Bison Art
 
This is an artistic rendering the American Bison, showing human impacts on this majestic animal.
 
"Millions of bison once thundered across the Great Plains. For centuries, Native Americans depended on bison as a source of food, clothing and shelter in order to survive on the open plains. But in the mid-1800s, ever-increasing hunting pressure began to take its toll. Unregulated shooting led to mass slaughters of bison in the 1870s, and by 1889, scarcely 1,000 bison remained. Today, wild bison are making a small comeback in a few scattered places, but they need more room to roam.
Intolerance.  The greatest threat to bison is the refusal of some humans to accept them. Even though bison are no longer threatened with extinction as a species, they are still not allowed to be a wild animal and perform their important keystone role in their grassland environment, except in a very few small areas. This is why, for all intents and purposes, bison are “ecologically extinct.  Wild bison make their home on the grasslands that once covered so much of the central and western U.S. Today, much of these vital habitats have been plowed and built over by humans."
 
-Defenders of Wildlife