In Arizona God Blesses the Buffalo

In Arizona God Blesses the Buffalo BY JAMES TALLON

No whiteman wandering the frontiers of the land that would be called "Arizona" ever saw the wood buffalo, bison bison athabascae. In theory, during prehistory the wood buffalo roamed, and called home, the northeastern two-thirds of the state. Draw a slightly curving line from Needles to Nogales with the belly to the northeast. This marks the outer fringes of the wood buffalo's hypothetical range, a range believed once to penetrate from the Arctic nearly to Mexico City. The wood buffalo disappeared from these southerly climes, unexplained, congregating their diminished numbers in the vicinity of the Great Slave Lake in the Northwest territories.

But the buffalo is back in Arizona. Imported. Not the wood buffalo, but his brother from the plains, bison bison bison. (No, the scientist who named the plains buffalo didn't stutter.) In 1905, a friend of Zane Grey's, a tough, wiry character with the moniker "Buffalo" Jones did the importing. He shipped a small herd of buffalo from the Texas Panhandle to Kansas, sold part of it, then freighted the remaining 30 or 40 head to Lund, Utah. From here he trail-herded the animals into House Rock Valley. For the first time in centuries, Arizona felt the tread of North America's largest mammal. Jones brought the buffalo to Arizona neither for the sake of buffalo nor Arizona, but to cross them with his Galloway cattle. He figured the resulting hybrid, which he called "cattalo," would be hardy enough to better meet the demands of living and growing on House Rock Valley's arid rangeland. Jones experienced semisuccess but lost interest in his experiments. He sold part of the herd, and his friend, another well-known westerner named "Uncle Jimmy" Owens, wound up with the remaining 15 or 20 head of buffalo left on the House Rock range. In turn, Owens disposed of his herd, selling it to the State of Arizona in 1927 for $10,000.

Since then Arizona has managed these buffalo and their offspring, periodically introducing new blood into the herd. Today the state maintains two buffalo ranges, one, the South Canyon Ranch on the original landscape where Jones raised his "cattalo," and the other, the rolling pinyon and juniper hills near Winslow known as the Raymond Ranch. Collectively, the ranches carry about 360 animals, all the available land will support. Even so, that is 340 more wild buffalo than remained in the U. S. by 1894; then the buffalo herds that had been quoted as being "numberless in their numbers" had been reduced to just 20 wild buffalo living in this nation. But counting those in Canada, including the wood buffalo, they have increased to more than 20,000 animals. Little room exists for more because their ancestral range is now cattle ranches, under plow, or paved over.

The U. S. Mint no longer stamps portraits of buffalo on nickels, but the chances of the spector "Extinction" overtaking the buffalo is extremely remote. Arizona is doing its part to preserve these magnificent animals. Its ranges are largely unfenced, giving buffalo homes where they can roam in a freedom not experienced by some buffalo herds in other states. In Arizona, the buffalo is very much alive and well!

Looking like cattle, but wild and unpredictable buffalo graze in House Rock Valley, on the Grand Canyon's North Rim.

Bison bison bison, the plains buffalo, bunch up in Arizona's House Rock Valley.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMES TALLON

In House Rock Valley, a family of buffalo is backlighted by the late afternoon sun.