Bison return to Kane County Prairie, after over 200 years

追加: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Used to be millions of buffalo on the Great Plains, even in Illinois. Now, they're almost all gone.

[00:00:05]>> As part of an effort to reverse that tragedy, the mighty buffalo is returning to the plains in Kane County, and starting tomorrow, you'll be able to see them for yourself. Dane Placo got a preview.

[00:00:15]>> [music] >> The long metal gate slowly swings open at the entrance to the Burlington Prairie Forest Preserve in Sycamore, about 50 mi northwest of downtown [music] Chicago, revealing the home where the buffalo >> flow now roam. But, this is the first time they've been back in hundreds of years on their native habitat, [music] which is the Illinois prairie. Six American buffalo, or bison if you prefer. Some people call them both bison and and buffalo. Three males and three females, the start of a major new effort to repopulate a small slice of Illinois prairie with the mighty bison, and right a historical wrong. When we learn the story of what happened [music] to the buffalo across North America, I think a lot of people want to figure out what they can do to help. It's estimated around 1800 there were between 30 and 60 [music] million buffalo across the Great Plains, forming dense herds as big as 50 mi across. But, America's westward migration led to mass [music] slaughter of the buffalo, their population dropping to fewer than a thousand by the late 1800s.

[00:01:22]The buffalo arrived in January from the Nachusa Grasslands herd in western Illinois. Welcome home. With a traditional ceremony by dozens of Native Americans from different tribes. The American Indian Center of Chicago owns these buffalo, >> [music] >> which is an important part of the effort.

[00:01:38]>> The story of the the American buffalo is the same as the Native Americans, it coincided and there was of course there was a very [music] close relationship. So, when we first started designing this project, it was a straight [music] ecological restoration, but there there's a bigger story that I feel we were responsible to tell.

[00:01:55]>> Now, there are other buffalo in Kane County at the Lords Park Zoo in Elgin, and [music] the herd grazing on grass at Fermilab. But, what's special here is the setting, 38 acres of restored tallgrass prairie with 150 species of native plants, including a rare section of virgin prairie never broken by the plow. A buffalo buffet. Here is really the only place in Kane County you can see them on tallgrass prairie, so people are excited to come see them here in their natural environment, [music] and it's not like you have to travel to South Dakota, you just come out to Kane to see them. If you squint a little bit, you can kind of imagine what it looked like here 200 years ago, huh? I would imagine so. And this is just the start.

[00:02:34]Right now, there [music] are six buffalo here on 38 acres, but by the end of the summer, the [music] prairie across the way here is also going to be fenced in another 62 [music] acres of space for the buffalo. Eventually, they hope the herd will grow as large as [music] three dozen buffalo calling this home.

[00:02:53]So, they definitely can breed on their own. Half of this herd is yearlings, which is a little a little young for that to happen, but given the timeline and that we're not going to be taking [music] these animals on and off, this is their their new home. They're going to live live out their full life cycle.

[00:03:08]So, we [music] do expect some love matches here maybe next year. Next year?

[00:03:12]Yes. And after months of anticipation, the public will finally be able to visit this herd starting at sunrise Friday morning.

[00:03:19]>> [music] >> We've had more than a million visits to posts specifically on this project, so people are excited to get in here and check out the bison. When when this first opens, there's going to be plenty of people out here, but this is this is here forever. We like to say we're in the forever business at [music] the Forest Preserve District. So, in Sycamore, Dane Placo, Fox Chicago.