WIND RIVER RESERVATION, Wyo. — On Friday, March 29, the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative (WRTBI) announced that nine new buffalo — three females and six males — arrived on the Wind River Reservation.
The buffalo were transferred from the Denver Parks & Recreation Department and have been given to the Northern Arapaho Tribe.
“The transfer was preceded with a blessing before the buffalo were loaded and began their journey home to Wyoming,” the WRTBI said in the announcement.
This is just one of several transfers that have taken place this year between Denver Parks & Recreation and other Tribes and Tribal Councils. Previously, surplus buffalo were auctioned off, and over the last several years Denver Parks & Recreation has been giving the buffalo to Indigenous communities instead. Earlier this year, on Jan. 4, the Eastern Shoshone Tribe released 10 new buffalo on the Wind River Reservation.
According to WRTBI, during the 1800s, buffalo were exterminated across Wind River. The WRTBI in partnership with the Intertribal Buffalo Council, have been working for 40 years to return wild buffalo back to the reservation. After 131 years since the animal’s extermination, the first 10 buffalo were reintroduced to the Wind River Indian Reservation in 2016.
Jason Baldes (Eastern Shoshone) is a board member on the Intertribal Buffalo Council and also serves as the Tribal Buffalo Coordinator for the Tribal Partnerships Program of the National Wildlife Federation, and he is instrumental in restoring the cultural revitalization of the buffalo.
“This restoration effort in partnership with the National Wildlife Federation’s Tribal Program, 40 years in the making, will return buffalo to our lands, our culture, our community and generations to come,” Baldes wrote on Wyoming’s Wind River Country website.
