i hitched a ride with misuse of project director bill kleiman and restoration ecologist cody considine to track down the bison in their five hundred acre grazing area. the wire the bison so important to the restoration process bison eight grass and there the disturbances they're creating puts diversity on the landscape as they graze the nutrients are going in one of them is coming out the back and they are getting a very quick nutrient cycling on the prairie. those bison patties are spreading seeds and fertilizing the soil what's the average weight of a full size bison the coyotes can range from eight hundred to eleven hundred pounds in the balls as they mature they can get up to two thousand pounds massive so how many bison do we have on them on the reserve thirty adults and sixteen calves the calf was just born last week a little tiny want to get easily pick it up it's pretty exciting to think about the calf being born a illinois prairie that hasn't happened for probably two hundred years. what happened to bison here there was a tremendous slaughter of bison in the eight hundred seve

and restoration ecologist cody considine. it was a vast landscape dominated by those grasses but the real diversity of the prairie was in the wild flowers the forms the broadly plants and thousands of species of insects and dozens of birds and mammals and reptiles called the prairie home along with animals like the bison. what was once this bass landscape across much of illinois has been virtually eliminated and turned into the corn belt. but illinois isn't alone since the late one thousand nine hundred prairie grasslands across the united states have been steadily vanishing. i've heard grasslands and general referred to as the unheralded counterparts of the rain forest and grasslands have a critical role in terms of climate change as well in a prairie most of that carbon is stored in the soil and so it's very secure for very long term storage a soil organic matter in essence the plants of the tall grass prarie absorb carbon dioxide trapping it in their deep roots. the restoration began in one thousand nine hundred six growin