500 years ago, there were 30 million wild bison to be found roaming North America. By the end of the 1800s, there were only a thousand. I won’t go into detail of how that happened because it is a story for another time, but I will show a picture to illustrate just to what extent they were being hunted.

Pile of American bison skulls to be used for fertilizer in the mid-1870s. Image taken from Wikipedia.

Luckily, environmental organizations and dedicated people are trying to repopulate the wild bison in North America. By now, there’s around 20 thousand wild bison roaming public lands in the United States, and over 150 thousand in private property. The Chicago Tribune is reporting another attempt at bison reintroduction in the northern United States.

The state of Illinois has been one of the states that has seen the return of the bison, in October of…