The hulking animals that stepped from trailers to corrals here late at night drew a hushed, attentive audience of about 25 people. The reason for the reverence: wild bison have been reintroduced on the prairies east of the Mississippi River for the first time since the 1830s, says the conservation group coordinating the effort. In a few days, the 20 animals will be released from the corral to gradually roam much of the 3,500-acre Nachusa Grasslands -- the key part of an ambitious prairie restoration 95 miles west of Chicago. The word that keeps coming up is surreal, said Jeff Walk, director of science for the Illinois Chapter of The Nature Conservancy, which owns Nachusa and has been readying the land for the bison since the late 1980s.
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 23:30:00 +0000
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