30,000 is roughly 1/3 of 60,000,000.

VERY roughly. Lol

Each of the bison shapes in the 60mil example are actually clusters of bison so small you can't see them with the naked eye.

I think it gets the point across even if it's off by orders of magnitude.

Because they finally caged the velociraptor in the middle image?

Log scale?

I don't think this is to scale.

Settlers killed buffalo to force indigenous people into the reservation system. It was a big part of the genocide here, worth looking into if you get the chance.

Each buffalo in the first picture represents 242,914 buffalo. Which means the last picture would be about 1/10th of a bison, and the middle one would be just the tip of a horn.

TIL There are 30,000 free roaming bison but there are 500,000 total including privately owned and commercial herds.

I like the optimistic message but the graph scale is throwing me

300 is a hell of a bottleneck

The decision to stop was required, but a ton of work was done to help the population rebound. What kind of misguided message is this trying to send?

I don't know the history of bison population. From the image, I assume there used to be a ton of bison. But then a science experiment involving velociraptors went awry, and only a small group of bison were left alive. Then those bison made an uprising against the velociraptor-experiments and invaded their area, allowing their population to grow again.

How far off am I?

Also, like, it wasn’t just a “decision to stop” it was the end of a coincidence of factors. The mid century climatic conditions that led to several years of poor grass growth, with the combined hunting efforts of European American settlers on rail roads supported by the army’s policies against the Great Plains Indians, south eastern Indians displaced in to the great planes, and Great Plains Indians intensifying hunting via sophisticated methods they’d developed using horseback and fire arms, all driven by a demand for buffalo hides for use in industrial machinery. The end of the bad climatic conditions and the collapse of the hide trade due to development of other industrial materials is what stoped the over hunting.

With the pressures of hunting decreased and a historic climatic event over, the population was able to rebound somewhat, but, due to the encroachment of farms and ranching never really recover. Also the genetic bottleneck of the population probably hasn’t helped things but that’s not super well studied.

Wait. I need to know more about the Aperture Science dinosaur in 1889.

So I'm not bothered by the inconsistent scale... but why is there a dinosaur peeking through the bottom of the 1889 column?!

So thats why charles in rdr2 was so mad about some foreigners killing bisons. Never knew they were endangered (also im not an american)

Science/Biology question for someone. If the Bison that exist today are all sourced from those last 300 Bison, are there genetic bottlenecks/recessive traits and defects that we've just permanently given to the entire Bison species forever and ever?

Thank goodness for the Bronx Zoo and the WCS.

Not perfect recovery, but still a powerful reminder that “too late” isn’t always true. Stopping the damage is step one.

THERE! ARE! FOUR! LIGHTS BISONS!!

What is the genetic diversity of the bison? Are they are going to be very inbred soon and die out?

Not gonna lie, thought those were coffee tables until I zoomed in

I thought this was about vaccines until I read the bottom.

It does the job

60,000,000? Seems like they would've starved anyway.