Lost Tracks: Buffalo National Park, 1909-1939

While contemporaries and historians alike hailed the establishmentof Buffalo National Park in Wainwright, Alberta as a wildlife savingeffort, the political climate of the early 20th century worked againstit. The Canadian Parks Branch was never sufficiently funded to operateBNP effectively or to remedy the crises the animals faced as a result.Cross-breeding experiments with bison and domestic cattle provedunfruitful. Attempts at commercializing the herd had no success.Ultimately, the Department of National Defence repurposed the park formilitary training and the bison disappeared once more. This book sheds light on the history of Canada’s national parks,bison recovery efforts, and environmental thought in the first halfof the twentieth century.