June 17, 2026 • 57 mins
Though almost driven to extinction in the 1800s, this massive bovine has made a comeback – thanks in part to the popularity of its rich meat. Anney and Lauren herd together the history and science behind American bison.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Save for a production of iHeartRadio.
I'm Annie Reese.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I'm Lauren vogel Baum, and today we have an
episode for you about the American Bison.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yes, was there any particular reason this was on your mind? Lauren?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, yep, it has been on our list for forever.
I have been avoiding it for forever because it is
a huge and deeply upsetting topic. Yeah, but here, but
why not why not spend a few days towards the
end of this upsetting run the upsetting end of this run.
(00:44):
The whole run was not upsetting. The whole run was delightful, right, Yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Know we had to. When we were figuring out our
last topics, there were some that we were were like,
this one really needs to be in there, and this was. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
It's just really important and covers a lot of things
that we've covered in various aspects on the show before,
but just really distills in a number of ways a
bunch of things about American, well in North American in
general history. And it's also a delicious food product that
I love eating.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yes, yes, I don't think I have too much experience
with it, but I know I've had a bison Berger.
I know it at least. Okay, yeah, I have had
a bison Berger and it was good.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Oh yeah, yeah, I've definitely had yeah, bison bergers, a
couple of bison steaks. For a little while there there
was a Ted's Montana Grill Indicator Square, which is a
local town center, one of many around Atlanta, which is
composed of many really cool little neighborhoods. And yeah, for
a minute, that was like a fancy place that my
(02:01):
friends and I who hung out around that neighborhood would
go to be fancy.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
I love it. That's fantastic. This is also kind of
a very American episode. Yeah, in a lot of ways,
not great, but you know, as we approached July fourth
and oh yeah, two hundred and fiftieth, Yeah, this was
(02:28):
a topic that feels like we should talk about.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, And also a lot of these kind of end
of Savor Day's episode topics have been focused around the
Americas and the US in particular, partially because they're all
topics that I had hoped when we were traveling more
that we would be able to get out and travel
and talk to someone about. Thus get I mean, you know,
(02:53):
for as much as we can read about a topic.
It's really cool to get someone who is an expert
to come on and you know, give their experience and
their opinions.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
But yeah, here we are.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Here we are, And there are a couple of episodes
we've done in the past that are related.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, that episode that we did about like Laura Ingalls
Wilder and the Little House series definitely touches on all
of this. Also in a similar bent our wild Rice
episode for sure. And then once you want to start
talking about bovines like I don't know, like oxtail, traskrias, buffalo, mozzarella, yas.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
All these episodes are available to you, they are, Yes,
But for this episode, I guess that brings us to
our question. Sure, American bison, what is it?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Well, the American bison, sometimes also called the buffalo, is
a type of extra large bovine that produces rich, lean
red meat that's a little bit sweet, and they also
produce a number of useful non food products like hair, hide, bone,
and horn. We are ostensibly a food show, but we
(04:16):
will be talking kind of a lot about those today anyway.
Bison are the biggest land animals in North America modernly.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
For their meat.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
They are slaughtered at about like a year and a
half to two and a half years old, so the
meat will be super tender. It is often butchered into
steaks or roasts or ground into use for stuff like
burgers because it is so lean because bison don't really marble.
The meat lends itself to gentle cooking, either a nice
(04:47):
quick sear or for tougher cuts, like a low and
slow braize or stew kind of situation. It's just it's
just a really pleasant red meat. It's like if you
you could chew on a wide open sunset.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I have the specific image in mind, and if I
could eat that image.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Oh man, I wish I had been keeping track of
all of my silly little poetical things, because I'm really
curious about, like, how many times have I compared something
to a sunset, Like sunsets are nice, they are like
something about a meadow or something. I don't know anyway, Okay,
(05:36):
the American bison's taxonomical name is bison bison, and I
love this, I partially because I feel like it's a
derivative of that like buffalo buffalo pun sentence. Are you
familiar with that one?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
No?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Oh my goodness. Okay, all right, side quest, hold on,
So all right, this is a linguistic side quest because
the English line, which is really silly, such that there
we have so many like homonyms that you can create
a logical sentence out of the same word over and
over again. One of those examples is if you say
(06:14):
buffalo eight times in a row, it makes grammatical sense.
Allow me to demonstrate, please, Okay, all right, I'm going
to do the sentence first and maybe from context clues
it will start making a little sense.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
But then i'll explain it. Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
So the sentence goes, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo. Okay,
this pun, I can feel your confusion. This pun relies
on three different definitions of the word buffalo. The first
one is the animal, the second one is the verb
(06:54):
to buffalo, which means to like, bother or confuse, and
the third is the city.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Of Buffalo, New York.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Okay, so allow me, allow me to break down the
sentence for you based on those three definitions. The sentence goes,
and I'm gonna go ahead and switch to the word
bison to make it a little bit more clear. Okay,
bison from the city of Buffalo. Okay, that bison from
(07:27):
the city of Buffalo. Annoy themselves. Annoy bison from the
city of Buffalo. Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Oh, I see it. Yeah, okay, I love that any
type of person who spends the amount of time to
be like what, I love this this is. That's an
old one.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I don't I didn't look up where it came from,
but I strongly believe it's one of the ones that's
kind of like gotten expanded upon over the years.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
So yeah, it feels like it might have some more Yeah,
I like it. Okay, I got it. After you explained it,
I got it.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Okay, all right, all right, side quest over back back
to the animal. So, all right, bison, bison. There are
two agreed upon subspecies, the wood bison, which is more
northerly and a little bigger, and the planes bison, which
is more southerly and smaller. I think their hump is
(08:51):
like a little rounder. And also the plane s bison
is the one we're going to be focusing in on
more today, especially in the history section, because it's more
from the US and that's where we're located. So yep,
that's what we focused on. Bison in general, though, have
a sort of stout shape and a stout coloration now
(09:11):
that I think of the pun there. So they've got
kind of like heavy bodies and a tall hump over
their front shoulders with a broad face and then a
slimmer hind quarter rear kind of section. They've got these
heavy coats of brown black hair, hence the stout coloration.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, it's shorter towards their back and longer towards their front,
filling out to like a big old shag around their heads.
This does help them with stand North American winters and
will largely shed during the spring. I've read that like
the reason it grows and thicker around their heads is
that the way that they have developed to deal with
(09:50):
snowstorms like absolute blizzards is they just face it head on,
just a bunch of buffalo just looking straight into a storm.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That feels right to me. Right, the buffaloes vibe that
feels right.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
To me, like come and get me.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
But the bulls, which are the males, and the cows
which are the females, have a pair of short, hollow horns,
one on either side of their head, and bulls will
also grow a cute little beard on their chins. These
are big buddies. Mature bulls can reach six and a
half feet tall at their hump that's one point nine meters,
(10:32):
and then twelve and a half feet in length that
is three point eight meters and way up to two
four hundred pounds that's like one thousand, one hundred kilos.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Yep, they're big. They're big.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
The cows are a bit smaller than the bulls, like
possibly up to half as small it depends, but especially
for their size, these animals are super agile, like they
can out maneuver horses. They can jump as well as deer.
They can bust through fences that would certainly foil cattle.
They're also strong swimmers. All of this means that they
(11:13):
are kind of hard to keep confined, but very good
at getting around their native habitats, which are the plains
of North America. Bison are herbivores in the wild. They
graze year round on preferably grasses, but basically any other
greens they can find at a pinch. Their broad, shaggy
heads help them sweep away snow during the winter forage
(11:35):
to forage, They're big enough that adults are really only
preyed upon by humans, though predators like wolf packs or
mountain lions or bears could take down like an isolated
or weak bison, they'll live about twenty years, maybe a
little bit shorter in the wild and longer in captivity.
(11:55):
They are social animals and have social hierarchies, and their
life and life cycle goes something like this. For most
of the year. Adult bison tend to separate out into
bands of male animals versus female animals, and then young
offspring of both sexes will follow along with the females.
Sometimes older bulls will peel off and go solo, but yeah,
(12:17):
the bands will come together during different times of year
for breeding or maybe to search for food or water.
Mating happens during these summer months, and gestation lasts a
full forty weeks like technically longer than most human gestation,
which is usually closer to like thirty eight weeks. The
bulls will help protect their partners through gestation, but then
(12:38):
go back to their dude group After calves are born
in the spring, it's almost always singles. Multiple bursts are
pretty unheard of. Calves are super cute, they're redder than
the adults, and oh they're just such Oh they're so
fuzzy looking. Oh my goodness. They will nurse through the
winter and then ween and possibly split from their birth
group at around a year old. They'll reach maturity at
(13:01):
around two to three years, though due to that hierarchy,
the bulls don't usually mate until they're older, like five
to six years. They have poor eyesight but good hearing,
and communicate vocally with each other to keep track of
their bandmates and to warn off any interlopers. Note here,
(13:22):
do not make yourself an interloper to bison. If you're
closer than the length of like two city buses, you
are too close. They are not really domesticated, and they
are really big, and herds especially are easily startled and
prone to stampede. They can run like thirty miles an hour.
That's like fifty kilometers an hour. That's faster than you.
(13:46):
That's faster than you, say in bolt, do not bother bison.
