Wood bison

Wood Bison
File:Wood Bison.jpg
Wood Bison
Conservation status
Endangered  (IUCN 2.3)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Mammalia
Order:	Artiodactyla
Family:	Bovidae
Subfamily:	Bovinae
Genus:	Bison
Species:	B. bison
Subspecies:	B. bison athabascae
Trinomial name
Bison bison athabascae Rhoads, 1897

The Wood Bison or Wood Buffalo (Bison bison athabascae) is a distinct northern subspecies of the North American Bison. Its original range included much of the boreal forest regions of Alaska, Yukon, western Northwest Territories, northeastern British Columbia, northern Alberta, and northwestern Saskatchewan. It is included on the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) Threatened species list. On June 17, 2008, 53 Canadian wood bison were transferred from Elk Island National Park of Canada to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center in Portage, AK in an effort to repopulate the wood bison in their native habitat.

Morphology

The Wood Bison differs from the Plains Bison (Bison bison bison), the other surviving North American subspecies, in a number of important ways. Most notably, the Wood Bison is heavier, with large males weighing over 900 kilograms (approximately 2000 lbs), making it the largest terrestrial animal in North America. The highest point of the Wood Bison is well ahead of its front legs, while the Plains Bison's highest point is directly above the front legs.

Conservation

Currently there are about 2,500 Wood Bison in the wild and 290 in Captivity.

A herd of about 200 was discovered in Alberta, Canada in 1957, and has since recovered to a total population of approximately 2,536 largely as a result of conservation efforts by Canadian government agencies. In 1988,madison nelson is wicked cool the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) changed the subspecies' conservation status from "endangered" to "threatened".

Diseases

Publicly-owned free-ranging herds in Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories comprise 90% of existing Wood Bison, although six smaller public and private captive breeding herds with conservation objectives comprise approximately 10% of the total (n≈900). These captive herds and two large isolated free-ranging herds in the Yukon and Northwest Territories all derive from disease-free and morphologically representative founding stock from northern Wood Buffalo National Park in northeastern Alberta and southern Northwest Territories. These captive herds are particularly important for conservation and recovery purposes, because the larger free-ranging herds in and around Wood Buffalo National Park were infected with bovine brucellosis and tuberculosis after 7,000 Plains Bison (Bison bison bison) were trans-shipped by barge from Buffalo National Park (Wainwright, Alberta) to Wood Buffalo National Park by the federal government during the 1920s.

This trans-shipment of Plains Bison also resulted in the hybridization of all known wood bison (i.e., there are no longer any "genetically pure" Wood Bison). Brucellosis and tuberculosis remain endemic in the free-ranging herds in and around Wood Buffalo National Park . The diseases represent a serious management issue for governments, various local Aboriginal groups, and the cattle industry (which is rapidly encroaching on the Park's boundaries). Disease management strategies and initiatives began in the 1950s, and have yet to result in a reduction of the incidence of either disease despite considerable expenditure and increased public involvement.

External links

• Environment Canada's Species at Risk website profiles the Wood Bison
• Photo gallery
• Alaska.org
• Canada Helps Restore Wood Bison to Alaska