globeandmail.com: Were bison one of globalization's first victims?

 

Economist says Europeans, with their insatiable demand for hides, were more to blame than Americans for the decimation of herds

DAWN WALTON

July 31, 2007

CALGARY -- The near-extinction of the plains bison in the United States has long been blamed on the advent of the railways, native overhunting and a government policy of slaughter designed to address the "Indian problem."

But a Canadian researcher has discovered that globalization was the real culprit for the decimation of the U.S. bison herd in the 19th century.

M. Scott Taylor, an economist at the University of Calgary who used international trade records and first-person accounts of the hunt, has found that European development of a cheap and easy tanning method after 1870 fuelled that continent's insatiable appetite for bison hides, which could be turned into shoe soles and machinery belts.

globeandmail.com: Were bison one of globalization's first victims?