Bison roam an Illinois prairie for the first time in 200 years

Six bison now roam Kane County land

Six American bison stepped onto tallgrass prairie in Kane County, Illinois, on Dec. 5, 2025, for the first time in more than 200 years.

The herd, three males and three females, arrived at Burlington Prairie Forest Preserve in Sycamore after being transferred from an Illinois herd with bloodlines tracing back to the last bison on the Great Plains.

The moment marked a turning point for a landscape that lost its largest native animal two centuries ago.

Three groups joined forces for the project

The release took three partners to pull off. The Forest Preserve District of Kane County owns the land.

The American Indian Center of Chicago stewards the animals. And Ruhter Bison of Woodstock, Illinois, handles the day-to-day herd management.

The district spent years putting the agreement together.

Voters helped make it real when they approved the 2024 Land Acquisition and Preserve Improvement Referendum in November 2024, which included the bison project.

Fifty people waited in freezing cold

About 50 Native Americans from different tribes stood for hours in teens-level temperatures with 15-mph winds, waiting for the bison trailers to pull up to Burlington Prairie.

When the trailer doors swung open, the crowd broke into cheers, singing, and drumming. The American Indian Center held a ceremonial land blessing, smudging the trailer with sacred herbs.

A tribal elder offered prayers over the ground where the bison would live.

Urban Natives reconnect with a lost relative

Many of the people at the release had never seen a bison in person.

Chicago is home to the country’s third-largest urban Native American population, with roughly 65,000 people from more than 170 tribes.

Some of those tribes had their federal recognition taken away by the government in the 1950s, and their families were relocated to cities like Chicago.

The American Indian Center, founded in 1953, is one of the oldest urban Native centers in the country.

Illinois lost its bison two centuries ago

Bison once moved freely across Illinois’ tallgrass prairie, which stretched over 21 million acres before European settlement. The industrial revolution turned most of that prairie into farmland or developed land.

By the early 1800s, bison had disappeared from the state through habitat loss and overhunting.

Illinois still calls itself “The Prairie State,” but less than one-tenth of 1% of its original tallgrass prairie still exists.

Across North America, bison numbers fell from tens of millions to about 500 animals starting around 1870.

Bison do things no mower can

Bison help restore tallgrass prairie in ways nothing else can.

They graze selectively on tall grasses, which gives wildflowers and low-lying native plants room to grow.

When they roll on the ground, a behavior called wallowing, they press out small depressions that fill with rainwater. Those tiny pools create habitats for insects, birds, and other wildlife.

As the animals move across the land, they spread seeds and natural fertilizer behind them.

Northern Illinois already hosts three herds

The Burlington Prairie herd is not the first in the region, but it is the first in Kane County to live on actual tallgrass prairie.

Nachusa Grasslands in Lee County, managed by The Nature Conservancy, keeps about 100 bison on 1,500 acres after bringing them back in 2014.

Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in Will County hosts about 70 bison on 1,000 acres.

Fermilab in Batavia has about two dozen on an 800-acre pasture, though that setting is more like a field than native prairie.

Nachusa proved bison change the land

The Nature Conservancy started restoring Nachusa Grasslands in the mid-1980s and added bison in 2014. Over 10 years, the herd grew from a small group to about 100 animals.

Researchers have tracked how bison grazing boosts biodiversity at the site.

Studies show that the combination of prescribed fire and bison grazing creates a patchwork of habitat that benefits grassland birds like Henslow’s sparrows.

In 2015, the first wild-born bison calf in Illinois in about 200 years arrived at Nachusa.

The herd could grow to 30 animals

Right now the six bison roam a fenced area of about 35 acres at Burlington Prairie. The Forest Preserve District plans to build a second fenced area next to it, expanding the space to roughly 100 acres.

Four more bison should join the herd sometime in 2026, and the animals will be allowed to breed. The herd could eventually reach up to 30 animals, and the district hopes to one day devote hundreds of acres to them.

Spring programs already sold out fast

Burlington Prairie is closed to the public this winter so the bison can settle in. The Forest Preserve District set up guided sneak-peek programs for March 2026, and they sold out quickly.

The preserve gates reopen to the public in April 2026.

The American Indian Center is planning a spring celebration for its community to formally welcome the bison home.

Both the preserve and the center will launch guided and self-guided public programs at the prairie this spring.

Volunteers will track the herd’s impact

The American Indian Center is building a community science project where members will work alongside forest preserve ecologists.

Volunteers will help monitor prairie health, track changes over time, and document how the bison shape the ecosystem. Educational programs will teach visitors about land stewardship and prairie health.

Programming will be tailored for members of different tribes, some with deep historical ties to bison and some without. The goal is to get Chicago’s urban Native community onto the land.

Leaders call this a homecoming centuries overdue

Benjamin Haberthur, the Forest Preserve District’s executive director, called the release a homecoming “hundreds of years in the making.”

Jessica Walks First, president of the American Indian Center board and an enrolled member of the Menominee Tribe, said the goal goes beyond prairie restoration. She wants to restore bison to Native people’s lives.

The return fits a broader movement across North America to bring bison back to small pockets of their historic range. The center prefers the word “steward” over “own” when describing their relationship with the herd.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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