After a few months fattening up on Delta Junction hay, 28 young wood bison are starting the long journey from Fairbanks to the Lower Innoko River region. It’s the latest step in a decades-long effort to re-establish the animals in Alaska.
Young Wood Bison that are being transported to join a herd seeded along the Innoko River in 2015.
“When we first got them, they were just kind of bony calves that had just been weaned, and we wanted to get their body condition up. So we got them on some really good hay from Delta Junction and supplementing them with alfalfa pellets to try to improve their protein so they can gain some muscle mass,” he said. “This summer was a great growing summer, and you can really see it in the bison. Some gained as much as 200 pounds since April, and it’s pretty amazing.
The bison are traveling in four customized steel shipping containers, which longtime project partner Carlile Transportation trucked from Fairbanks to Nenana Wednesday. From Nenana, it’s a three-to-four-day barge voyage along the Tanana, Yukon and Innoko Rivers to a pre-staged release site on the Innoko. Seaton says 2 biologists are accompanying the wood bison on the river trip, during which overheating is the biggest concern.
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