ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 30, 2024
Excerpt from USA TODAY
By Cy Neff, USA Today
The Wind River Tribal Buffalo initiative is part of a nation-wide, indigenous-lead movement to restore wild buffalo to their natural habitat.
Deep in the heart of central Wyoming’s 2.2 million-acre Wind River Indian reservation, home to the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho Tribal nations, a dozen wild buffalo are lazily grazing on green and yellow grass.
Fog swirls over rock faces, patches of sagebrush prairie are starting to look like bogs, and rain soaks through jackets. But Xavier Michael-Young, 22, and a member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida, looks at the buffalo, also known as bison, and says there’s nowhere he’d rather be.
“Buffalo are the coolest animal ever. They’ve been my favorite since I was a kid. Now, to be able to work with them every day is a gift that I’m always grateful to just have,” Michael-Young said, grinning ear-to-ear. “I see myself in all the people that come out here and want to get close to the buffalo.”