Alaska Highway Bison (Buffalo) Herds

We have been using our E-travel magazines empire as an experiment in translating the best practices of print publications, into an Information Age article that uses multimedia design to combine photos, video, and words. My media plan for those who wanted to dwell further than “tagline” style captions, was to allocate 300 words, or so, for the background readers.  This idea sort of exploded into the size magazine articles that used to run back in the 50’s, when I sold my first freelance photo to Natural History Magazine. It was a fuzzy Black x White of a Yellowstone buffalo, that a silly 14-year old kid risked being trampled, taking.

Oh how much safer it was to sit in a motorhome with big windows, and telephoto lens, to capture the above, on digital video “film.” Obviously, these buffalo seem to be in traffic control mode, just as it was when railroads were being built to connect the East, to the West, from coast to coast. 

The big herds of the Old West did not disappear on account of tracks being laid, anymore than our caribou were intimidated by the pipeline, or would be, if the long hoped for North Slope natural gas line were ever built.

What drove the buffalo almost to the brink of extinction, along with those who lived through the hard times on dried jerky, were “gentlemen hunters,” following the lead of European royalty shooting from fancy train cars at any species dumb enough to hang around a sign of man. Especially flamboyant personalities (and “experts”) as Buffalo Bill Cody, who filled wooden casks with buffalo tongues, and hides for shipment back East. The rest of the carcass was left to rot.  

Now, compare that a modern day equivalent that a lot of natural gas is flared into arctic skies which would have less of an effect on Global Warming if at least it was burned properly to heat water stolen from Owens Valley, for Hollywood hot tubs.  Those that read history for an understanding on what to do right, should also know that a lot of desert Southwest wildlife (horses, bobcats, elk, deer, etc., etc.) disappeared when the water was encased in concrete.

I’m sorry. I really don’t want a housewife in Phoenix to fill guilty over allowing her dog a drink of Colorado water.  She needs to worry about not getting a ticket for (anywhere in the state of AZ) exercising an overweight dog on a leash that extends further than six feet. Most all of the abuses to the West have come about through very poor legislation, out of control political action committees, self-serving bureaucrats and special treatment for big money and corporations. 

My bitterness comes from writing this the day U.S. District Judge Ken Hoyt in Houston had such contempt for us that he handed down a wimpy 72 month prison sentence for the convicted former Enron CFO Andrew Fastow who engineered a fraud that cost countless numbers of motorhome travelers the richness of a retirement they had worked hard for. Almost wants to make me rob a bank to get sentenced to the same shower as this Andrew sister. Nah, I’ll wait until he gets out of the special country club these guys get sent to, cause I am sure it won’t be long before good old boy Andy is pardoned (the judge cited an eagerness to assist shareholders recover) and then collect my $100,000, plus, personally.
  
Back to the sanity of further answering my question, “why does a buffalo cross the road,” is that there are enough us — sorry, good guy Kevin Costner for the Hollywood hot tub crack — who respects these survivors.  I want my developing photographer grandsons to also be able to live off selling buffalo photographs one day.

Bet that academics who put down people when they open their mouth to say, “Actually, these should correctly be called, Bison,” don’t know through “loving” one up close on a hot day, that these animals, stink. And that these Bovidae bison are related to those protected in Canada’s Mackenzie Bison Sanctuary, not far from Wood Buffalo National Park.

So that is wilderness British Columbia.  The Yukon Territory border is just around the bend, but you will have to bookmark this site for now.  I have to spend some time getting E-TravelMagazines.com established to the point we can find a qualified helping hand.  By the time you will be reading this, we most likely will be photographing in Baja.  Sorry for the wait, so let me pass on this tip. The family that operates the café at Coal River sells a hand knitted buffalo wool hat that qualifies as a souvenir many times past that of an imported trinket.