The BLM is still slaughtering them en masse at the request of the cattle ranchers (who need to be put out of business). I've been lobbying for a healthy "meat tax" and it may happen soon.
Fantastic news. The Bison is our greatest American Icon. It symbolizes the west, Strength, and most of all our respect for the Native American Indian. This is truly great, and some of the best news in quite a while. It should be on currency not just the nickel. I am in total support.
I still really think it should be the Turkey. I really like Turkey's and I think they get a bad rap. Especially with how they are raised for food these days. Bison have it easy compared to them.
Benjamin Franklin would totally agree with you. I like the turkey too, but the old shaggy buffalo stands for strength. In a storm he stands and faces the storm, when so many animals turn away or hide. He is such great icon representing our American West.
Just wait till you need a lawyer. Some suck, but they are not inherently evil because of their job. EVERYONE is entitled to a defense, even the guilty.
David, used to be that the VAST majority of Americans went their whole lives without ever needing a lawyer. Then along came the lawyers who saw to it that the laws became so convoluted that you couldn't do anything without paying them for their services.
All you people making comments about congress having better things to do...
How much time do you think congress is devoting to this?
Someone (not a congressman) came up with the idea.
A few people (not congressmen) put together a plan for implementing the idea.
A few more people (also not congressmen) put together the paperwork and start planning implementing the plan. Maybe, by now, one or more congressmen are aware of the plan.
Eventually, the idea goes before congress as one of a long list of things congress will address.
It is not like congress suddenly stops doing everything else they are doing and says, "Hey, let's devote all our attention to Bison for a couple of months. Screw the rest of the country."
Well I would disagree with your last sentence. They are screwing the country on a daily basis regardless of whatever they happen to be doing at the time.
Bison are majestic and should be placed on the back of the one dollar bill. As long as the Treasury Department is thinking in terms of changing the currency, the bison should get their due.
So this is new. The bison is not taking another mammals spot, it is just new. I am ok with it, I am just surprised we did not already have a national mammal
I lived in Buffalo, NY for 11 years, but any true Buffalonian will tell you that the animal is not from where the city draws its name.
Dances with Wolves, a movie I never saw, ends with the epilogue:
Thirteen years later, their homes destroyed, their *buffalo gone*, the last band of free Skioux submitted to white authority at Fort Robinson, Nebraska.The great horse culture of the plains was gone and the American frontier was soon to pass into history.
Yeah somehow I don't think the slaughter of over 2,000 Yellowstone Bison over the next few years is how many of us would like to see this magnificent animal celebrated. How about instead of giving Bison a special day, congress do something to actually protect them.
Herds have to be culled. If they aren't, they will eat out their resources of food and starve to death. It's about balance. Bison don't have many natural predators. Native Americans did the culling before we ever got here.
I think that it is great that we deem this animal as the national mammal. however, it seems to me that our legislators have far more important things to debate and fix, like unemployment, welfare, terrorism and discrimination.
You mean to say those tribal Americans feel disfranchised from the Buffalo? How could a thing like that happen? Well folks, you take paradise and make it a parking lot, that's how.
Government micro-manages EVERYTHING poorly---doubly so for the last 100 years while it grew themselves exponentially into BIG FEDERAL GOVERNMENT i.e.overlords.
Indigenous Americans were not owners of the land, just its guardians. They respected the land because all tribal people depended upon her grace. But where are they now?
I so wish history wasn't co-opted by the Progressives to revisit established historical facts like they did and still do. Now you're probably going to attack me on this. And its not you I blame. You've been mislead by the insidious slow creep of the Progressive movements infiltration of their mandate into every facet of our society down to how much soda you're allowed to buy at a restaurant establishment in NYC. because of its caloric intake. Even abortion was their baby.
Want to get to the bottom of this? Arguing with me won't do any of us any good. Go find OLD history books---I mean at least 65 years old---they're out there somewhere; not on web, not on the internet.
In Rare Book stores. Please find them, rescue them, and read them and then pass them along. The truth is really out there.
...and while you're at it, Vote Trump and take your America back.
Oh the irony. Europeans tried to kill all the buffalo/bison to destroy the Am Indians way of life, and almost succeeded. Now those same people are honoring the bison. it's like when developers cut down all the whispering pines in an area, then name the development 'Whispering Pines.'
Not really (another Scott). That was indeed the goal & we were taught in history that they nearly succeeded. But, more recent studies have proven it wasn't the slaughter of millions of bison that nearly wiped them out. At the height of commercial hunting, we were taking at most 2 million bison a year, out of a herd of over 60 million. Meanwhile, bison were calving 15-20 million newborns every year, nearly half of which survived. Simple math tells you that the harvest was sustainable. Moreover, native Americans reported finding thousands upon thousands of dead bison in countless places white men hadn't yet discovered, and they had not been killed.
You have to go back to the cattle wars to understand what really happened. Following the Civil War, millions of Longhorn cattle were driven out of Texas to market in Missouri & Kansas. Missouri farmers soon found that when their cattle mixed with Texas cattle, the Missouri cattle died. The railheads as a result kept being pushed further & further West into Kansas so Missouri farmers wouldn't have to encounter Texas cattle.
Nobody knew at the time, but ticks brought by Texas cattle into the Midwest were the culprit. Texas cattle born into this environment were immune to the diseases these ticks carried. But, Missouri cattle were not - nor were bison. And once Longhorns were driven into the Plains, THAT is when Bison really started losing ground.
So yes, there were attempts to deliberately wipe out bison, and bison were in fact nearly wiped out. But, the REASON they were nearly wiped out wasn't the deliberate effort, but rather the accidental introduction of tick-born illness.
The picture of the Bison should have been placed on the new $20 bill instead of some unattractive African-American woman who our U.S. Constitution formerly said was a half-citizen . Can America survive these politicians who place their time on these Bisons that our ancestor killed almost to extinction , while ISIS and the Muslims that they are letting into the U.S. cities are determined to put an end to America and it's Christian heritage ?