Do not buffalo buffalo.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Another saveer slogan, do not buffalo buffalo.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
But again, ostensibly we are a food show.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Bison are not usually milked, partially because the physiology of
the teats is not like conducive to obtaining milk. But
bison meat is nice. It's lean compared with beef. It
does not tend to marble, which I said above, It'll
be like a deep red in color, and if allowed
to graze naturally, any fat on it will be yellowish
(14:30):
from that diet of natural grasses. Though apparently some like
sixty five percent of farms at ranchers will grain finish
their bison for a few months before slaughter to whiten
the fat, like specifically because American consumers are used to
white fat on cattle, which I fell out about for
like a solid four minutes earlier today, because we still
(14:54):
dye kraft singles orange because we have some kind of
concept about orange cheese being better. But we need to
feed our cattle grain to get rid of the same
baita caroteen that makes their fat yellow. Yeah, humans are weird.
Humans are weird. You are anyway. The flavor on that
(15:16):
meat tends to be yes quite rich and a little sweet,
and can often be like perceived, even if it's not
objectively juicier than like beef, It's often perceived as being
juicier than beef, which I think has to do with
that deeper red color.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Yeah. Yeah, disgust before the looking at something your eye.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Part of the experience, it is. Yes, they do make
for really good steaks, especially if you like your steak
on the rarer side. Also good for burgers, meatloaf, meatballs.
Teffer cuts make really good like briskets or braised ribs,
like a like a bison short rib.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah that sounds good.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah, I'm incredibly mad. I got so hungry like two
hours ago, even though I wasn't like I wasn't like
like on my meal schedule. I was doing fine, but
I was like.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Put bison, those bison short ribs anyway.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Sounds amazing. Well, what about the nutrition.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
By itself, It's pretty good for you, you know, full of protein. Uh,
helps fill you up, good, good, good spread of micro nutrients,
you know, in order to help keep you going. Probably
eat a vegetable, drink some water, both those things.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, that's nice.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Probably pair it with a starch because that's delicious.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah, all those things. Oh my goodness. Yes, Well, we
do have some numbers for you.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
We do so as of twenty twenty two about eighty
thousand bison a year are slaughtered for consumption in the
United States. You can compare this to the number of
cattle slaughtered, which run about one hundred and twenty five
thousand a day. Yeah, that being said, bison are very big,
(17:17):
and you can get about half the body weight of
a bison in butchered meat, so like up to one
thousand pounds or five hundred kilos. Usually it's less than
that because younger, smaller animals are the most often harvested.
But yeah, like three hundred pounds is not infrequent. And
(17:39):
for this next number, I have to lead in a
little bit by saying and like you might already notice
or have gleaned it from our kind of top of
the episode conversation. But the story of the American bison
is both incredibly tragic and upsetting and also one of
the most hopeful case studies of like concerted species recovery.
(18:03):
Humans both really wrecked and really came together to conserve
this species. Bison populations only exist on approximately one percent
of the lands that they inhabited just two hundred years ago.
They also came back from the brink of extinction to
(18:23):
being considered merely near threatened, which is like one step
down from doing just fine. Numbers vary, but there are
approximately four hundred thousand bison being kept as livestock around
North America and another fifty thousand maintained in like wild
conservational herds. That's sort of a rough average of a
(18:44):
bunch of different numbers I read.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So it's yeah, yeah, and this is an episode that
is both very upsetting but it is it is hopeful
in the ways that people came together, and I am
happy that there's a lot to read about it. Oh yes, yes,
(19:07):
So if you were not going to go into every
specific event of people right like bringing these bison too
this suit or moving them to this land or whatever
it is, but I will tell you it's out there.
People have written about it. It really is.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
And yeah, uh, we're you know, we're we're going to
do the kind of top notes for you, and those
are that is already going to be a longer outline
than many.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Of our other episodes.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
But yeah, we're going to get into that history as
soon as we get back from a quick break for
a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. Okay,
So historians will that the early ancestor of the American
bison traces back to Asia and that they made their
way across the land bridge connecting what would become Asia
north America four hundred thousand years ago. Meanwhile, humans likely
(20:15):
arrived in North America thirteen two hundred to fifteen thousand,
five hundred years ago to find an environment that was
shaped already by these bison.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yeah, being so large, bison really do have an impact
on their environment and are considered a keystone species because
like so okay for a bunch of reasons. So they
move and graze a lot, like maybe one thousand miles
over the course of a year, that's like sixteen hundred kilometers.
(20:45):
Their hoofs can soften earth and break up tough roots,
thus aerating the soil. They selectively eat particular plants like grasses,
which both spreads those seeds and also allows other plants
to flourish when they eat those grasses back right. Meanwhile,
(21:07):
their long fur carries other seeds with them, which they
also deposit as they travel. They provide a lot of
fertilizer back to the land.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Buffalo poo, that's.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
A new one, right, in order to regulate body temperature
and parasitic insects.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
They will wallow in.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Wet ground or sometimes even in dry ground, like breaking
through the turf and creating pits that are free of
vegetation and slow to dry out, thus providing a home
for like insects and amphibians to carry out their life cycles.
Bison will rub against young trees at the edge of
woods as they shed their coats in the spring, which
(21:55):
can kill those trees and thus manage forest encroachment of grasslands.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Birds follow along with.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Bison and feed on the insects that feed on them
and on their waste. If you ever driven through the
American planes, it might look really boring, but when that
ecosystem is actually working, it is hugely biologically.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Diverse and fascinating.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
It's super cool.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, it really really is. The American bison was hugely
significant to planes Indian societies. They would follow these large
herds of the bison as they migrated from north to
south in the winter. They'd hunt them for food, but
also they used the skins for shelters and clothes, the
(22:45):
bones and horns for tools and weapons, and the rest
medicinally are for decoration. The meat was salted and preserved
to get through those winter months. Because of mindful hunting
and the substantial size of these herds, the population of
bison remained healthy. In eighteen hundred, an estimated sixty million
(23:07):
bison roamed North American prairies. Their migrations had important implications
for the environment too.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah yeah, and furthermore, plains people's helped manage and guide
bison populations, partially through controlled burns of grasslands at particular
times of the year. These burns allowed for new growth
to come up, which would attract bison herds to wherever
people wanted them to go.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Meanwhile, the name buffalo allegedly came from the French, who
termed it a bof savage or buffalo, a name that
was then picked up by other Europeans. The first written
instance of buffalo popped up in seventeen fifty four, So
(23:56):
stepping back a bit with the arrival of colonizers beginning
in the fifteen hundreds, we get the first European mentions
of bison, often describing how plentiful they were, how the
meat was fatty and nourishing, and the hides were useful.
The American bison population was hit really hard in the
(24:17):
nineteenth century, as colonizers spread west, not only did they
not show one bit of care about resource management or
learning about the ecosystem, they hunted not just for food,
but for sport and to purposefully deprive indigenous peoples of
a resource that was and had long been important to them,
(24:38):
with the hopes of driving them out. In the eighteen hundreds,
colonizers killed over fifty million bison. At the lowest estimate
of their numbers, only a couple thousand or even one
hundred of bison remained. And there's a lot of pieces
to this, and we are a food show, but we're
(25:00):
going to try to put in the main pieces. So
one is the expansion west. So the expansion west, in
part driven by the California Gold Rush, included building railways
which cut through the lands bison migrated through. Railway companies
didn't appreciate the damage these big animals did to their tracks,
(25:23):
so to combat it, they ran hunter specials. For instances
when bison would be near the railways, the hunters and
these hunter specials would shoot bison from the windows of
the train, and sometimes the train would stop so that
they could get out the hunters good and collect a
(25:43):
trophy from a down to buffalo. Salted bison tongue was
a delicacy on the East Coast at the time. Government
officials and hunting enthusiasts from around the world participated. The
bison was called the golden goose at the time. Generally
the carcasses were left to rot on either side of
(26:06):
the tracks because the meat was too difficult to transport
and sell, though sometimes hunters did collect and sell the
hide during summer months. The smell was so horrendous that
the railways suspended their summer hunter specials.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Yeah yeah, yeah, oh yeah, so yeah. This also just
to put in, was remember a time before like refrigerated
train cars and stuff like that existed. This was when,
you know, we were still harvesting ice and we didn't
really have cold transport technology.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yes, and then we have newer guns that made hunting
bison easier. A bison hunter at the time named Frank h.
Meyer wrote, a couple of years before, it was nothing
to see five ten thousand buff in a day's ride. Now,
if I saw fifty, I was lucky. Presently all I
(27:05):
saw was rotting red carcasses or bleaching white bones. We
had killed the golden goose, So that was one piece
of it. Then in the eighteen thirties we have the
advent of steamboats traveling up and down the Missouri River,
which allowed for increased trade of bison meat and other
(27:27):
by products from bison. On top of that, artist renderings
of indigenous peoples on horses hunting bison captured the imagination
of American people. One such artist, George Catlin, sounded the
alarm that unless something changed, the bison would only exist
(27:48):
in art and memory. He called for parks or reserves
to protect the bison, but his suggestions were discarded. And
then you've got folks like Irish George Gore, who traveled
to the US on a hunting trip between eighteen fifty
four to eighteen fifty seven where he and his party
(28:09):
killed over four thousand bison and a bunch of other animals.
Of Indigenous peoples and frontier settlers protested, and the Lakota
essentially kicked him out. But instances like this led to
skirmishes and violence and a lot of needless death of bison. Yeah,
(28:31):
after the Civil War, the US government was pushing to
isolate indigenous peoples on to reservations as a part of
that the military killed bison on orders from their superiors.
Since bison were this major food source and so much
more than that for indigenous folks, the belief was that
(28:52):
eliminating access to bison would not only remove an essential resource,
but also shift Indigenous peoples from a nomadic people to farmers.
