A decade ago the American bison, an icon of the North American frontier, had almost entirely disappeared from Mexico. Relentless hunting and habitat loss over the past two centuries had ravaged the population, and although some of the animals survived on private ranches, they no longer roamed freely on Mexico’s northern plains. In 2009 The Nature Conservancy, the U.S.-based international conservation group, launched an initiative to rebuild Mexico’s bison population. It began by transporting 23 bison from Wind Cave National Park in the U.S. state of South Dakota to Rancho El Uno, an 18,500-hectare (45,700-acre) cattle ranch it had bought in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua in 2005. “None of the bison that still existed in Mexico were pure bred, meaning... [Log in to read more]