Utah’s 2,236 bison records have one dominant address: Antelope Island State Park accounts for 1,553 of them, and Davis County, the island’s county, holds 2,156 of the state total.
An island herd older than the park
Twelve bison turned loose on Antelope Island in 1893 grew into one of the oldest and largest publicly managed herds in the country, grazing native grassland on hills above the Great Salt Lake’s shore. The herd is worked each autumn in a well-known public roundup, and the record follows that rhythm, cresting in April during calving season and again in October when the roundup takes place.
A second, wilder story
The record’s only other named landmark is the Henry Mountains, and it matters. The Henry Mountains herd, established from Yellowstone stock in the 1940s, is one of the few genuinely free-roaming bison herds in the country, drifting across high desert benches in the state’s south, and Garfield County’s small record count belongs to it. Whether island-managed or desert-roaming, these are wild animals of up to a ton, fast and unpredictable, and people are injured around bison precisely because the animals’ calm posture lies.
Status in Utah
The overlay treats the bison as native to its mapped Utah range, and USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous in the state. Utah’s herds are managed conservation animals, one island-bound and one free-roaming, and the IUCN lists the species globally as Near Threatened.
