Thirty female bison charged out of a livestock truck at the Belwin Conservancy on Saturday afternoon, drawing cheers from hundreds of onlookers.
The animals traveled two hours from the NorthStar ranch in Rice Lake, Wis., to the conservancy in Afton, where people gathered for the annual Bison Festival to celebrate the herd’s release onto Belwin’s 130-acre Bison Prairie. The event featured other wildlife, exhibits on ecological restoration and samples of bison meat.
Lynette Anderson, an interpretive naturalist and a restoration specialist at Belwin, said the conservancy has brought bison herds to help restore prairielands since 2008 as they are critical to that work.
“They’re the keystone species that makes everything happen on the prairie,” Anderson said…