USGS announces bison metapopulation strategy for conservation

The US Geological Survey announced a metapopulation strategy on Thursday 29 October 2026 to support collaborative bison restoration and management. The strategy provides guidance for conserving genetic diversity across Department of the Interior bison herds through strategic translocations.

According to the agency, plains bison were driven nearly to extinction after once numbering in the tens of millions. By the late 19th Century, only a few hundred individuals remained. Conservation efforts in the early 20th Century relied largely on captive herds established from small remnant groups of wild bison remaining in the late 1800s.

Plains bison have since recovered to approximately 20,000 animals managed in conservation herds. The agency said the herds contain animals representing only a small fraction of historic populations and global genetic diversity because of an extreme genetic bottleneck.

The Department of the Interior currently manages approximately 11,000 bison in 19 conservation herds across 12 states. The agency said most of these herds are relatively small and isolated, with no opportunity for natural gene flow. Early crossbreeding also introduced cattle genes into bison when new conservation herds were established.

The USGS said the Department of the Interior Bison Working Group established a framework for a nationally coordinated strategy. The strategy considers cattle introgression and bison health while supporting the conservation of genetic diversity. It also supports the donation of excess bison to Tribes to advance shared conservation and cultural restoration goals.

The agency said connecting populations through human-assisted gene flow can reduce the loss of genetic diversity within and across groups of populations. USGS research geneticist Sara Oyler-McCance will present the strategy during Friday’s Findings on Friday, November 6, 2026. The session is timed for National Bison Day on November 7.