American bison recovered from near-extinction but face ongoing welfare challenges from population management practices, disease control, and habitat limits.
Bison welfare sits at the intersection of conservation, agricultural politics, and Indigenous rights. Individual welfare impacts arise primarily from management interventions: hazing with helicopters and horses causes panic flight, separation of social groups, and physical injury. Capture operations for brucellosis testing or population transfer cause extreme stress for animals that evolved with minimal predation pressure from humans. The welfare-positive vision for bison — large, connected grassland preserves where herds can move freely following seasonal forage — aligns with both ecological restoration and individual animal welfare. Expanding the areas where bison can live without active management reduces the welfare burden of human intervention on individual animals.