Although farmers and ranchers considered bison to be a nuisance, some people were concerned about the demise of this "North American icon", so individual landowners and zoos took steps to protect them.

[9] The northernmost introduction occurred in 1928 when the Alaska Game Commission brought bison to the area of present-day Delta Junction.

Currently, over 500,000 bison are spread over the United States and Canada, but most of these are on private ranches, and some of them have small amounts of hybridized cattle genes.

According to the national agency Parks Canada, the entire breeding population of these wild and "semiwild" bison is descended from just eight individuals that survived the period of near extinction, due to overhunting and tuberculosis infecting the herd.

Fifteen animals were shipped to Oklahoma, where bison had already become extinct due to excessive hunting and overharvesting by non-native commercial buffalo hunters from 1874 to 1878.

[14] Some of these specimens have been released in other areas of the United States, such as Paynes Prairie in Florida.Only one southern plains bison herd was established in Texas.

[9] Ted Turner owns America's largest secured bison herd in Cimarron, New Mexico's Vermejo Park Ranch.

[18] Besides using the meat, fat, and organs for food, plains tribes have traditionally created a wide variety of tools and items from bison.

These include arrow points, awls, beads, berry pounders, hide scrapers, hoes, needles from bones, spoons from the horns, bow strings and thread from the sinew, waterproof containers from the bladder, paint brushes from the tail and bones with intact marrow, and cooking oil from tallow.