“There are prophecies about white buffalo calves being born at a time of great change,” says one expert. How rare are white bison—and what does this birth mean?
It’s not often that the birth of a wild animal causes a stir among so many different groups of people, but a white American bison calf photographed in Wyoming has done just that.
“We’re in Yellowstone this week and just missed this birth by a few minutes!” wrote photographer Erin Braaten in a Facebook post on June 4. “A white bison calf!!” News of the birth quickly spread around the world after that. __
Images of albino, yellow, or blonde animals—from giraffes, tapirs, and monkeys to cougars, badgers, and frogs and snakes—often fascinate the public. But this pale bison, also known as an American buffalo, has special significance in Indigenous cultures.
“There are prophecies about white buffalo calves being born at a time of great change,” says Jason Baldes, a member of the Eastern Shoshone tribe and executive director of the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative. “We have stories of the Eastern Shoshone people hunting and pursuing white bison or white buffalo from well over a century ago.”
(At long last, the American buffalo has come home.)
Buffalo used to roam from Alaska to Mexico and number between 30 to 60 million. Although that population was driven down to just 325 animals by 1884, scientists and conservationists have since rescued bison from the brink of extinction. But most of the 30,000 buffalo that exist today aren’t as free or as wild as you might think.
“With the momentum that we see with bison restoration and conservation, I think this will help to bring awareness about the importance of, not only the sacredness of that white buffalo calf, but also the issue of [buffalo] existing as wildlife,” says Baldes, who is also a National Geographic Explorer.
WHAT IS A WHITE BUFFALO—AND HOW RARE IS IT?
While studies about the frequency of albinism or leucism have taken place in animals such as penguins, white buffalo are much less studied.
One statistic bandied about online, and misattributed to the National Bison Association, is that a white buffalo calf will occur in one out of every 10 million births.
(Rare “blonde” penguin spotted in Antarctica. See the photo.)
“To my knowledge, no one has kept consistent records of white buffalo being born,” says Jim Matheson, executive director of the National Bison Association. “Therefore it’s tough to make a determination of occurrence.”
At least anecdotally speaking, there haven’t been many in the last few decades, says Robert Pickering, author of Seeing the White Buffalo. Most of the white bison you do hear about actually come from cross-breeding bison and white Charolais cattle.
“There’s a lot of private producers, folks that are in the bison industry, that realize that there’s a lot of attention
