A little history for those who like Evelyn above are aroused my the mistreatment and losses of native North American species and peoples:
Ranchers brought brucellosis to the American west back in the late 1800s. The disease causes cows to abort, and so they lose $. This is their common strategy in resisting the return of the bison.
They claim that bison are or can be carriers, and just as voters and politics are all about filling the wallet with green paper, their power is immense in the states they control.
After the bison was killed off (historical record mentions that US military command in the US west had much to do with influencing the allowance of this, to "pacify" the plains nations (Assiniboine, Crow, Blackfoot, Shoshone, Arapaho, especially Cheyenne, Lakota/Nakota, who depended upon and revered the buffalo as vital bringer of life and balance, and fiercely desired to protect that part of the earth), Eastern and foreign (mainly British) wealth saw the opportunity to graze for free - they saw it as unbelievably lucrative, which it was.
THIS is why those involved states so hate US federal control over their local decisionmaking. They want to be like the past Euro lords their forebears had lived under, and have handed down this sense of entitlement to their children - such attitudes were and are a huge factor in their vilification and treatment of everything from native peoples to bison to wolves and coyotes, and even prairie dogs
The Feds, from the evil Andy Jackson (who betrayed the very Cherokee and many others who assisted him in his war of 1812 battles, by forcible exile to Oklahoma of eastern tribes) through other US presidents and greedy exploiters who moved to the future prairie states to become imitators of the European wealthy nobility, wanted to diminish and assimilate the Native Americans, or else condemn them to extinction. White religions also participated in this genocide and forced assimilation, and so showed themselves in their evil racism and self-aggrandizement in this.
In recent decades, various National Grasslands have been added to protect original flora. Original fauna (yes, I know that the bison arose with the indigenous peoples, after the loss of North American megafauna millenia past) are still much excluded.
We owe the Fort Peck (NE Montana reservation) peoples, The Assiniboine Canoe Paddler and Red Bottom Bands, and the Lakota/Dakota/Nakota Sisseton, Wahpetons, Yanktonais, and Teton Hunkpapa, our powerful thanks, deep love as relatives, and support for their determination to begin the great rescue of the Bison.
We own them more than this, including the return of far, far more land upon which to live and restore, and should constantly keep such a goal in mind.
10 of the recently restored 63 bison have recently died in a fire in late Sept.