134 CONSERVATION OF CANADIAN WILD LIFE 



The Present State op the Buffalo in Canada 



From the latest reports, we are justified in concluding 

 that the number of wild or wood bison in Canada is not 

 less than 1,500 or 2,000 head, and is probably increasing. 

 This has been brought about by the protection of this sole 

 remaining wild herd by the government. If now we con- 

 sider the present state of the plains buffalo in Canada, we 

 shall find a condition of affairs of which every Canadian 

 may justly feel proud, a condition that has resulted from an 

 endeavour on the part of the government to prevent the 

 extermination of this former monarch of the prairies. 



The present state of the buffalo will be all the more strik- 

 ing if we first take into account the low ebb to which the 

 numbers of the animals in North America had fallen. They 

 reached their lowest level in 1889, when there were only 

 1,091 buffalo then living, according to Hornaday's estimate. 

 Of this total, 256 buffalo were in captivity, 200 were pro- 

 tected by the United States Government in the Yellowstone 

 Park, and 635 were running wild, of which number 550 

 were estimated to be in the Athabaska region of our North- 

 west Territories. Twenty years later, the same authority 

 estimated the number of living buffalo in North America 

 to be 2,047, and in 1912 there were computed to be 2,907 

 by Mr. W. P. Wharton. 



In 1907 and 1909 the government purchased the well- 

 known herd of buffalo, the largest on the continent, belong- 

 ing to Michel Don Pablo, of Montana, consisting of 709 

 head. For these animals a special buffalo park was created 

 at Wainwright, in Alberta, on the main line of the Grand 

 Trunk Pacific Railway, between Saskatoon and Edmon- 

 ton. This park covers an area of about 160 square miles, 

 the whole of which is enclosed in a special wire fence about 

 76 miles in length and consists of land unsuited to agricul- 

 ture on account of its sandy nature, but admirably suitable 