The goal of all of this was to coerce Indigenous
peoples into signing treaties that were handing over their land
and exchange for basic support from the government. A lot
(29:14):
of those treaties were later broken or not upheld by
the US government. Unfortunately, this support that they promised was
both lacking and came at a major cost. With the
intent of erasing Indigenous culture altogether, Entire peoples and cultures
(29:35):
forced into white supremacist, patriarchal structures. Lands were being taken,
families separated, children sent to boarding schools.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yeah, yeah, I know, we're talking about bison today, But
Lauren's Killjoy Corner. We haven't had one of those in
a while. So I want to highlight two major pushes
that were instrumental to this that happened during the eighteen hundreds. Okay,
you've got the Removal Act of eighteen thirty and the
(30:06):
General Allotment or DAWs Act of eighteen eighty seven. The
Removal Act is what led to the Trail of Tears,
in which some fifteen thousand Indigenous Americans from around the
southeast died during forced relocation to territories west of the Mississippi.
That was obviously terrible. The DAWs Act was a little
(30:31):
more insidiously terrible because it broke up a lot of
tribal lands into private allotments, some of which were earmarked
for Native families. But this is not the way these
peoples worked. Like generally speaking, you know that they had
communities and collective land and resource management that sure was territorial,
(30:52):
but was not parceled. And the DAWs Act happened because
not just like the government and cow bpitalists and colonists
wanted chunks of that land, but also because social reformers,
who genuinely thought that they were doing the right thing,
wanted to save Native peoples from themselves by paving the
(31:14):
way for them to become profitable private farmers and ranchers.
No less than Teddy Roosevelt said, and I quote, the
effort should be to steadily make the Indian work like
any other man on his own ground. So the Removal
Act was relocation and the DAWs Act was assimilation.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
And it didn't even work because, like.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Even if they had wanted to, most of these people
didn't have the money to like just start up a
farm or a ranch. So a lot of families lost
the land that they were allotted. Anyway when taxes came due,
which colonists and businesses were happy to then buy up.
The short version, I could get into worse details, but yeah, yes,
(32:09):
kill Joy Corner over the extermination of bison was wrapped
up into this.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Killjoy Corner re enter.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah, So by eighteen ninety, indigenous peoples across North America
were participating in a ghost dance dance hoping for a
future with bison and without white encroachers. And then there's
(32:44):
an infamous photo from this time of a bison skull
mountain that shows thousands and thousands of bison skulls piled
into a mountain with two white business men standing on
top of it, and the skulls were they were used
at the time to crush They were crushed down to
be a filter impurifier for sugar. But it's just such
(33:08):
a striking image it's horrifying and striking. Yep.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
It's one of those things if you have not seen
and you want to kind of ruin your day, definitely
look it up.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, definitely look it up. Okay. So Congress realized that
the US government's actions had in part pushed the bison
to the brink of extinction and decided maybe that they
should do something, and so they passed legislation to regulate
the killing of bison in eighteen seventy four, but then
(33:46):
President Grant vetoed it. A little over a decade later,
they managed to pass a law against hunting of endangered
species like bison. They then outlawed the killing of animals
in Yellowstone National Park in eighteen ninety four. I have
to say, Yellowstone has a whole history with bison. You
can look up and read if you would like to.
(34:09):
These things did help, but it feels very much like
they created their own problem orchestrated this whole thing, and
now we're trying to put these band aids on it.
And Yeah, in eighteen eighty four, six hundred members of
the black Feet died due to starvation in the winter months,
(34:30):
and that was a quarter of their tribe.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
So yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
When you take away a resource that people depend on,
they cannot automatically switch.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah yeah, oh so, I mean so plentiful and they
had it, had been managing it and yeah yeah. Anyway,
that didn't stop Western consumerism from demanding people wanted parts
(35:04):
of the bison. Beginning in the eighteen eighties, there was
a big demand for bison bones, horns, and hooves. The
bones were ground up to use as fertilizer, while the
horns were fashioned into things like buttons and the hooves
into things like glue. So someone who was and had
(35:26):
been concerned about the bison population was the Smithsonians William Hornaday.
In eighteen eighty nine, he opened a small zoo on
the National Mall in Washington, d C. That featured a
few bison. Further, he convinced Congress to open up a
national zoo. It opened in eighteen ninety one, but without Hornaday,
(35:49):
who resigned due to differences with officials. He's also somebody
that if this episode wasn't already so long, he's been
involved in this fight for he was a part of
it for a while. Yeah. Okay, even with people like
horn to day, you still had the heights of the
(36:09):
buffalo were in high demand for jackets and clothes on
the East Coast in the early nineteen hundreds, and all
of this led to the formation of the American Bison Society,
which Horned Day was a part of in New York's
Bronx Zoo in nineteen oh five, with the goal of
preventing extinction of the of the bison and growing the
(36:30):
number of them. Theodore Roosevelt was named the honorary president.
He was an early proponent of the US conservation movement,
allegedly after he went to hunt buffalo and the Dakota
Territory in eighteen eighty three and observed how low their
numbers were. He wanted to help those numbers to get
(36:51):
back up, so he came together to help found this organization. However,
as Lauren has already alluded to, he also I thought
that the extermination of the bison was necessary to control
the indigenous population. So he's not great. Let's not give
him too much credit, if any.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yeah, our dear friend, super producer Tyler Klang helped helped
make a whole show about the Adore Roosevelt a few
years ago, and really good, meaty, weird.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Complicated stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
So, oh gosh, I don't remember the name of it,
but if you like, I don't know, google the Adore
Roosevelt podcast. I feel like you'll figure it out. If
this is a thing that interests you anyway, I'm sorry,
go ahead, any.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yes, yes, anyway. In early focus for the American Bison
Society was reintroducing bison into parts of the West. To
that end, they sent fifteen bison to a preserve in
Oklahoma in nineteen oh seven, and did similar things in
other areas over the next decade. They later went on
to partner with indigenous people's who had long been doing
(38:02):
the work of preserving bison. Once again, this is something
you can find much more information about online.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Oh yes, oh yeah. Meanwhile, the image of the bison
was still part of this popular conception of America, of
the United States as a country, and so along those
lines you've got things like the Buffalo nickel, which was
(38:32):
a five cent coin with like a kind of stereotyped
American Indian portrait on the front and a profile of
a bison on the back that was minted from nineteen
thirteen through nineteen thirty eight. The artist one James Earl
Fraser did grow up in like Minnesota and South Dakota,
but probably based his bison design on an animal kept
(38:53):
at the aforementioned Bronx Zoo. The bison was adopted as
part of the Wyoming state flag in nineteen seventeen. The
flag is like a white bison on a field of
blue bordered by white and then red, with the state
seal placed in the center of the bison.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Yes, and then museums across the country started spotlighting the
bison and the fact that they were endangered the nineteen twenties, which,
by the way, I just remembered there's a scene of
this in my favorite game of all time, The Last
of Us Too Am, and there's a bison exhibit. Okay, yes,
(39:34):
Oh it's not good.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Is there any scene in that game that's like good?
Speaker 1 (39:42):
There's some that are better than that. Cool cool, cool cool. Yes.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Well.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
In nineteen fifty one, the National Park Service adopted its
current emblem is a part of so if you're unfamiliar
with it, it's this arrowhead shape that features a landscape
with a mountain and lake in the background and kind
of like grasslands and a big Sequoia pine in the foreground,
and then a bison standing center at the base of
(40:17):
the design.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
I'm sure I've seen it.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like brown and green and white.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
It's really cute.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Then in the nineteen seventies, we have to talk about
Ted Turner, so then butting media mogul Ted Turner became
interested in bison ranching as a sort of side project,
Like he was in the midst of starting up what
would become TBS and CNN in like nineteen seventy seventy
(40:48):
six through seventy nine. And also during that time he
like bought some bison and some farmland and started what's
called Turner Enterprises, Incorporated, which is a company that today
manages i think either the most or like the second
most privately held ranch land in the United States. It
(41:09):
also owns some ranchland in other countries as well. It's
over two million acres wow, and definitely manages the largest
privately held bison population, some forty five thousand animals. Like
it was a business thing, but it was also an
(41:30):
environmental conservation thing, and like he worked with lots of
legit groups to help figure out how to preserve lands
and herds. He would later start up a bison steakhouse,
a chain of bison steakhouses called Ted's Montana Grill. The
(41:50):
first one opened in two thousand and eight. There are
still a bunch around Atlanta, which was Turner's like adopted hometown.
There's smattering of other restaurants around, but there's a bunch
around Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
And I okay, I was thrilled. Lauren put this note
in here because I had mentioned we were doing this
episode and my co host over at Sminty was like,
so you're gonna talk about Ted Turner and had no
idea what she was like, I.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
Guess like, were there bison on Cartoon Network?
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Like what? But now I'm determined, Lauren and I will
go to a Ted's Montana Grille. Yeah, it's I have
super producers.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Oh my god. Right, good field trip, good field trip.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Oh I'm hungry again. Okay.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Anyway, yes, well I am excited. Okay. So, the Wildlife
Conservation Society, alongside the Black Pect Nation, Oakland Zoo and
the Elk Island National Park in Alberta, Canada, worked together
to successfully relocate eighty eight bison to the Blackfeet Reservation
(43:07):
in Montana in twenty sixteen. So this is a part
of those efforts to move bison back to where they're from. Also,
in twenty sixteen, the bison was designated in the US
as the National mammal, a decision which drew some criticism
due to the history that we've been talking about that
(43:29):
the US has of decimating the population of bison and
how a large part of that hinged on the intent
to harm and destroy indigenous peoples. So with all of that,
while the bison population has been growing thanks to the
efforts of indigenous peoples, some legislation, and organizations, they still
(43:52):
face a lot of threats climate change as always, disease,
increased urbanization and agriculture sure that impacts their habitat, lack
of genetic diversity, and that's just to name a few.
