Bison's Needs

 "The running season"
     -Throughout the year, bison groups are usually separated into smaller individual herds. Every summer between the months of August and September, the whole nature of the herd changes. Independent bison herds converge together reaching the thousands. Bison fight each other to create dominance leading to finding mates. With thousands of congregational bison, large land mass in essential for proper breeding rituals.

Migration
    -Bison are known as a migratory animals. They have been recorded to travel up to 3.2 km per day. Migration is necessary for bison during the winter and spring months. Looking for better grazing conditions, they  head to lower elevations.  With habitat restriction, seasonal migration could become disrupted leading to stress and malnutrition lowering reproduction rates.

Population size
     - Monitored herd population numbers have surpassed the Yellowstone land population management causing overgrazing and high bison competition rates.

Genetic Diversity
     -Due to near extinction and low survival numbers, today bison face a lack of genetic diversity. Biologists are concerned with bison's genetic heath because all North American herds were founded with only a small amount of surviving individuals. These bison were then maintained at small population sizes within National Parks . Because of their small gene pool and population size, and isolated population, concerns of inbreeding depression and detrimental alleles have caused great concern.

Bison crossed with cow

With small habitat space, inbreeding and hybridization with cattle is a huge problem. Private breeding of bison have lead to an increase of introduced cattle genetics causing a disappearance of pure bison. The only pure bred herds exist in Yellowstone and Canada wildlife parks but then suffer the bottleneck effect. Bison will become more susceptible to diseases, low reproductive success and the lack of ability to adapt to new selective pressures.