South Dakota’s 5,523 bison records are the heaviest concentration of bison documentation in this atlas, and they sit almost entirely in the state’s southwest corner: Custer County with 2,679, Shannon County with 1,699, and Pennington County with 1,087, anchored by Badlands National Park, Custer State Park, and Wind Cave National Park.
Three herds, three landscapes
Each park runs its own herd. Wind Cave’s animals graze mixed-grass prairie against a ponderosa pine edge and rank among the few federal herds shown free of cattle-gene ancestry. The Badlands herd works the park’s open tablelands, with some records spilling onto the surrounding Buffalo Gap National Grassland. Custer State Park’s herd descends from remnant stock gathered in the early twentieth century and is still managed with a well-known autumn roundup on horseback.
A year written in hooves
Bison are active in every month here, pawing through winter snow for grass, and the record reflects it. Reports crest in July at the height of the rut, when bulls join the cow herds to bellow and wallow, then surge far higher in October, when the roundup works the Custer herd and autumn crowds fill the parks. None of this changes what the animals are: wild bovines of up to a ton that can pivot and charge faster than a person can react, and they are given a wide berth in every season.
Status in South Dakota
The overlay treats the bison as native to its mapped South Dakota range, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state. The herds are managed park populations rather than free statewide wildlife, and the IUCN lists the species globally as Near Threatened.
