Trophic effects of bison slaughters in the 19th Century?

[Chase]

We are all aware of the decimation of bison and why it happened. And, at times, thousands of the buffalo that were killed were used for food, fur, trophies, penis compensation, whatever. Then there were the tens of thousands that were killed and left to decompose on the Plains, basins, et cetera until few were left.
Question: what happened to the ecosystems in this decades (say, 1830's - 1880's) when all those beasts rotted and disappeared? For example, it would seem that wolves, coyotes, ravens, and other animals would thrive for a few decades due to the Costco of free food for them to snack upon. Populations of certain animals must have swelled. Yes?
Then those populations must have shrunk as bison disappeared (mostly) and cattle farms, barbed wire, and humans shrank their habitat.
Anyone know about this swelling (I'm purely guessing it happened) and shrinking of certain animal (and plant) populations?

[drm]

Such a possible population increase would have been at the same time that increasing human populations were eradicating predators and hunting their prey in general. So even if there had been a major attempt to gather such statistics, it would be very hard to separate the effects from the bison crash from all the other impacts. I have seen some discussion of their impact on browse. They ate a lot of grass and effectively were replaced by cattle of European extraction. But the exact favored species and eating habits of the two animals are not the same and there has been some research on the impacts on grasslands from that switch. This is helped along by some large ranches that house only bison now so can be studied with modern methods.

The other thing to keep in mind regarding the bison is that the massive populations were in part the result of the decimation of the native populations. The natives didn't hunt them to extinction, but they certainly did hunt them. Most native populations crashed due to European-brought diseases before many settlers reached them - the diseases traveled ahead of the main settler wave. So by the time eastern settlers arrived, the native population had already crashed and the bison increased - eastern settlers found the leftovers of those crashed societies and mistakenly assumed that is how they always lived - and that the resultant bison populations had also been like that. Earlier visitors from the south - i.e. Spanish - saw far fewer bison and lots more people in more developed cities. But their diaries were not available until more recently. Much research is now done on pre-Columbian populations in the Americas and there were more people and higher developed societies than was previously known. So it's not like the ecological relationships with bison were stable at those high populations. Most likely other animals were still adjusting to the increasing bison herds when they were decimated.

[Aimless]

Much research is now done on pre-Columbian populations in the Americas

An easily accessible and fairly recent book that covers much of this research is 1491 by Charles C. Mann. I found it fascinating and learned a lot from it. However, the author himself warns that the book reflects his own biases in favor of certain theories that may not have attained full agreement among the experts. Helpfully, he generally signals when he's on solid ground and when he's creeping out on a limb.

[kepPNW]

Most native populations crashed due to European-brought diseases before many settlers reached them - the diseases traveled ahead of the main settler wave. So by the time eastern settlers arrived, the native population had already crashed and the bison increased - eastern settlers found the leftovers of those crashed societies and mistakenly assumed that is how they always lived - and that the resultant bison populations had also been like that. Earlier visitors from the south - i.e. Spanish - saw far fewer bison and lots more people in more developed cities.

This is absolutely fascinating! I'd never heard that before. Another myth destroyed!

[Charley]

The other thing to keep in mind regarding the bison is that the massive populations were in part the result of the decimation of the native populations. The natives didn't hunt them to extinction, but they certainly did hunt them. Most native populations crashed due to European-brought diseases before many settlers reached them - the diseases traveled ahead of the main settler wave. So by the time eastern settlers arrived, the native population had already crashed and the bison increased - eastern settlers found the leftovers of those crashed societies and mistakenly assumed that is how they always lived - and that the resultant bison populations had also been like that. Earlier visitors from the south - i.e. Spanish - saw far fewer bison and lots more people in more developed cities. But their diaries were not available until more recently. Much research is now done on pre-Columbian populations in the Americas and there were more people and higher developed societies than was previously known. So it's not like the ecological relationships with bison were stable at those high populations. Most likely other animals were still adjusting to the increasing bison herds when they were decimated.

Jaw dropped! So, to continue this chain of trophic effects, think back to North America before Homo Sapiens arrived! How things must have changed over the millennia. There were woolly mammoths and mastodons back then, too!

[drm]

Much research is now done on pre-Columbian populations in the Americas

An easily accessible and fairly recent book that covers much of this research is 1491 by Charles C. Mann. I found it fascinating and learned a lot from it. However, the author himself warns that the book reflects his own biases in favor of certain theories that may not have attained full agreement among the experts. Helpfully, he generally signals when he's on solid ground and when he's creeping out on a limb.

This is the book that first opened my eyes to this subject, though I have seen TV shows on it since then. Given how little is left over from most of these old civilizations, there will always be some controversy and disagreement. But the trend towards accepting that pre-Columbian societies were more populous and developed than previously thought is pretty well established. In one place in the book 1491, they compare a report from a Spanish and a British colonial expedition to some place in the Southwest that are I think 100 years or less apart. The Spanish spoke of large towns and agriculture and didn't even mention bison. The later British expedition found a few locals living in hovels and huge herds of bison in the very same place.

Regarding mammoths and the like (there were huge dire wolves and saber tooth cats too), there were also mammoths in Asia that went extinct at about the same time as in North America. They even went extinct in parts of Siberia that had no people that we can find trace of. So it seems that the warming post-glacial climate probably had more to do with their disappearance in North America than the arrival of people (though presumably that contributed).

[Chase]

Such a possible population increase would have been at the same time that increasing human populations were eradicating predators and hunting their prey in general. So even if there had been a major attempt to gather such statistics, it would be very hard to separate the effects from the bison crash from all the other impacts. I have seen some discussion of their impact on browse. They ate a lot of grass and effectively were replaced by cattle of European extraction. But the exact favored species and eating habits of the two animals are not the same and there has been some research on the impacts on grasslands from that switch. This is helped along by some large ranches that house only bison now so can be studied with modern methods.

Wow, this is just a fantastic answer! Thanks for summarizing it so well!

I read up a bit on this at the library and found some good info online as well. There definitely were some years where carcasses littered the prairie (hides and tongues removed; most meat left behind). Animals ate the meat and many of these animals were killed by men wanting their fur.

BUT! Bones! Bones actually had to be cleared and put in piles to make room for farming in many areas (later sold to the fertilizer industry).

[Wikipedia photo]

So, less of a trophic effect and more of a messy one, like a child moving into a clean bedroom full of toys and never told to pick up after himself.

The other thing to keep in mind regarding the bison is that the massive populations were in part the result of the decimation of the native populations. The natives didn't hunt them to extinction, but they certainly did hunt them. Most native populations crashed due to European-brought diseases before many settlers reached them - the diseases traveled ahead of the main settler wave. So by the time eastern settlers arrived, the native population had already crashed and the bison increased - eastern settlers found the leftovers of those crashed societies and mistakenly assumed that is how they always lived - and that the resultant bison populations had also been like that. Earlier visitors from the south - i.e. Spanish - saw far fewer bison and lots more people in more developed cities. But their diaries were not available until more recently. Much research is now done on pre-Columbian populations in the Americas and there were more people and higher developed societies than was previously known. So it's not like the ecological relationships with bison were stable at those high populations. Most likely other animals were still adjusting to the increasing bison herds when they were decimated.

Native Americans sure had some clever ways of hunting large numbers of bison. See, I thought, 'hey, they didn't have horses or guns, so they couldn't have killed THAT many, right?' Well, they certainly did, and some methods are too gruesome to detail in this forum.

And I gotta get a copy of that book mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Thanks for all the great info!