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He Spent Decades Protecting Buffalo. A Microscopic Invader Threatens That Work. [1]
['Mitch Smith']
Date: 2022-03-12
BLACKFOOT, S.D. — On the ice-glazed banks of the Missouri River, coyotes chewed through the hide of a buffalo that had recently died from disease. In a corral up the hill, more than 20 orphaned buffalo calves crowded together in the cold with no mother to protect them. Down in the pasture, a few animals stood apart from the others, coughing violently, clouds of their breath hanging in the winter air.
Fred DuBray spent about 30 years building that herd at his ranch on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota. But since last year, his buffalo have been dying by the dozens, victims of a microscopic invader, Mycoplasma bovis, that has ravaged pastures across the Great Plains and the West.
“You have no idea what’s going to happen,” said Mr. DuBray, whose sprawling pasture is now speckled with buffalo skeletons in various stages of decay. “I really don’t even know what to do,” he added. “Everything I try to do seems to make it worse.”
Buffalo, a common name for what are technically American bison, were hunted to the brink of extinction by white people in the 1800s but rebounded somewhat by the late 20th century through generations of conservation work. As the national mammal of the United States and a central part of many Native American traditions, the animal carries significance far beyond its small share of the agricultural market.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/12/us/buffalo-bison-mycoplasma-south-dakota.html
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