White Baby Bison Is One In Ten Million

Wyoming’s Bear River State Park announced the arrival of a white bison this week, an event that occurs only once in ten million births.

“Well - our two-year-old white bison is now a mother!” the park kvelled on Facebook. The mother, also white, is a two year old named Wyoming Hope. Mom and calf are not albinos, but “the coloration is a result of a very small amount of cattle genetics mixed in.”

“Most of the bison you find anymore have some cattle genetics,” park superintendent Tyfani Sager told the Cowboy State Daily. “They were nearly hunted to extinction by the late 1800s. People got concerned about extinction, and cattle inbreeding was used. A white bison birth is still fairly rare.”

A number of Native American tribes – Sioux, Cherokee, Navaho, Lakota, Dakota – consider the white bison “the most sacred living thing on Earth,” according to the National Park Service. “The birth is sacred within the American Indian communities, because it brings a sense of hope and is a sign that good times are about to happen.”

Park rangers have not yet determined whether the sacred little one is a heifer or a bull.

Photo credit: Bear River State Park via Facebook