Karsten Heuer helped bring bison back to Banff. Facing his own end, he reflected with amazement on how nature remembers.

~

Wes Olson, who spent 40 years studying and reintroducing bison in places as far afield as Alaska and Siberia, came to observe the newly freed bison in Banff in 2018. Olson had been involved in other introductions, and in every case, “it felt like we put them in a strange place. In Banff, if felt like we had brought them home.”

Almost immediately the land came to life, said Olson. “I watched a group of ravens fly over and look down at these strange beasts. They could have been hovering in mid-air, they were so shocked. Then they went to gaggle in some spruce trees where they pondered the arrival, of something old yet deeply familiar.”

Within a few days Olson observed Columbian ground squirrels gathering shedded bison hair to line their birth dens as they had done since time immemorial. “After 140 years of their absence, I found that amazing.”

~

A few bulls that gambolled beyond the park’s borders were shot or relocated. The Alberta government does not recognize bison as wildlife.

~

The second thing the buffalo taught Heuer was not to reduce animal biology down to its smallest pieces the way so much western science does to everything. The whole is always greater than the sum of its parts, and connections to other species matter. Animals have unexplained powers and are more conscious than most humans recognize.