On October 18, 1993, on a rolling expanse of unplowed grassland in Osage County, Oklahoma, the gates of a wooden corral opened and 300 American bison walked out onto the largest unplowed tallgrass prairie remaining on Earth. The man who had been invited to speak at the ceremony was four-star General Norman Schwarzkopf, the architect of Operation Desert Storm, two years into his retirement and at the peak of his post-military fame. Almost nobody in America knew the ceremony was happening.

This video tells the full story of how Joseph H. Williams, Harvey Payne, Frederick Drummond, and Kenneth Adams brought the bison back to the prairie that 142 million acres of European agriculture had nearly destroyed.

But here's the twist — what those 300 bison did over the next 32 years has, in real measurable terms, changed what conservation biologists thought was possible about the recovery of one of America's most damaged ecosystems. Peer-reviewed research at the Konza Prairie Biological Station documented an 86% increase in native plant species richness under bison grazing, while cattle grazing produced only a 30% increase. The herd has grown from 300 to over 2,500 animals. Greater prairie chickens still breed there. The federally endangered American burying beetle still survives there.

How does an ecosystem that has been damaged for over a century come back to life?

Drop your thoughts in the comments — I read every one.

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