Of North Dakota’s 1,952 bison records, 1,829 come from Theodore Roosevelt National Park, with Billings County alone holding 1,622 and McKenzie County 280 more. The park’s two units, stitched to the Little Missouri River through the badlands, are effectively the state’s whole bison story.
Badlands herds on old prairie
Bison are native to this mixed-grass country and were hunted to near extinction across the northern plains by the 1880s. The park’s herds descend from animals reintroduced in the mid-twentieth century, and they now range freely across badland benches, sage flats, and wooded draws, with the Little Missouri National Grassland wrapping around both units. Records away from this country are scattered and few; outside the park, a wild bison in North Dakota is a rarity.
A summer of dust and bellowing
Reports build through spring and peak from June through August, when the rut puts bellowing, wallowing bulls out in the open, then the record surges again in November. Bison stay active all year in the badlands, pawing through snow for grass rather than migrating out. Their size fools people: an animal that can weigh a ton can also spin and charge faster than a person can react, and anyone on foot near a herd is in real danger whether the animals look calm or not.
Status in North Dakota
The overlay treats the bison as native to its mapped North Dakota range, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state. The wild presence is essentially the park’s managed herds, and the IUCN lists the species globally as Near Threatened.