But people are looking into this, people are working on
building up their populations.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah yeah, I mean, you know, it's it's never never
going to be sixty million and one million would be wild. Yeah,
but it is so so painfully hopeful, so like hopeful
(44:36):
balanced on the edge of a razor blade, that these
kind of increases in population have been possible.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
Yes, And with the work of the people who have
been there, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Yeah, And by actually listening to indigenous people's.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
What wow, well a wild idea, yeah, I know. And
a lot of the episodes we do that have specifically
indigenous topics, they often have a like a food preservation
(45:15):
websites and like how we're trying to build up these
food ways again, so I would say look those up. Yeah,
because it exists. It's sad that it has to, but
you know, remembering these things and bringing those things back
and making sure they don't get lost.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Yeah, that's where it would have been super cool to
go do some interviews. But yeah, that's what That's what
we got for you about bison today.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
It is, and we would love to hear from you listeners.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Yes, oh my goodness, have you met a bison from
hopefully it Scared to bus links? Yeah, I like large
dog freak me out sometimes and I love dogs, so
like that, I just feel like a bison.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
It can move, as you said, I I'm not.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
There quick, and they're unpredictable because they are.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Wilds and they're big. Mm hmm, I'm small.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Chairs.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
No, No, we would as always love to hear from you,
but yeah, that's what we've got to say for now.
We do already have some listener mail for you, and
we are going to get into that as soon as
we get back from one more quick break for a
word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back with
snool Bison look out Out. So Hailey wrote, I am devastated.
(47:13):
I just heard the announcement my favorite show. What will
I do without your food facts, silly banter and comforting voices.
I hope you know read my past messages how much
this show has helped me through good days and bad.
I'm the weird cookie girl and am happy to say
that I've been running my cookie business full time for
(47:35):
a year now. Many many hours have been spent rolling
cookie dough with your voices in the background. I appreciate
all you've done for me in the world by sharing
this podcast. If this was forced upon you by the
powers that be, know that I'm shaking my fist on
your behalf. If this was a personal decision, I totally
(47:56):
support that and love that you'll have more time for
other endeavors. Either way, Please know how much you've shaped
your listeners' worlds, how loved you both are, and how
missed you'll be Time to reset my podcast feed from
unplayed only to all episodes.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
Oh oh my goodness, Oh thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Thank you, Hailey, and you have written in over the years.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
And I love I love checking up on your cookie
business on Instagram. I saw your message on there and
I was like, oh, no.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
I yeah, that's I'm glad that you're you're running it
full time's graduations. Yes, congratulations, and I'm glad that we
could have been a small part of you rolling out
those cookies. Yeah, coming up with these creations. We have
(48:55):
loved hearing from you. And as as we've said, we're
not going away, like our emails will still exist. Yeah,
I'll still be checking it and hopefully we'll still randomly
be able to.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Just pop up. Yeah, but yeah, if not, thank you. Yes,
it's meant a lot, It really has. It really has. Yeah.
I've said often that it's it's a weirdly lonely form
of media, you know, because we're just recording in our houses,
(49:33):
not even in a studio anymore, and so it's kind
of like a lovely surprise to be reminded that humans
are actually listening.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
It really is and engaging and sharing.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Yeah, yes, and right, and part of a weird little community.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yes, a weird wonderful community that we built.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
Yes. Oh, Janet wrote time runs short for us, and
I cannot bear to edit any shorter. As a Queenslander,
May I explain my Home States relationship with the much
prized Kensington Pride mango, now grown anywhere warm enough and
(50:17):
shipped Australia wide. The KP is also known as the
bow and Mango after its birthplace and former primary growing region.
A polyembryonic variety, the crop has a highly variable yield
year to year, yet through strong preference for it, it
retains around eighty percent of the Australian market. The fruit
is large, commonly four hundred to five hundred grams, which
(50:40):
is about a pound, and it is living heart shaped,
like their family name and a cardiassia sure. The upward
facing heart ripened fruit blushes from apple green through a
spectrum of yellows and oranges to a peachy pink sun
kiss on the upper curve. It's smells heady like, stickly
(51:02):
humid summer sunshine and intense tropical sweetness. A combination of
rich floral peachy scent combined with an apple like freshness
or citrus brightness and an almost hoppy, spicy sappy undertone
from the skin and stem. All other mangoes feel like
they are missing something from the mix. By comparison less
ripe specimens continue apple and citrus brightness in their taste
(51:26):
of being noticeably sour, but I recommend waiting until any
remaining sourness is smothered by sweetness and perfume. Food science
explains that an unusually high concentration of the monoterpene terpinileine
is responsible for the cultivar's distinctive flavor and perfume. This
terpene is also being investigated for a possible pharmacological effects
(51:49):
such as anxiety and pain reduction. Speak to your healthcare
professional before consuming a medicinal quantity of Kensington Pride. Mangoes
consume a Kensington Pride by cheeking it around the fibris seed,
then give the flesh a pineapple crisscross cut and invert
the peel so you can eat chunks directly from it.
The ripe flesh has a rich, dense orange color, and
(52:10):
the texture is velvety, smooth, and somewhat firm, giving way
to a melting softness when bitten into releasing a gloriously
messy amount of juice. Stringiness is only noticeable if you
like a culinary icarus have cut too close to the seed.
Deliciousness and possible mood improvement by themself may explain why
Australia loves the Kensington.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
Pride so dearly.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
However, I believe the history of mangoes in Australia plays
a large part too. Australia's love of mangoes began when
Walter Hill championed the mango as the chief Colonial Botanist,
a precision he held from eighteen fifty nine to eighteen
eighty one in the botanical gardens of Brisbane. His championing
is shown in this letter he wrote to the Queenslander
in eighteen seventy about seven varietals that he had successfully cultivated,
(52:58):
skipping the letter, Yes, but moving he was right, and
I have a huge, doddering mango tree in my backyard
to prove it. The fruit, bats and possums don't seem
to mind that it's a stringy variety known locally as
a turpentine. But mister Hill was far from the only
source of mango varieties in Queensland. Harbourmasters all along the
Queensland coast would take in seeds from various visiting cargo ships.
(53:21):
Some of the earliest recorded mangoes were grown by mister Fraser,
the colonial botanist, at Redcliffe Upport north of Brisbane in
the eighteen forties. Many otherwise exotic plants became part of
local food landscapes in many coastal Queensland towns. This point
is where my family's oral and gardening traditions joined the story.
Plants such as the Southeast Asian passion fruit and South
(53:43):
American chocove vines would adorn every Queenslander's outhouse, and notably
gardener's cultivated chili plants only ever used to make mango
chutney by small town locals. Wild and uncataloged local mango
cultivars flourished into large and sta trees perfect for climbing
in in backyards all over Queensland, with descriptive names like
(54:06):
Bullock's Heart, common or stringy mango, and the strawberry still
grown recreationally more than one hundred years after Walter Hill
introduced it. The mango tree was a universal part of
the Queensland summer experience for many generations. As for the
Kensington Pride. I've been so far unable to locate primary
sources for much of the story of its origin, the
(54:29):
story being that many different mango seeds from India were
given to the harbourmaster of the town of Bowen in
the eighteen eighties and eventually resulted in the cultivation of
the Kensington Pride on the Kensington Estate. With the mango
already well known to Queenslanders, it was the superior flavor
and texture that made the Kensington Pride a going concern.
(54:50):
As we say locally, it was so good that you'd
pay money for it even if you didn't have to.
The arrival of mango season is still celebrated in Queensland
to this day. It still refers to when the Kensington
Pride crop hits the market. The giant old mango tree
in my backyard is dying, but I intend to cultivate
its seedlings to help the story of the Australian mango
(55:12):
continue on.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
I just felt real regret. Yeah, right, mango trees died.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
It's so sad when a big old tree dies, and
I know they're not eternal. I mean, you know, like
I know that there are some trees that are more
or less that thing.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
But yeah, oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
But I'm glad you're cultivating seedlings. Yeah, the story live on.
Help us the old tree live on. And yeah, thank
you so much for taking the time.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
Oh my goodness, right write this to us, to share
this with us.
Speaker 1 (55:56):
So fascinating and so interesting because we don't always get
the international perspective even though we try to get it.
Speaker 2 (56:04):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, well and you know, and like
we only have so much time on the show to
say things and so right, you know, like we can't
always follow the threads down every corridor that a plant
has gone down. So yeah, yeah, getting all of this.
And I'm so sorry if I with my American accent
butchered all of your local place names. That's any mistakes
(56:26):
are mine. Uh but oh, mangoes are so good. Mangos
are so good.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
And I am so happy that you wrote in about this.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
Yeah, like I legitimately I really need to try one
of these mangoes now.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
Yes, yes, And and just the history of it really
detailed in a way that Lauren and I appreciate. Oh yeah, sho,
oh my goodness, so yes, thank you, thank you, Thanks
(57:07):
to both of these listeners for writing in. If you
would like to write to us, you can. Our email
is Hello at savorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (57:16):
We are also on social media. You can find us
on Instagram and blue Sky at savor pod and we
do hope to hear from you. Save is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you
can visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our
superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
(57:38):
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
Hello, and welcome to Save for a production of iHeartRadio.
I'm Annie Reese.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And I'm Lauren vogel Baum, and today we have an
episode for you about the American Bison.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yes, was there any particular reason this was on your mind? Lauren?
Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, yep, it has been on our list for forever.
I have been avoiding it for forever because it is
a huge and deeply upsetting topic. Yeah, but here, but
why not why not spend a few days towards the
end of this upsetting run the upsetting end of this run.
