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Was all this environmental protection stuff really necessary we

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mean come on America is a huge place with infinite

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resources that will never run out right huh yeah sure [Oil meter decreasing]

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tell that to the American Buffalo which was hunted close to extinction which

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would have really messed up the song yeah

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seriously though Americans somehow managed to whittle the population of

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these giant bovine from about 30 million down to about 300 let's think about that [Buffalo population chart appears]

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again 30 million 300 that means the population went down to about one

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100,000 of its previous size we didn't know fractions could be that scary nice

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going guy so how did the Buffalo genocide go down well it wasn't all [Buffalo's laying dead on the ground]

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humans fault one issue was that the late 19th century saw some of the horse

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droughts America had ever seen up until that point in the 1870s the Great Plains

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were even plagued by swarms of locusts which no doubt led a whole bunch of [Locust appears]

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pious farmers to whip out their biblical readings about the ten plagues and

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wonder whether they were accidentally allotted land in ancient Egypt well the [Man stood in front of Moses in Egypt]

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trouble with drought is that they make it super hard for things to grow and it

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sucks for farmers but it also sucks for animals who heed grass like the Buffalo

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to make matters worse the droughts led to giant wildfires yeah so not only was [Fire burning in the woods]

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the grass sparse and dry it was also on fire which makes it kind of hard to eat

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and buffalo had to fight human bred horses and cattle for a little bit of

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grass that was left guess who the human side is with in that fight but that [Man stood with cow fighting buffalo]

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wasn't the end of the buffalos woes Americans were also going bison crazy

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and killing the big beef fees in record numbers how'd we manage that well

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railroads had opened up the West and made it possible for anyone with a gun

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and a thirst for profit to hop a train and go huntin [People boarding a train]

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Plus railroads made the shipment of buffalo hides back east even quicker and

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cheaper so more people were getting into the buffalo hide biz farmers wanted the

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Prairie lands cleared so they could get to planting which meant those darn [Man inspects land of buffalo]

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Buffalo had to take a hike Plus Western myths and

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legends about famous buffalo hunters like Buffalo Bill Cody made it seem like

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a super American and super cool guy thing to do [Buffalo Bill Wild West advert appears]

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well commodities markets for Buffalo tongues meat skins and pelts were

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booming and demand only went up as supply increased basically consumers

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were desperate for a piece of the mythic American West and the Bison was an easy

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symbol to which the Buffalo said hang because we love all the love but maybe [Buffalo speaking to man wearing Buffalo fur jacket]

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you could show it without eradicating our population well probably they just

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