Bison Bellows: The Long Trail Back

About Bison Bellows:

In November 2016, the National Park Service Biological Resources Division in Fort Collins, Colorado, began the 52-week long "Bison Bellows" series. Every week, "Bison Bellows" featured short articles—known as "Bellows"—highlighting stories centered on three themes: meeting the herd, meeting the people, and telling the story. In essence, it is a celebration of all things bison.

Screenshot of WCS short film on bison.

Film courtesy of Doug Lazarus.

This week, the 5th Biannual Meeting of the American Bison Society was held at Banff National Park, Canada and hosted the world premiere of a short film entitled "Wild Bison - The Long Trail Back".

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) supported production of the film to celebrate the recent designation of the American bison as the United States national mammal. For millennia, bison have been the focus of human art and storytelling - and digital film media can be a powerful compliment to artistic endeavors to express our emotional and intellectual curiosity, fascination and awe of bison as part of the long trail of the human experience. The film's producer Doug Lazarus from Vermont joined over 300 meeting attendees from Canada, the United States and Mexico and expressed joy at sharing this story and his embrace of the communities who gather together to restore wild bison.

The WCS short film, "Wild Bison - The Long Trail Back", is avaliable publicly on Vimeo.

Read more Bison Bellows here.

Did you know?

Powerful poly-chromatic artistic images of bison in Altamira, Spain, represent the apogee of Paleolithic Cave art that developed across Europe, from the Urals to the Iberian Peninsula, from 35,000 to 11,000 BCE. These images are inscribed as masterpieces of creative genius and are amongst humanity's earliest accomplished art.