Slightly OT so I’m sure I’ll be rightfully downvoted, but my favorite part of playing The Oregon Trail in first grade was always hunting for bison, even tho it was often a waste of resources because you couldn’t carry all the meat back to use.

And I guess from skimming the article, that’s sort of what really happened. We just lost nearly an entire animal group (I don’t remember the proper taxonomy ranking, forgive me) because of excessive hunting.

The difference in the ecology with and without the bison is fascinating. I’m curious what other changes have happened in other parts of the world due to manmade extinction of an animal or organism group.