{"id":603093,"date":"2026-04-14T09:20:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T09:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/603093\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T09:20:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T09:20:20","slug":"44-elk-island-wood-bison-sent-to-alaska-as-part-of-conservation-efforts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/603093\/","title":{"rendered":"44 Elk Island wood bison sent to Alaska as part of conservation efforts"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Much like cattle, 44 wood bison<\/a> were separated, sorted, run through chutes and onto a truck Monday morning.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

They\u2019ll make a roughly 40-hour drive from Alberta\u2019s Elk Island National Park<\/a> east of Edmonton to their new home in Alaska\u2019s<\/a> Minto Flats State Game Refuge.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe run them through our system here and give them a little bit of a tranquilizer just to help them on their journey,\u201d Elk Island National Park superintendent Dale Kirkland said.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom there, they batch back up and we load them onto the truck.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRare white bison pair becomes \u2018sign of hope\u2019 for Alberta First Nation\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

The park does annual transfers, alternating between wood and plains bison every other year.<\/p>\n

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This is the fourth time Elk Island has sent the animals to Alaska. They\u2019ve also done Indigenous transfers to First Nations.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ve been central to global conservation bison efforts around the world,\u201d Kirkland said.<\/p>\n

Biologists in Alaska say more than 170 bison now live wild in the state and another 50 live in captivity. They\u2019re either from Elk Island or descendants.<\/p>\n

\u201cWood bison used to widely roam across northern landscapes and with the project here, working with the state of Alaska to help restore these animals carries a real deep sense of purpose and meaning,\u201d Kirkland said.<\/p>\n

Kirkland says plans are being made to send more bison to Alaska in 2028.<\/p>\n

For more on this story, watch the video above.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u2018Very busy\u2019: Elk Island National Park exceeding capacity due to pass program\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Descrease article font size Increase article font size Much like cattle, 44 wood bison were separated, sorted, run…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[14343,13710,49,48,218200,5105,44,14035],"class_list":{"0":"post-603093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-alaska","9":"tag-bison","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-elk-island-national-park","13":"tag-features","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-parks-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=603093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}