(00:44):
The whole run was not upsetting. The whole run was delightful, right, Yeah, you.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Know we had to. When we were figuring out our
last topics, there were some that we were were like,
this one really needs to be in there, and this was. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
It's just really important and covers a lot of things
that we've covered in various aspects on the show before,
but just really distills in a number of ways a
bunch of things about American, well in North American in
general history. And it's also a delicious food product that
I love eating.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Yes, yes, I don't think I have too much experience
with it, but I know I've had a bison Berger.
I know it at least. Okay, yeah, I have had
a bison Berger and it was good.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Oh yeah, yeah, I've definitely had yeah, bison bergers, a
couple of bison steaks. For a little while there there
was a Ted's Montana Grill Indicator Square, which is a
local town center, one of many around Atlanta, which is
composed of many really cool little neighborhoods. And yeah, for
a minute, that was like a fancy place that my
(02:01):
friends and I who hung out around that neighborhood would
go to be fancy.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
I love it. That's fantastic. This is also kind of
a very American episode. Yeah, in a lot of ways,
not great, but you know, as we approached July fourth
and oh yeah, two hundred and fiftieth, Yeah, this was
(02:28):
a topic that feels like we should talk about.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, And also a lot of these kind of end
of Savor Day's episode topics have been focused around the
Americas and the US in particular, partially because they're all
topics that I had hoped when we were traveling more
that we would be able to get out and travel
and talk to someone about. Thus get I mean, you know,
(02:53):
for as much as we can read about a topic.
It's really cool to get someone who is an expert
to come on and you know, give their experience and
their opinions.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
But yeah, here we are.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Here we are, And there are a couple of episodes
we've done in the past that are related.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, that episode that we did about like Laura Ingalls
Wilder and the Little House series definitely touches on all
of this. Also in a similar bent our wild Rice
episode for sure. And then once you want to start
talking about bovines like I don't know, like oxtail, traskrias, buffalo, mozzarella, yas.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
All these episodes are available to you, they are, Yes,
But for this episode, I guess that brings us to
our question. Sure, American bison, what is it?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Well, the American bison, sometimes also called the buffalo, is
a type of extra large bovine that produces rich, lean
red meat that's a little bit sweet, and they also
produce a number of useful non food products like hair, hide, bone,
and horn. We are ostensibly a food show, but we
(04:16):
will be talking kind of a lot about those today anyway.
Bison are the biggest land animals in North America modernly.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
For their meat.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
They are slaughtered at about like a year and a
half to two and a half years old, so the
meat will be super tender. It is often butchered into
steaks or roasts or ground into use for stuff like
burgers because it is so lean because bison don't really marble.
The meat lends itself to gentle cooking, either a nice
(04:47):
quick sear or for tougher cuts, like a low and
slow braize or stew kind of situation. It's just it's
just a really pleasant red meat. It's like if you
you could chew on a wide open sunset.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
I have the specific image in mind, and if I
could eat that image.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Oh man, I wish I had been keeping track of
all of my silly little poetical things, because I'm really
curious about, like, how many times have I compared something
to a sunset, Like sunsets are nice, they are like
something about a meadow or something. I don't know anyway, Okay,
(05:36):
the American bison's taxonomical name is bison bison, and I
love this, I partially because I feel like it's a
derivative of that like buffalo buffalo pun sentence. Are you
familiar with that one?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
No?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Oh my goodness. Okay, all right, side quest, hold on,
So all right, this is a linguistic side quest because
the English line, which is really silly, such that there
we have so many like homonyms that you can create
a logical sentence out of the same word over and
over again. One of those examples is if you say
(06:14):
buffalo eight times in a row, it makes grammatical sense.
Allow me to demonstrate, please, Okay, all right, I'm going
to do the sentence first and maybe from context clues
it will start making a little sense.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
But then i'll explain it. Okay.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
So the sentence goes, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo. Okay,
this pun, I can feel your confusion. This pun relies
on three different definitions of the word buffalo. The first
one is the animal, the second one is the verb
(06:54):
to buffalo, which means to like, bother or confuse, and
the third is the city.
Speaker 3 (07:02):
Of Buffalo, New York.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Okay, so allow me, allow me to break down the
sentence for you based on those three definitions. The sentence goes,
and I'm gonna go ahead and switch to the word
bison to make it a little bit more clear. Okay,
bison from the city of Buffalo. Okay, that bison from
(07:27):
the city of Buffalo. Annoy themselves. Annoy bison from the
city of Buffalo. Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo, Buffalo.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Oh, I see it. Yeah, okay, I love that any
type of person who spends the amount of time to
be like what, I love this this is. That's an
old one.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
I don't I didn't look up where it came from,
but I strongly believe it's one of the ones that's
kind of like gotten expanded upon over the years.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
So yeah, it feels like it might have some more Yeah,
I like it. Okay, I got it. After you explained it,
I got it.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Okay, all right, all right, side quest over back back
to the animal. So, all right, bison, bison. There are
two agreed upon subspecies, the wood bison, which is more
northerly and a little bigger, and the planes bison, which
is more southerly and smaller. I think their hump is
(08:51):
like a little rounder. And also the plane s bison
is the one we're going to be focusing in on
more today, especially in the history section, because it's more
from the US and that's where we're located. So yep,
that's what we focused on. Bison in general, though, have
a sort of stout shape and a stout coloration now
(09:11):
that I think of the pun there. So they've got
kind of like heavy bodies and a tall hump over
their front shoulders with a broad face and then a
slimmer hind quarter rear kind of section. They've got these
heavy coats of brown black hair, hence the stout coloration.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, it's shorter towards their back and longer towards their front,
filling out to like a big old shag around their heads.
This does help them with stand North American winters and
will largely shed during the spring. I've read that like
the reason it grows and thicker around their heads is
that the way that they have developed to deal with
(09:50):
snowstorms like absolute blizzards is they just face it head on,
just a bunch of buffalo just looking straight into a storm.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That feels right to me. Right, the buffaloes vibe that
feels right.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
To me, like come and get me.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
But the bulls, which are the males, and the cows
which are the females, have a pair of short, hollow horns,
one on either side of their head, and bulls will
also grow a cute little beard on their chins. These
are big buddies. Mature bulls can reach six and a
half feet tall at their hump that's one point nine meters,
(10:32):
and then twelve and a half feet in length that
is three point eight meters and way up to two
four hundred pounds that's like one thousand, one hundred kilos.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Yep, they're big. They're big.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
The cows are a bit smaller than the bulls, like
possibly up to half as small it depends, but especially
for their size, these animals are super agile, like they
can out maneuver horses. They can jump as well as deer.
They can bust through fences that would certainly foil cattle.
They're also strong swimmers. All of this means that they
(11:13):
are kind of hard to keep confined, but very good
at getting around their native habitats, which are the plains
of North America. Bison are herbivores in the wild. They
graze year round on preferably grasses, but basically any other
greens they can find at a pinch. Their broad, shaggy
heads help them sweep away snow during the winter forage
(11:35):
to forage, They're big enough that adults are really only
preyed upon by humans, though predators like wolf packs or
mountain lions or bears could take down like an isolated
or weak bison, they'll live about twenty years, maybe a
little bit shorter in the wild and longer in captivity.
(11:55):
They are social animals and have social hierarchies, and their
life and life cycle goes something like this. For most
of the year. Adult bison tend to separate out into
bands of male animals versus female animals, and then young
offspring of both sexes will follow along with the females.
Sometimes older bulls will peel off and go solo, but yeah,
(12:17):
the bands will come together during different times of year
for breeding or maybe to search for food or water.
Mating happens during these summer months, and gestation lasts a
full forty weeks like technically longer than most human gestation,
which is usually closer to like thirty eight weeks. The
bulls will help protect their partners through gestation, but then
(12:38):
go back to their dude group After calves are born
in the spring, it's almost always singles. Multiple bursts are
pretty unheard of. Calves are super cute, they're redder than
the adults, and oh they're just such Oh they're so
fuzzy looking. Oh my goodness. They will nurse through the
winter and then ween and possibly split from their birth
group at around a year old. They'll reach maturity at
(13:01):
around two to three years, though due to that hierarchy,
the bulls don't usually mate until they're older, like five
to six years. They have poor eyesight but good hearing,
and communicate vocally with each other to keep track of
their bandmates and to warn off any interlopers. Note here,
(13:22):
do not make yourself an interloper to bison. If you're
closer than the length of like two city buses, you
are too close. They are not really domesticated, and they
are really big, and herds especially are easily startled and
prone to stampede. They can run like thirty miles an hour.
That's like fifty kilometers an hour. That's faster than you.
(13:46):
That's faster than you, say in bolt, do not bother bison.
Do not buffalo buffalo.
Speaker 1 (13:54):
Another saveer slogan, do not buffalo buffalo.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
But again, ostensibly we are a food show.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
Bison are not usually milked, partially because the physiology of
the teats is not like conducive to obtaining milk. But
bison meat is nice. It's lean compared with beef. It
does not tend to marble, which I said above, It'll
be like a deep red in color, and if allowed
to graze naturally, any fat on it will be yellowish
(14:30):
from that diet of natural grasses. Though apparently some like
sixty five percent of farms at ranchers will grain finish
their bison for a few months before slaughter to whiten
the fat, like specifically because American consumers are used to
white fat on cattle, which I fell out about for
like a solid four minutes earlier today, because we still
(14:54):
dye kraft singles orange because we have some kind of
concept about orange cheese being better. But we need to
feed our cattle grain to get rid of the same
baita caroteen that makes their fat yellow. Yeah, humans are weird.
