Bison Art - Bright Pink Bison

Brighten up any home with this Bison Art - Bright Pink Bison Canvas Print. 

This twins a couple of great things together to form one work of art. Namely, the color pink and the American Buffalo!

The American Bison (also called the American Buffalo or just the Buffalo) is the largest surviving terrestrial animal in North America. They are broad and muscular with long coats, grow up to 2 metres in height, 3 metres in length, and weigh up to 2,800 pounds. In every sense they are impressive.

In terms of their survival as a species, regrettably the American Bison has followed a similar environmental pattern to many such animals that have crossed paths with humans. Namely, that they were hunted to the very verge of extinction (at their lowest point in 1884 it is reckoned that there were only 324 wild bison remaining - from a high of around 60 million in 1800).

Cattle farmers had rapidly colonised the territories, due to the expansion of the railroads, and the hunting of bison was also encouraged both to protect cattle grazing lands, for profit, and to act as a source of pressure on Native American reservations (for whom Bison was their main source of food)

During the 1870s as the bison numbers were rapidly diminishing, the subject of protecting the remaining animals became more pressing, but the idea was resisted, as the plains indians, who were frequently at war with the United States at that time, were dependent on them for food, and hence it seems that it was politically expedient to turn a blind eye. In 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant "pocket vetoed" a Federal bill to protect the dwindling bison herds, and in 1875 General Philip Sheridan pleaded to a joint session of Congress to slaughter the herds, to deprive the Indians of their source of food.

As their numbers dwindled, so too did not only the settlers hunting them, but also the hunts of the Native American Indians. It is now reckoned that the last big indian bison hunt happened in June 1882 where 600 Lakota and Yanktonai hunters located a big herd on the plains far west of the Standing Rock Agency. In this last hunt, they killed around 5,000 animals.

This sounds like a lot (and it is, given their dwindling numbers at the time, it probably represented a significant portion of the remaining wild animals). But it is important to realise that it wasn't the hunts of the American Indian tribes that had driven the buffalo to the edge of destruction. 

Between 1872 and 1874 it is estimated that an average of 5000 bison were killed EVERY DAY during those three years. So 5.4 million animals in just those three years.

Hence the seeds for their low point of an estimated 324 remaining wild bison by 1884, was already sown well before that final big Native American bison hunt.

Thankfully, since that low of 1884, when there are reckoned to have only been 324 animals left in the wild, they have just about held on as attitudes towards killing wild buffalo (and presumably their obvious scarcity in the wild) and the emergence of National Parks, such as Yellowstone came about.

Between 1884 and 1910, conservation efforts saw the numbers of wild bison rise to around 1,000 and that has been growing ever since.

Today there are an estimated 500,000 bison in the United States, though most are farmed animals. The genetically pure 'Bison' is only reckoned at up to around 25,000 animals (this is because studies have found that around 95% of the bison in the USA have some cattle genetics, no doubt from interbreeding on the same grasslands as cows for decades.)

It is great that they are still with us!

 

Great for Decorating a Whole Home

This canvas is available in four different colors :

• Bright Blue Bison
• Bright Red Bison
• Bright Yellow Bison, and
• Bright Pink Bison (you're here!)

And also a single canvas 'Bison Pop Art - Four Colored Buffalo-  Andy Warhol Inspired Bison Canvas Print' version which has some different color variations.

(You can see the other single color versions at the links above)

So, with the possibility to purchase 5 different (but similarly themed) canvases, you have a unique opportunity to purchase several variations for different rooms, and have a consistent bison theme throughout your home.