2011 ABS Conference, Tulsa

American Bison Society Meeting on Bison Ecological Restoration
March 23-25, 2011, Tulsa Marriott Southern Hills, Tulsa, Oklahoma

The American Bison Society and the Wildlife Conservation Society hosted our third meeting on Bison Ecological Restoration on March 23-25, 2011, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The 2011 meeting brought stakeholders together to address a set of focal issues facing bison restoration and included three panels of experts from the US and Canada that explored the following topics:

• Techniques for Bison Genetic Evaluation

• Guidelines for Managing Bison Genetics

• Bison Ecological Interactions

The meeting was co-sponsored by the Linden Trust for Conservation, the National Park Service, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and World Wildlife Fund-US.

- Download conference program -

Copies of the panel presentations are available here for download.

Panel I: Techniques for Bison Genetic Evaluation

• Matthew Cronin, University of Alaska Fairbanks, "Bison subspecies"
• Gisella Caccone, YIBS-Molecular Systematics Conservation Genetics Center, Yale University, "Giant Galapagos tortoises: insights for managing the American bison?"
• Phil Hedrick, Arizona State University, "Bison conservation genetics"
• Robert Schnabel, University of Missouri, "High throughput genomic technologies for bison"

Panel II: Guidelines for Managing Bison Genetics

• Keith Aune, Wildlife Conservation Society, and Thomas Jung, Yukon Department of Environment, "Survey of bison managers: genetic issues and concerns"
• Oliver Ryder, San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, "Management for population persistence: developing guidelines for managed populations for which introgression is a concern"
• Richard Reading, Denver Zoological Foundation, "Managing the genetic integrity of bison in the field: lessons from Mongolia"
• Greg Wilson, Environment Canada, Canadian Wildlife Service, "Wood-plains bison hybridization and the loss of genetic diversity in small herds"
• Peter Dratch, US Fish & Wildlife Service, Inventory and Monitoring Initiative, "Management of bison conservation herds with historic cattle ancestry"

Panel III: Documenting Bison Ecological Interactions

• Cormack Gates, University of Calgary, IUCN Bison Specialist Group, "From the ground up: cascading ecological effects of bison"
• Kate Schoenecker, USGS-Fort Collins Science Center, and Natural Resources Ecology Lab, Colorado State University, "Bison-elk niche overlap in an arid habitat"
• Steve Zack, Wildlife Conservation Society, "Grassland birds as indicators of the ecological recovery of bison"
• Michel Kohl, Boone and Crockett Program in Wildlife Conservation, University of Montana, and Kyran Kunkel, WWF-US, "Ecological monitoring of bison with telemetry data"
• Joseph Craine, Kansas State University, "Climate change and the climate-nutrition-performance cascade for bison"

 

Posters: 

Kevin Ellison and Steve Zack, Wildlife Conservation Society:

1. Toward defining and measuring an ecological restoration of bison
2. Using grassland birds to guide an ecological restoration of bison