Download Wood Bison - Whitman Middle School

Tundra
What is the tundra biome?
The tundra biome
Tundra is the coldest of all the biomes. Tundra comes
from the Finnish word tunturi, meaning treeless plain.
It is noted for its frost-molded landscapes, extremely
low temperatures, little precipitation, poor nutrients,
and short growing seasons. Dead organic material
functions as a nutrient pool. The two major nutrients
are nitrogen and phosphorus. Nitrogen is created by
biological fixation, and phosphorus is created by
precipitation.
Tundra along the Colville River, Alaska.
Characteristics of tundra include:
1. Extremely cold climate
2. Low biotic diversity
3. Simple vegetation structure
4. Limitation of drainage
5. Short season of growth and reproduction
6. Energy and nutrients in the form of dead organic material
7. Large population oscillations
Source: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibits/biomes/tundra.php
Source:
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/exhibits/biomes/tundra.php
Wood Bison or Wood Buffalo
Link to World Book entry :
http://www.worldbookonline.com/student/article?id=ar752625&st=wo
od+bison
Bison Reintroduction
Program
After more than 100 years of
extinction in Alaska, wood
bison have found their way back
to the state of Alaska. The
AWCC herd arrived in
November 2003 from the Yukon
Territory in Canada and is part
of a wood bison recovery
program designed to reintroduce
the species to Alaska. AWCC is
home to the only wood bison
herd in the United States. Wood
bison hold the distinction as the
largest land animal in North
America. The first wood bison
calves born in the state of
Alaska in over 100 years were born at AWCC in 2005. In 2008, AWCC received 50 calves from
Canada and have placed them within the current herd. Since 2006, AWCC has seen the birth of
multiple calves every spring (look for small orange "lumps" in the exhibit near the bushes) and
we are working towards a possible release date in the coming years.
Wood Bison Calves
Source: http://www.alaskawildlife.org/bison-reintroduction.html
Wood bison are on the comeback in Alaska
Posted: Monday, April 26, 2010
By MIKE CAMPBELL
ANCHORAGE - Big plays well in Alaska. We're the biggest state, with the most coastline.
We've got the continent's tallest mountain and longest sled-dog race. We catch the world's
heftiest salmon and halibut, and shoot the biggest moose and grizzly bears.
Erik Hill / The Anchorage Daily News
Within the next few years, North America's largest land mammal could once again roam the
meadows and hills of Interior Alaska, munching on vetch, grasses and willow.
An effort to reintroduce wood bison, the up-to-2,200-pound cousin of the plains bison, to Alaska
has been under way here for nearly two decades and may culminate with animals roaming free on
the Yukon Flats, Minto Flats or in the remote Innoko River area. Right now, Canada is the only
place in North America with wild wood bison.
But they've been in Alaska before.
Shaggy descendants of a larger-horned bison from the Pleistocene epoch, wood bison lived in
Southcentral and the Interior for thousands of years. An estimated 168,000 called Alaska and
western Canada home two centuries ago before the species began disappearing, perhaps victims
of over-hunting or habitat destruction and becoming an endangered species here.
Now a herd of nearly 100 that lives behind fences at Portage's Alaska Wildlife Conservation
Center - nearly a dozen newborns are due any day - may be able to trade their penned-in world
for the Alaska wilderness if proponents led by Fish and Game biologist Bob Stephenson in
Fairbanks can remove the few remaining hurdles. Those include: efforts to classify wood bison as
a "nonessential experimental population," which allows a reintroduced species to skirt some of
the restrictions of the federal endangered species list.
Worries by Doyon Ltd. that a bison reintroduction could harm the Native corporation's plans to
drill for natural gas in the Nenana Basin.
Broader concerns that the presence of nearby wood bison could hamper future resource
development in other parts of the state.
"We're firmly opposed to reintroduction where there may be any conflict with resource
development," said James Mery, Doyon's senior vice president of lands and natural resources.
Consequently, Doyon would "vigorously oppose" any effort to transplant wood bison to Minto
Flats or Yukon Flats, Mery said, while it has no opposition to the more remote Innoko area.
Something called the 10(j) federal designation rule, an amendment to the Endangered Species
Act, allows a species to be reintroduced to a place it once lived by designating it
The rule has been used for the reintroduction of some 30 species in 15 different states, said
Randy Rogers, a state wildlife planner with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
"Eventually," said Fish and Game biologist Cathie Harms, "we're looking at the potential of a
population that could withstand some hunting within 10 years" when the population grows to
about 400 animals.
"Predation is not a problem here. They're well designed for northern climates with massive coats.
And they're large enough they can get through deep snow."
Local fish and game advisory committees and federal regional subsistence advisory councils have
supported the reintroduction.
But there is opposition.
"We simply don't have a lot of confidence in the 10(j) rule," Mery said. "The intentions are good,
but sometimes good intentions are hijacked by interest groups."
Earlier this year, state veterinarian Robert Gerlach led a team of veterinarians and state wildlife
biologists who screened 82 wood bison quarantined at Portage.
Each animal had to be handled twice within three days, Rogers said. Large, sometimes ornery
and powerful, the big bulls were cordoned off and examined separately to help reduce the
animals' stress.
"The herd itself looked in great shape," Gerlach said. "It was pretty much a clean slate."
Some animals were slightly underweight and their feed was adjusted, he added.
The Portage wood bison come from 13 animals obtained in 2003 and 53 more that arrived five
years later from Elk Island National Park in Canada - plus their offspring. While no wood bison
roam the Alaska wilds today, there are some 10,000 in Canada, according to the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, including 4,000 in seven free-ranging herds.
Rogers said the "nonessential" designation won't be needed if the federal government down-lists
wood bison to threatened status and removes the animal from the Endangered Species List.
Canadian officials have submitted a petition to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to do exactly
that because of the successful recovery effort in Canada.
Source: http://juneauempire.com/stories/042610/sta_623752026.shtml
Project to Return Wood Bison to Alaska Wilderness Makes
Progress
Posted by David Braun of National Geographic on February 14, 2011
By Jordan Schaul
Bison are symbolic of the American prairie and the wooded landscape and meadows of Canada’s
boreal forest. But today they are no longer part of Alaska’s landscape.
As the largest terrestrial mammal in the Western Hemisphere, they are an iconic species, and
their return to Alaska would be monumental.
I became involved with the wood bison project almost eight years after its inception, at least eight
years since the translocated herd had been at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, and I feel
honored just to be able to say that I knew them when.
Indeed, the “hefty one on the land” (an Athabascan reference to wood bison) became that much
closer to returning to the interior of Alaska recently, as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
determined that reclassifying the species from Endangered to Threatened was warranted
following a status review.
Photos of wood bison at Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center courtesy of AWCC.
Based on scientific and commercial data, the Service recommended the status change which will
make efforts to reintroduce the bison herd now managed at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation
Center much more feasible.
Given constraints imposed by the heightened protection — in this case, the status of Endangered
— the bison would not be candidates for reintroduction to the sites selected and deemed most
appropriate for a soft release.
Fish and Wildlife spokesman Bruce Woods said the federal agency is working with the state to
establish wood bison in Alaska as a non-essential population and to accommodate a
spring/summer 2012 release date.
Source: http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/wood-bison/
Source: http://www.bisonbelong.ca/en/history_na.php
Source:
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2010/08/12/wood_bison_return_to_alaska_range/