Humans are weird. You are anyway. The flavor on that
(15:16):
meat tends to be yes quite rich and a little sweet,
and can often be like perceived, even if it's not
objectively juicier than like beef, It's often perceived as being
juicier than beef, which I think has to do with
that deeper red color.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Yeah. Yeah, disgust before the looking at something your eye.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Part of the experience, it is. Yes, they do make
for really good steaks, especially if you like your steak
on the rarer side. Also good for burgers, meatloaf, meatballs.
Teffer cuts make really good like briskets or braised ribs,
like a like a bison short rib.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Yeah that sounds good.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
Yeah, I'm incredibly mad. I got so hungry like two
hours ago, even though I wasn't like I wasn't like
like on my meal schedule. I was doing fine, but
I was like.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Put bison, those bison short ribs anyway.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Sounds amazing. Well, what about the nutrition.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
By itself, It's pretty good for you, you know, full of protein. Uh,
helps fill you up, good, good, good spread of micro nutrients,
you know, in order to help keep you going. Probably
eat a vegetable, drink some water, both those things.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Yeah, that's nice.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
Probably pair it with a starch because that's delicious.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Yeah, all those things. Oh my goodness. Yes, Well, we
do have some numbers for you.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
We do so as of twenty twenty two about eighty
thousand bison a year are slaughtered for consumption in the
United States. You can compare this to the number of
cattle slaughtered, which run about one hundred and twenty five
thousand a day. Yeah, that being said, bison are very big,
(17:17):
and you can get about half the body weight of
a bison in butchered meat, so like up to one
thousand pounds or five hundred kilos. Usually it's less than
that because younger, smaller animals are the most often harvested.
But yeah, like three hundred pounds is not infrequent. And
(17:39):
for this next number, I have to lead in a
little bit by saying and like you might already notice
or have gleaned it from our kind of top of
the episode conversation. But the story of the American bison
is both incredibly tragic and upsetting and also one of
the most hopeful case studies of like concerted species recovery.
(18:03):
Humans both really wrecked and really came together to conserve
this species. Bison populations only exist on approximately one percent
of the lands that they inhabited just two hundred years ago.
They also came back from the brink of extinction to
(18:23):
being considered merely near threatened, which is like one step
down from doing just fine. Numbers vary, but there are
approximately four hundred thousand bison being kept as livestock around
North America and another fifty thousand maintained in like wild
conservational herds. That's sort of a rough average of a
(18:44):
bunch of different numbers I read.
Speaker 1 (18:45):
So it's yeah, yeah, and this is an episode that
is both very upsetting but it is it is hopeful
in the ways that people came together, and I am
happy that there's a lot to read about it. Oh yes, yes,
(19:07):
So if you were not going to go into every
specific event of people right like bringing these bison too
this suit or moving them to this land or whatever
it is, but I will tell you it's out there.
People have written about it. It really is.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
And yeah, uh, we're you know, we're we're going to
do the kind of top notes for you, and those
are that is already going to be a longer outline
than many.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Of our other episodes.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
But yeah, we're going to get into that history as
soon as we get back from a quick break for
a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. Okay,
So historians will that the early ancestor of the American
bison traces back to Asia and that they made their
way across the land bridge connecting what would become Asia
north America four hundred thousand years ago. Meanwhile, humans likely
(20:15):
arrived in North America thirteen two hundred to fifteen thousand,
five hundred years ago to find an environment that was
shaped already by these bison.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Yeah, being so large, bison really do have an impact
on their environment and are considered a keystone species because
like so okay for a bunch of reasons. So they
move and graze a lot, like maybe one thousand miles
over the course of a year, that's like sixteen hundred kilometers.
(20:45):
Their hoofs can soften earth and break up tough roots,
thus aerating the soil. They selectively eat particular plants like grasses,
which both spreads those seeds and also allows other plants
to flourish when they eat those grasses back right. Meanwhile,
(21:07):
their long fur carries other seeds with them, which they
also deposit as they travel. They provide a lot of
fertilizer back to the land.
Speaker 3 (21:16):
Buffalo poo, that's.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
A new one, right, in order to regulate body temperature
and parasitic insects.
Speaker 1 (21:31):
They will wallow in.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Wet ground or sometimes even in dry ground, like breaking
through the turf and creating pits that are free of
vegetation and slow to dry out, thus providing a home
for like insects and amphibians to carry out their life cycles.
Bison will rub against young trees at the edge of
woods as they shed their coats in the spring, which
(21:55):
can kill those trees and thus manage forest encroachment of grasslands.
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Birds follow along with.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Bison and feed on the insects that feed on them
and on their waste. If you ever driven through the
American planes, it might look really boring, but when that
ecosystem is actually working, it is hugely biologically.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
Diverse and fascinating.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
It's super cool.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, it really really is. The American bison was hugely
significant to planes Indian societies. They would follow these large
herds of the bison as they migrated from north to
south in the winter. They'd hunt them for food, but
also they used the skins for shelters and clothes, the
(22:45):
bones and horns for tools and weapons, and the rest
medicinally are for decoration. The meat was salted and preserved
to get through those winter months. Because of mindful hunting
and the substantial size of these herds, the population of
bison remained healthy. In eighteen hundred, an estimated sixty million
(23:07):
bison roamed North American prairies. Their migrations had important implications
for the environment too.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
Yeah yeah, and furthermore, plains people's helped manage and guide
bison populations, partially through controlled burns of grasslands at particular
times of the year. These burns allowed for new growth
to come up, which would attract bison herds to wherever
people wanted them to go.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Meanwhile, the name buffalo allegedly came from the French, who
termed it a bof savage or buffalo, a name that
was then picked up by other Europeans. The first written
instance of buffalo popped up in seventeen fifty four, So
(23:56):
stepping back a bit with the arrival of colonizers beginning
in the fifteen hundreds, we get the first European mentions
of bison, often describing how plentiful they were, how the
meat was fatty and nourishing, and the hides were useful.
The American bison population was hit really hard in the
(24:17):
nineteenth century, as colonizers spread west, not only did they
not show one bit of care about resource management or
learning about the ecosystem, they hunted not just for food,
but for sport and to purposefully deprive indigenous peoples of
a resource that was and had long been important to them,
(24:38):
with the hopes of driving them out. In the eighteen hundreds,
colonizers killed over fifty million bison. At the lowest estimate
of their numbers, only a couple thousand or even one
hundred of bison remained. And there's a lot of pieces
to this, and we are a food show, but we're
(25:00):
going to try to put in the main pieces. So
one is the expansion west. So the expansion west, in
part driven by the California Gold Rush, included building railways
which cut through the lands bison migrated through. Railway companies
didn't appreciate the damage these big animals did to their tracks,
(25:23):
so to combat it, they ran hunter specials. For instances
when bison would be near the railways, the hunters and
these hunter specials would shoot bison from the windows of
the train, and sometimes the train would stop so that
they could get out the hunters good and collect a
(25:43):
trophy from a down to buffalo. Salted bison tongue was
a delicacy on the East Coast at the time. Government
officials and hunting enthusiasts from around the world participated. The
bison was called the golden goose at the time. Generally
the carcasses were left to rot on either side of
(26:06):
the tracks because the meat was too difficult to transport
and sell, though sometimes hunters did collect and sell the
hide during summer months. The smell was so horrendous that
the railways suspended their summer hunter specials.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
Yeah yeah, yeah, oh yeah, so yeah. This also just
to put in, was remember a time before like refrigerated
train cars and stuff like that existed. This was when,
you know, we were still harvesting ice and we didn't
really have cold transport technology.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
Yes, and then we have newer guns that made hunting
bison easier. A bison hunter at the time named Frank h.
Meyer wrote, a couple of years before, it was nothing
to see five ten thousand buff in a day's ride. Now,
if I saw fifty, I was lucky. Presently all I
(27:05):
saw was rotting red carcasses or bleaching white bones. We
had killed the golden goose, So that was one piece
of it. Then in the eighteen thirties we have the
advent of steamboats traveling up and down the Missouri River,
which allowed for increased trade of bison meat and other
(27:27):
by products from bison. On top of that, artist renderings
of indigenous peoples on horses hunting bison captured the imagination
of American people. One such artist, George Catlin, sounded the
alarm that unless something changed, the bison would only exist
(27:48):
in art and memory. He called for parks or reserves
to protect the bison, but his suggestions were discarded. And
then you've got folks like Irish George Gore, who traveled
to the US on a hunting trip between eighteen fifty
four to eighteen fifty seven where he and his party
(28:09):
killed over four thousand bison and a bunch of other animals.
Of Indigenous peoples and frontier settlers protested, and the Lakota
essentially kicked him out. But instances like this led to
skirmishes and violence and a lot of needless death of bison. Yeah,
(28:31):
after the Civil War, the US government was pushing to
isolate indigenous peoples on to reservations as a part of
that the military killed bison on orders from their superiors.
Since bison were this major food source and so much
more than that for indigenous folks, the belief was that
(28:52):
eliminating access to bison would not only remove an essential resource,
but also shift Indigenous peoples from a nomadic people to farmers.
The goal of all of this was to coerce Indigenous
peoples into signing treaties that were handing over their land
and exchange for basic support from the government. A lot
(29:14):
of those treaties were later broken or not upheld by
the US government. Unfortunately, this support that they promised was
both lacking and came at a major cost. With the
intent of erasing Indigenous culture altogether, Entire peoples and cultures
(29:35):
forced into white supremacist, patriarchal structures. Lands were being taken,
families separated, children sent to boarding schools.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Yeah, yeah, I know, we're talking about bison today, But
Lauren's Killjoy Corner. We haven't had one of those in
a while. So I want to highlight two major pushes
that were instrumental to this that happened during the eighteen hundreds. Okay,
you've got the Removal Act of eighteen thirty and the
(30:06):
General Allotment or DAWs Act of eighteen eighty seven. The
Removal Act is what led to the Trail of Tears,
in which some fifteen thousand Indigenous Americans from around the
southeast died during forced relocation to territories west of the Mississippi.
