American buffalo

The wildlife service has compared lake sturgeon losses to the mass destruction of the American buffalo.

At the end of the 18th century, according to modern estimates, the American buffalo population numbered around 60 million, with herds roaming freely across North America.

Reaching over a barbed wire fence, he scattered the leaves onto the pasture where a growing herd of bison — popularly known as American buffalo — grazed in northeastern Oklahoma.

By nightfall, the last of the American buffalo shipped from Badlands were being unloaded at the Rosebud reservation, where Heinert also lives.

Yet at the time, most people assumed that "species were static and enduring," Nijhuis writes, and those who did catch wind of the fall of the American buffalo mostly responded with a shrug.