A few buffalo from the Fort Peck Indian Reservation made a journey to Alaska thanks to FedEx.
The buffalo are being moved on behalf of Yellowstone National Park to an Alaska Native village, according to the Cowboy State Daily.
Yellowstone made the decision to ship the buffalo as part of the agreement the park has with the Tribes.
Bison from the Tribal Buffalo Ranch have been taken on a truck to Seattle. From there, they were loaded into a very large FedEx crate and taken on a barge to Alaska.
Yellowstone Park Superintendent Cam Sholly said the “genetics of the Yellowstone bison are very pure, and so it’s been fantastic to get the Yellowstone bison on to 19 different tribal lands.”
Fort Peck has a herd of several hundred Yellowstone buffalo (ie: “cultural herd”) originally exported from the park years ago. Buffalo from the Tribes cultural herd are shipped to other American Indian tribes requesting Yellowstone Buffalo to start their own herds.
The total cost of the delivery is roughly $50,000, according to the report. The Tribes covered the costs, the report states.
According to the Cowboy State Daily, one of the park’s priorities is the re-population of these buffalo. The genetic purity of these animals are from the original herds that populated the plains. In the mid to late 1800’s, the buffalo were killed en masse to start indigenous tribes into submission of the government and by the 1900’s they vanished from the plains and were nearly killed off.
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