That was obviously terrible. The DAWs Act was a little
(30:31):
more insidiously terrible because it broke up a lot of
tribal lands into private allotments, some of which were earmarked
for Native families. But this is not the way these
peoples worked. Like generally speaking, you know that they had
communities and collective land and resource management that sure was territorial,
(30:52):
but was not parceled. And the DAWs Act happened because
not just like the government and cow bpitalists and colonists
wanted chunks of that land, but also because social reformers,
who genuinely thought that they were doing the right thing,
wanted to save Native peoples from themselves by paving the
(31:14):
way for them to become profitable private farmers and ranchers.
No less than Teddy Roosevelt said, and I quote, the
effort should be to steadily make the Indian work like
any other man on his own ground. So the Removal
Act was relocation and the DAWs Act was assimilation.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
And it didn't even work because, like.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Even if they had wanted to, most of these people
didn't have the money to like just start up a
farm or a ranch. So a lot of families lost
the land that they were allotted. Anyway when taxes came due,
which colonists and businesses were happy to then buy up.
The short version, I could get into worse details, but yeah, yes,
(32:09):
kill Joy Corner over the extermination of bison was wrapped
up into this.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
Killjoy Corner re enter.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah, So by eighteen ninety, indigenous peoples across North America
were participating in a ghost dance dance hoping for a
future with bison and without white encroachers. And then there's
(32:44):
an infamous photo from this time of a bison skull
mountain that shows thousands and thousands of bison skulls piled
into a mountain with two white business men standing on
top of it, and the skulls were they were used
at the time to crush They were crushed down to
be a filter impurifier for sugar. But it's just such
(33:08):
a striking image it's horrifying and striking. Yep.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
It's one of those things if you have not seen
and you want to kind of ruin your day, definitely
look it up.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
Yeah, definitely look it up. Okay. So Congress realized that
the US government's actions had in part pushed the bison
to the brink of extinction and decided maybe that they
should do something, and so they passed legislation to regulate
the killing of bison in eighteen seventy four, but then
(33:46):
President Grant vetoed it. A little over a decade later,
they managed to pass a law against hunting of endangered
species like bison. They then outlawed the killing of animals
in Yellowstone National Park in eighteen ninety four. I have
to say, Yellowstone has a whole history with bison. You
can look up and read if you would like to.
(34:09):
These things did help, but it feels very much like
they created their own problem orchestrated this whole thing, and
now we're trying to put these band aids on it.
And Yeah, in eighteen eighty four, six hundred members of
the black Feet died due to starvation in the winter months,
(34:30):
and that was a quarter of their tribe.
Speaker 3 (34:32):
So yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
When you take away a resource that people depend on,
they cannot automatically switch.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah yeah, oh so, I mean so plentiful and they
had it, had been managing it and yeah yeah. Anyway,
that didn't stop Western consumerism from demanding people wanted parts
(35:04):
of the bison. Beginning in the eighteen eighties, there was
a big demand for bison bones, horns, and hooves. The
bones were ground up to use as fertilizer, while the
horns were fashioned into things like buttons and the hooves
into things like glue. So someone who was and had
(35:26):
been concerned about the bison population was the Smithsonians William Hornaday.
In eighteen eighty nine, he opened a small zoo on
the National Mall in Washington, d C. That featured a
few bison. Further, he convinced Congress to open up a
national zoo. It opened in eighteen ninety one, but without Hornaday,
(35:49):
who resigned due to differences with officials. He's also somebody
that if this episode wasn't already so long, he's been
involved in this fight for he was a part of
it for a while. Yeah. Okay, even with people like
horn to day, you still had the heights of the
(36:09):
buffalo were in high demand for jackets and clothes on
the East Coast in the early nineteen hundreds, and all
of this led to the formation of the American Bison Society,
which Horned Day was a part of in New York's
Bronx Zoo in nineteen oh five, with the goal of
preventing extinction of the of the bison and growing the
(36:30):
number of them. Theodore Roosevelt was named the honorary president.
He was an early proponent of the US conservation movement,
allegedly after he went to hunt buffalo and the Dakota
Territory in eighteen eighty three and observed how low their
numbers were. He wanted to help those numbers to get
(36:51):
back up, so he came together to help found this organization. However,
as Lauren has already alluded to, he also I thought
that the extermination of the bison was necessary to control
the indigenous population. So he's not great. Let's not give
him too much credit, if any.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Yeah, our dear friend, super producer Tyler Klang helped helped
make a whole show about the Adore Roosevelt a few
years ago, and really good, meaty, weird.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
Complicated stuff.
Speaker 2 (37:28):
So, oh gosh, I don't remember the name of it,
but if you like, I don't know, google the Adore
Roosevelt podcast. I feel like you'll figure it out. If
this is a thing that interests you anyway, I'm sorry,
go ahead, any.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Yes, yes, anyway. In early focus for the American Bison
Society was reintroducing bison into parts of the West. To
that end, they sent fifteen bison to a preserve in
Oklahoma in nineteen oh seven, and did similar things in
other areas over the next decade. They later went on
to partner with indigenous people's who had long been doing
(38:02):
the work of preserving bison. Once again, this is something
you can find much more information about online.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Oh yes, oh yeah. Meanwhile, the image of the bison
was still part of this popular conception of America, of
the United States as a country, and so along those
lines you've got things like the Buffalo nickel, which was
(38:32):
a five cent coin with like a kind of stereotyped
American Indian portrait on the front and a profile of
a bison on the back that was minted from nineteen
thirteen through nineteen thirty eight. The artist one James Earl
Fraser did grow up in like Minnesota and South Dakota,
but probably based his bison design on an animal kept
(38:53):
at the aforementioned Bronx Zoo. The bison was adopted as
part of the Wyoming state flag in nineteen seventeen. The
flag is like a white bison on a field of
blue bordered by white and then red, with the state
seal placed in the center of the bison.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
Yes, and then museums across the country started spotlighting the
bison and the fact that they were endangered the nineteen twenties, which,
by the way, I just remembered there's a scene of
this in my favorite game of all time, The Last
of Us Too Am, and there's a bison exhibit. Okay, yes,
(39:34):
Oh it's not good.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Is there any scene in that game that's like good?
Speaker 1 (39:42):
There's some that are better than that. Cool cool, cool cool. Yes.
Speaker 3 (39:52):
Well.
Speaker 2 (39:53):
In nineteen fifty one, the National Park Service adopted its
current emblem is a part of so if you're unfamiliar
with it, it's this arrowhead shape that features a landscape
with a mountain and lake in the background and kind
of like grasslands and a big Sequoia pine in the foreground,
and then a bison standing center at the base of
(40:17):
the design.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
I'm sure I've seen it.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, it's like brown and green and white.
Speaker 3 (40:24):
It's really cute.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
Then in the nineteen seventies, we have to talk about
Ted Turner, so then butting media mogul Ted Turner became
interested in bison ranching as a sort of side project,
Like he was in the midst of starting up what
would become TBS and CNN in like nineteen seventy seventy
(40:48):
six through seventy nine. And also during that time he
like bought some bison and some farmland and started what's
called Turner Enterprises, Incorporated, which is a company that today
manages i think either the most or like the second
most privately held ranch land in the United States. It
(41:09):
also owns some ranchland in other countries as well. It's
over two million acres wow, and definitely manages the largest
privately held bison population, some forty five thousand animals. Like
it was a business thing, but it was also an
(41:30):
environmental conservation thing, and like he worked with lots of
legit groups to help figure out how to preserve lands
and herds. He would later start up a bison steakhouse,
a chain of bison steakhouses called Ted's Montana Grill. The
(41:50):
first one opened in two thousand and eight. There are
still a bunch around Atlanta, which was Turner's like adopted hometown.
There's smattering of other restaurants around, but there's a bunch
around Atlanta.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
And I okay, I was thrilled. Lauren put this note
in here because I had mentioned we were doing this
episode and my co host over at Sminty was like,
so you're gonna talk about Ted Turner and had no
idea what she was like, I.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
Guess like, were there bison on Cartoon Network?
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Like what? But now I'm determined, Lauren and I will
go to a Ted's Montana Grille. Yeah, it's I have
super producers.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Oh my god. Right, good field trip, good field trip.
Speaker 1 (42:41):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2 (42:42):
Oh I'm hungry again. Okay.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
Anyway, yes, well I am excited. Okay. So, the Wildlife
Conservation Society, alongside the Black Pect Nation, Oakland Zoo and
the Elk Island National Park in Alberta, Canada, worked together
to successfully relocate eighty eight bison to the Blackfeet Reservation
(43:07):
in Montana in twenty sixteen. So this is a part
of those efforts to move bison back to where they're from. Also,
in twenty sixteen, the bison was designated in the US
as the National mammal, a decision which drew some criticism
due to the history that we've been talking about that
(43:29):
the US has of decimating the population of bison and
how a large part of that hinged on the intent
to harm and destroy indigenous peoples. So with all of that,
while the bison population has been growing thanks to the
efforts of indigenous peoples, some legislation, and organizations, they still
(43:52):
face a lot of threats climate change as always, disease,
increased urbanization and agriculture sure that impacts their habitat, lack
of genetic diversity, and that's just to name a few.
