their preferred food, and they can't thrive on it. They eat forbs, shoots, browse (twigs, buds, etc.) and mast like acorns (they are set up to deal with the large amounts of tannin in acorns).

https://www.msudeer.msstate.edu/deer-diet.php

"Although low quality forages such as mature grasses provide adequate nutrition to animals such as elk and cattle, the quicker digestive process of whitetails requires more readily digestible forages to fulfill their energy and protein requirements. On severely overpopulated and depleted ranges, white-tailed deer have starved to death with their stomachs full of low quality forages."

chrisco255

2d ago

1 reply

Point taken. Of course, again there is no shortage of shrubbery in suburban environments. And the last point is just what always happens when a species that evolved as prey is no longer hunted.

pfdietz

1d ago

Also plenty of immature grass. See also Canada Geese, which do prefer that.

ls612

2d ago

1 reply

They should just legalize shooting the deer and this problem will get figured out pretty quick.

dhosek

2d ago

Look up to my post—the village proposed shooting the deer and residents decided that they’d rather have nuisance deer than see Bambi shot in their neighborhood. (There’s also the safety questions around shooting deer in residential neighborhoods to deal with as well.)

dhosek

2d ago

Well there was a lynx spotted in north Oak Park in the last couple-three years so there’s another potential predator, but yep, they definitely need predation. I’ve seen some sizable herds north of North Avenue in the forest preserve there (along with lots of bread put out by people who wanted to feed the deer). They’re a lot bolder there than south of North.

rickcarlino

3d ago

That’s what I was wondering. Makes sense.

chrisco255

3d ago

1 reply

I 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

3d ago

4 replies

Unfortunately 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

3d ago

1 reply

There are several extant herds that have been genetically tested and proven "pure", although they're the minority

hopelite

3d ago

2 replies

Do 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

dabluecaboose

2d ago

I was told when I worked at Philmont Scout Ranch that they had a pure herd.

Other than that, I know Steven Rinella listed a few pure herds in his (excellent) book [1] on the American Buffalo, but I'd have to dig it out to find them for you.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/American-Buffalo-Search-Lost-Icon/dp/...

dboreham

2d ago

Yellowstone

gamblor956

2d ago

Bison and beefalo are different animals. Beefalo can't be marketed as either bison meat or beef.

chrisco255

3d ago

They have less than 2% cattle DNA, sometimes as little as 0.25%. That they were crossbreedable at all though shows they were already highly related.

dmix

2d ago

A lot of coyotes are mixed with dogs and wolves too

cwal37

3d ago

1 reply

That'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://northwest...

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverbank_Laboratories

toomuchtodo

2d ago

1 reply

> 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/hours.html

lq9AJ8yrfs

2d ago

If 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

3d ago

3 replies

Stuff 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

3d ago

2 replies

You should read "The World Without Us" by Alan Weisman.

sorentwo

3d ago

Seconded. I was going to say the exact same thing. Brilliant thought exercise that I still think about on a weekly basis 20 years later.

sriacha

2d ago

Hah, was just about to write that. Also recommended.

soperj

3d ago

1 reply

Wild 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

3d ago

1 reply

Do you have a reference for that? Some googling says it is a myth, which sounds right.

soperj

1d ago

1 reply

Been to a dairy farm.

Mistletoe

1d ago

1 reply

Idk my Dad worked on a dairy farm part time when I was a kid and I've never heard of that. That's just not how teats and udders work. There is nothing here about how the cow makes too much milk and will drown the calf.

https://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/youngstock-management/pros-c...

soperj

1d ago

1 reply

This is what the dairy farmer told me when I asked why they bottle feed.

mickdeek86

19h ago

He may have been pulling your leg. We bottle feed the calves formula, because to allow the calves to drink the milk would defeat the purpose of raising dairy cows. Also teat cleanliness and health is huge; suckling causes problems. Incidentally, wild cows actually are a thing in a bunch of far-flung places. I saw them in the Aleutian islands (some genius brought them up there thinking he could get a beef business going and just left them when it of course failed) and they're mean as hell. There's a bunch of feral cattle on the Big Island of Hawaii as well, and TIL there are ~5 million stray cows in India where it illegal to kill them for religious reasons, which creates a massive problem for transport infrastructure, and gave rise to possibly my all-time favorite wikipedia article title:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_vigilante_violence_in_Indi...

kitesay

3d ago

1 reply

More like a managed herd in a fenced paddock. A spring tourist attraction.

I wonder how climate change is going to affect the idealistic "restore the ecosystem" plan.

dmix

2d ago

Definitely more of a luxury exercise. A sort of zoo with even more researchers and administrators watching over

Id personally put that money into fighting the Pine Beatles which at this moment are killing huge swathes of existing wildlife and ecosystems. But that’s hard laborious work.

renewiltord

2d ago

For you, this is the day that Bison return to Illinois’s Kane County. For the bison, it’s Tuesday.

1123581321

3d ago

This is good to see. Also, I didn’t realize until now that Burlington was Kane and not DeKalb!

nesarkvechnep

3d ago

Making America great again. One species at a time. /s

ang_cire

2d ago

When you're walking around rural Illinois and you hear music start playing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72aSGvXeOTs