Fermilab bison herd
The Fermilab bison herd was established in 1969[1] at the U.S. national laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, about 34 mi (55 km) west of Chicago, under the leadership of physicist, amateur architect and Wyoming native Robert R. Wilson.[2] The herd grazes an 800-acre (320 ha; 3.2 km2) pasture[3] adjacent to the Fermilab prairie, which sits atop the accelerator's underground Main Ring and Tevatron.[4][5] The herd usually averages around 25 individuals;[6] as of spring 2022, the head count of the herd was 32 individuals.[7]
History and ecology
A bull and four cows
The Fermilab herd is one of 12 federally managed "buffalo" herds in the United States.[13] Most of the federal herds are managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service and partners; Fermilab's herd is solely managed by the Department of Energy.[13] All of the government-owned herds are considered conservation herds; there were about 50 conservation herds in North America circa 2006.[13] (Hundreds of thousands of other bison are owned by commercial ranching operations.)[13][8]
Both the bison herd and the prairie are part of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Environmental Research Park.[14] The Fermilab herd of DuPage County, and two other herds established during the 21st century at Nachusa Grasslands (Ogle County–Lee County) and Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie (Will County) represent the first bison to live in Illinois since the early 1800s.[15] Testing has found that the Fermilab display herd of indigenous Bison bison does not have any introgression of either mitochondrial or nuclear DNA[16] from domestic cattle (Bos taurus).[3]
Twitter-suggested names for a bison calf born at the lab in 2016 included Higgs Bison, Bison Tennial, Niels Bohrson and Neil DeGrass Bison.[17]
Management
The herd got up to 160 head in the 1990s[8] but is now kept to about 20 to 25 animals.[6] The herd's bulls are changed out from time to time in order to prevent inbreeding depression.[18] The bison get annual veterinary checkups but are otherwise left to their own devices.[7] There is a bison cemetery on the laboratory grounds where they bury animals that die of old age; other animals are auctioned off to ranchers in order to maintain a herd size appropriate for the carrying capacity of the site.[8] The Fermi herdsmen responsible for the bison, in cooperation with the lab's Roads and Grounds Department,[7] work out of a converted dairy building that dates to around 1900.[8]
Access
According to one site caretaker, the most important thing to know about bison is "leave them alone."[6]
Fans can observe the herd via a
See also
References
- ^ a b "Bison at Fermilab". Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (fnal.gov). Retrieved 2023-02-03.
- JSTOR 24080689.
- ^ a b Shivni, Rashmi (January 27, 2016). "The genetic purity and diversity of the Fermilab bison herd". Fermilab News. Retrieved 2023-02-03.
- S2CID 253592082.
- ^ Collision course. By: Merrion, Paul, Crain's Chicago Business, 01496956, 11/10/2003, Vol. 26, Issue 45
- ^ Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b c Marks, Tracy (April 14, 2022). "Fermilab is home to a new baby bison". Fermilab News (news.fnal.gov). Retrieved 2023-02-03.
- ^ Newspapers.com.
- ^ Jacobs, Tom (November–December 2008). "The Enduring Mystery of the Higgs Boson". Miller-McCune.com. Vol. 1, no. 6. pp. 84–85.
- ^ Fliege, Stu (March–April 2009). "Book Review: Quantum physics on the prairie". Illinois Heritage. 12 (2): 35.
- ^ S2CID 145564689.
- JSTOR 40261356.
- ^ a b c d Boyd, Delaney P.; Gates, C. Cormack (Spring 2006). "A Brief Review of the Status of Plains Bison in North America". Journal of the West. 45 (2): 15–21.
- Ebscohost.
- ISSN 0031-2746.
- ^ "Mammals at Fermilab". Fermilab Nature and Ecology (ecology.fnal.gov). Retrieved 2023-02-05.
- ISSN 0028-0836.
- Newspapers.com.
- ^ a b "Fermilab Hours, Maps and Directions". Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (fnal.gov). Retrieved 2023-02-05.
Further reading
- Hoddeson, Lillian; Kolb, Adrienne W.; Westfall, Catherine (2008). Fermilab : physics, the frontier, and megascience. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. OCLC 434595805.