But people are looking into this, people are working on
building up their populations.
Speaker 2 (44:12):
Yeah yeah, I mean, you know, it's it's never never
going to be sixty million and one million would be wild. Yeah,
but it is so so painfully hopeful, so like hopeful
(44:36):
balanced on the edge of a razor blade, that these
kind of increases in population have been possible.
Speaker 1 (44:44):
Yes, And with the work of the people who have
been there, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
Yeah, And by actually listening to indigenous people's.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
What wow, well a wild idea, yeah, I know. And
a lot of the episodes we do that have specifically
indigenous topics, they often have a like a food preservation
(45:15):
websites and like how we're trying to build up these
food ways again, so I would say look those up. Yeah,
because it exists. It's sad that it has to, but
you know, remembering these things and bringing those things back
and making sure they don't get lost.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
Yeah, that's where it would have been super cool to
go do some interviews. But yeah, that's what That's what
we got for you about bison today.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
It is, and we would love to hear from you listeners.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
Yes, oh my goodness, have you met a bison from
hopefully it Scared to bus links? Yeah, I like large
dog freak me out sometimes and I love dogs, so
like that, I just feel like a bison.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
It can move, as you said, I I'm not.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
There quick, and they're unpredictable because they are.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Wilds and they're big. Mm hmm, I'm small.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 3 (46:21):
Chairs.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
No, No, we would as always love to hear from you,
but yeah, that's what we've got to say for now.
We do already have some listener mail for you, and
we are going to get into that as soon as
we get back from one more quick break for a
word from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you, and we're back with
snool Bison look out Out. So Hailey wrote, I am devastated.
(47:13):
I just heard the announcement my favorite show. What will
I do without your food facts, silly banter and comforting voices.
I hope you know read my past messages how much
this show has helped me through good days and bad.
I'm the weird cookie girl and am happy to say
that I've been running my cookie business full time for
(47:35):
a year now. Many many hours have been spent rolling
cookie dough with your voices in the background. I appreciate
all you've done for me in the world by sharing
this podcast. If this was forced upon you by the
powers that be, know that I'm shaking my fist on
your behalf. If this was a personal decision, I totally
(47:56):
support that and love that you'll have more time for
other endeavors. Either way, Please know how much you've shaped
your listeners' worlds, how loved you both are, and how
missed you'll be Time to reset my podcast feed from
unplayed only to all episodes.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
Oh oh my goodness, Oh thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Thank you, Hailey, and you have written in over the years.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
And I love I love checking up on your cookie
business on Instagram. I saw your message on there and
I was like, oh, no.
Speaker 1 (48:33):
I yeah, that's I'm glad that you're you're running it
full time's graduations. Yes, congratulations, and I'm glad that we
could have been a small part of you rolling out
those cookies. Yeah, coming up with these creations. We have
(48:55):
loved hearing from you. And as as we've said, we're
not going away, like our emails will still exist. Yeah,
I'll still be checking it and hopefully we'll still randomly
be able to.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Just pop up. Yeah, but yeah, if not, thank you. Yes,
it's meant a lot, It really has. It really has. Yeah.
I've said often that it's it's a weirdly lonely form
of media, you know, because we're just recording in our houses,
(49:33):
not even in a studio anymore, and so it's kind
of like a lovely surprise to be reminded that humans
are actually listening.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
It really is and engaging and sharing.
Speaker 2 (49:46):
Yeah, yes, and right, and part of a weird little community.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
Yes, a weird wonderful community that we built.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
Yes. Oh, Janet wrote time runs short for us, and
I cannot bear to edit any shorter. As a Queenslander,
May I explain my Home States relationship with the much
prized Kensington Pride mango, now grown anywhere warm enough and
(50:17):
shipped Australia wide. The KP is also known as the
bow and Mango after its birthplace and former primary growing region.
A polyembryonic variety, the crop has a highly variable yield
year to year, yet through strong preference for it, it
retains around eighty percent of the Australian market. The fruit
is large, commonly four hundred to five hundred grams, which
(50:40):
is about a pound, and it is living heart shaped,
like their family name and a cardiassia sure. The upward
facing heart ripened fruit blushes from apple green through a
spectrum of yellows and oranges to a peachy pink sun
kiss on the upper curve. It's smells heady like, stickly
(51:02):
humid summer sunshine and intense tropical sweetness. A combination of
rich floral peachy scent combined with an apple like freshness
or citrus brightness and an almost hoppy, spicy sappy undertone
from the skin and stem. All other mangoes feel like
they are missing something from the mix. By comparison less
ripe specimens continue apple and citrus brightness in their taste
(51:26):
of being noticeably sour, but I recommend waiting until any
remaining sourness is smothered by sweetness and perfume. Food science
explains that an unusually high concentration of the monoterpene terpinileine
is responsible for the cultivar's distinctive flavor and perfume. This
terpene is also being investigated for a possible pharmacological effects
(51:49):
such as anxiety and pain reduction. Speak to your healthcare
professional before consuming a medicinal quantity of Kensington Pride. Mangoes
consume a Kensington Pride by cheeking it around the fibris seed,
then give the flesh a pineapple crisscross cut and invert
the peel so you can eat chunks directly from it.
The ripe flesh has a rich, dense orange color, and
(52:10):
the texture is velvety, smooth, and somewhat firm, giving way
to a melting softness when bitten into releasing a gloriously
messy amount of juice. Stringiness is only noticeable if you
like a culinary icarus have cut too close to the seed.
Deliciousness and possible mood improvement by themself may explain why
Australia loves the Kensington.
Speaker 3 (52:31):
Pride so dearly.
Speaker 2 (52:33):
However, I believe the history of mangoes in Australia plays
a large part too. Australia's love of mangoes began when
Walter Hill championed the mango as the chief Colonial Botanist,
a precision he held from eighteen fifty nine to eighteen
eighty one in the botanical gardens of Brisbane. His championing
is shown in this letter he wrote to the Queenslander
in eighteen seventy about seven varietals that he had successfully cultivated,
(52:58):
skipping the letter, Yes, but moving he was right, and
I have a huge, doddering mango tree in my backyard
to prove it. The fruit, bats and possums don't seem
to mind that it's a stringy variety known locally as
a turpentine. But mister Hill was far from the only
source of mango varieties in Queensland. Harbourmasters all along the
Queensland coast would take in seeds from various visiting cargo ships.
(53:21):
Some of the earliest recorded mangoes were grown by mister Fraser,
the colonial botanist, at Redcliffe Upport north of Brisbane in
the eighteen forties. Many otherwise exotic plants became part of
local food landscapes in many coastal Queensland towns. This point
is where my family's oral and gardening traditions joined the story.
Plants such as the Southeast Asian passion fruit and South
(53:43):
American chocove vines would adorn every Queenslander's outhouse, and notably
gardener's cultivated chili plants only ever used to make mango
chutney by small town locals. Wild and uncataloged local mango
cultivars flourished into large and sta trees perfect for climbing
in in backyards all over Queensland, with descriptive names like
(54:06):
Bullock's Heart, common or stringy mango, and the strawberry still
grown recreationally more than one hundred years after Walter Hill
introduced it. The mango tree was a universal part of
the Queensland summer experience for many generations. As for the
Kensington Pride. I've been so far unable to locate primary
sources for much of the story of its origin, the
(54:29):
story being that many different mango seeds from India were
given to the harbourmaster of the town of Bowen in
the eighteen eighties and eventually resulted in the cultivation of
the Kensington Pride on the Kensington Estate. With the mango
already well known to Queenslanders, it was the superior flavor
and texture that made the Kensington Pride a going concern.
(54:50):
As we say locally, it was so good that you'd
pay money for it even if you didn't have to.
The arrival of mango season is still celebrated in Queensland
to this day. It still refers to when the Kensington
Pride crop hits the market. The giant old mango tree
in my backyard is dying, but I intend to cultivate
its seedlings to help the story of the Australian mango
(55:12):
continue on.
Speaker 1 (55:14):
I just felt real regret. Yeah, right, mango trees died.
Speaker 2 (55:23):
It's so sad when a big old tree dies, and
I know they're not eternal. I mean, you know, like
I know that there are some trees that are more
or less that thing.
Speaker 3 (55:30):
But yeah, oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (55:36):
But I'm glad you're cultivating seedlings. Yeah, the story live on.
Help us the old tree live on. And yeah, thank
you so much for taking the time.
Speaker 2 (55:48):
Oh my goodness, right write this to us, to share
this with us.
Speaker 1 (55:56):
So fascinating and so interesting because we don't always get
the international perspective even though we try to get it.
Speaker 2 (56:04):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, well and you know, and like
we only have so much time on the show to
say things and so right, you know, like we can't
always follow the threads down every corridor that a plant
has gone down. So yeah, yeah, getting all of this.
And I'm so sorry if I with my American accent
butchered all of your local place names. That's any mistakes
(56:26):
are mine. Uh but oh, mangoes are so good. Mangos
are so good.
Speaker 1 (56:35):
And I am so happy that you wrote in about this.
Speaker 2 (56:39):
Yeah, like I legitimately I really need to try one
of these mangoes now.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
Yes, yes, And and just the history of it really
detailed in a way that Lauren and I appreciate. Oh yeah, sho,
oh my goodness, so yes, thank you, thank you, Thanks
(57:07):
to both of these listeners for writing in. If you
would like to write to us, you can. Our email
is Hello at savorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (57:16):
We are also on social media. You can find us
on Instagram and blue Sky at savor pod and we
do hope to hear from you. Save is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you
can visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our
superproducers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
(57:38):
and we hope that lots more good things are coming
your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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