FRANKLIN GROVE, Ill. — For the first time in almost two centuries, wild bison are roaming east of the Mississippi River. Well, sort of. Even though the beasts have returned to northern Illinois, residents of Chicago should not expect to see them passing through the suburbs anytime soon. The bison were relocated to the Nachusa Grasslands, a conservation program dedicated to restoring Illinois’ native prairie, where they safely roam thousands of fenced-in acres. “The idea of having bison at Nachusa has been around as long as the Nachusa project itself,” said Jeff Walk, the science director for the Nature Conservancy’s Illinois chapter. “They’ve been talking about this for 25 years.” The 30 bison at Nachusa taken to Illinois at the end of last year are part of a regional trend: the rewilding of the Midwest. In recent years, conservation programs in several states in the region have reintroduced large mammals — such as black bears and elk — into areas they once inhabited, before they were hunted to the brink of extinction. In other places, species like wolves and mountain lions have naturally returned to their former habitats. 
 
 ‘The great slaughter’ 
 
 Bison are one of the United States’ most successful conservation stories, but they also exemplify just how much damage was done to the continent during westward expansion. It’s hard to know for sure, but at the beginning of the 1800s, Walk said, there may have been as many as 60 million bison in North America. “And depending on the account, maybe there were 1,000 animals that remained after the great slaughter by the end of the 19th century,” he said. Conservation efforts were largely concentrated in Western and Northern states, in some cases spearheaded by Native American organizations and governments. Today there are approximately 500,000 wild or near-wild bison in the United States. Most modern bison contain varying amounts of cattle DNA after centuries of interbreeding, Walk said. The bison relocated to Nachusa are from a South Dakota herd with some of the least cow DNA found in any bison group. “Most conservation herds have really small amounts of cattle DNA in them,” Walk said. “But we typically do not see very many bison that have obvious domestic cattle traits in terms of their coat color, for example.” While domesticated bison raised for meat production have existed east of the Mississippi River, those now at Nachusa are the first near-wild animals in the region in nearly two centuries. “We needed something to control the grass,” said Cody Considine, Nachusa’s chief ecologist. “Grazing was always the one thing that was missing here.” 
 
 As grazers, bison are one of the last steps of prairie restoration. Although Illinois is called the Prairie State, native prairie makes up less than 1 percent of its land. Ryan Schuessler 
 
 Starting in 1986, the Nature Conservancy, an American environmental conservation organization, began buying land in northern Illinois to restore the state’s native prairie. Since then, the Nachusa Grasslands have grown to nearly 3,500 acres. Although Illinois is nicknamed the Prairie State, native prairie makes up less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the land. “We’ve pretty much destroyed all of it,” Considine said. “You just wish someone could have spared a square mile of prairie, and unfortunately we just don’t have that.” He added, “The state of Illinois prairie is very grim.” But it is not without hope. For outsiders, the bison are interesting news. For those who have been involved in the Nachusa project, they are the last piece of a diverse ecological puzzle. “It’s something very tangible you can see, but it’s definitely not the first animal study or population that we have at Nachusa,” volunteer Michelle Crites said of the bison. “It just happens to be big and fuzzy, and people like bison.” The bison graze on fast-growing species of grasses, allowing other plant species to grow. The population of native dung beetles will increase as a result of the bison’s reintroduction, which will provide more food for the endangered box turtle population. “All of a sudden, when we get a fuzzy animal, when we get a bison, the whole world cares,” said Crites, a 22-year-old Colorado State University student who has volunteered at Nachusa since she was in eighth grade. The extra attention may prove beneficial for Illinois’ prairie conservation efforts. If the work at Nachusa can be replicated elsewhere, there may be hope for the state’s prairie yet. “There still are species that are dependent on this habitat to live,” Considine said. “It’s our heritage, our culture, and we’re preserving and improving and increasing that at Nachusa. Bison just add to that restoration circle, if you will. It’s kind of the last piece of the puzzle of really having a full-functioning prairie.” 
 
 The bison were introduced so they can stamp down and graze on fast-growing grasses that would otherwise choke out other plant life, thus restoring balance to the ecosystem. Ryan Schuessler 

 CHICAGO (AP) — A small herd of around two dozen bison could be grazing on restored grassland south of Chicago as soon as this fall now that the Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie has final approval for an experimental project that's been years in the making. 
 
 Officials announced Friday they plan to introduce a mix of young and mature animals at the prairie 45 miles southwest of Chicago, where the U.S. Forest Service and other groups have been trying to restore grassland at a site that was for decades a U.S. Army ammunition plant. The 1,200-acre project area could eventually support a little over 100 bison. 
 
 The animals are a keystone of prairie ecosystems and their introduction will help with restoration of the site's native grass species, the Forest Service says. That, in turn, will improve habitat for native grassland birds. 
 
 The first animals should arrive in the fall, said Greg Peters, a spokesman for the National Forest Foundation, which has helped lead the project. 
 
 "We saw an opportunity to return an iconic species back to the native tallgrass prairie where they had existed before," Peters said. 
 
 Over the summer, workers will construct pasture fencing, corrals, hiking trails, overlooks and other facilities for an expected increased number of visitors. 
 
 Midewin is the first national tallgrass prairie in the U.S and one of the largest prairie restoration efforts east of the Mississippi River. It was established in 1996 on the site of what was once a sprawling military ammunition and explosives plant dating back to World War II. To restore the complex of wetlands that makes up the prairie, workers are dismantling hundreds of old grass-covered military bunkers, ripping up roadways and railroad lines and trying to strip out invasive weeds. 
 
 The bison are crucial to the restoration. Bison graze differently than cattle and are better suited for maintaining native plant species on restored prairie. 
 
 Organizers want to be sure they get genetically pure animals, rather than bison that have been crossbred with cattle. The largest natural, free-ranging herd is in Yellowstone, but some private ranchers also have genetically pure bison that could be sourced for the project, Peters said. 
 
 "We want to make sure that their behaviors and habits are as pure and historical as we can make them," he said. 
 
 A small number of bison were also recently introduced to the smaller Nachusa Grasslands, near Dixon in northern Illinois. 
 
 Midewin hopes the animals will attract more visitors and volunteers. 
 
 "We thought that bringing bison in would really provide a hook for the community to come out and get to know Midewin a little bit," Peters said.
– For the first time since Abraham Lincoln was a young man, there are wild bison in Illinois, and ecologists were thrilled to welcome a new calf this week. The baby bison was born at the Nachusa Grasslands prairie restoration preserve just 95 miles west of Chicago, reports the Chicago Tribune. The calf was born to one of around 30 bison moved to the preserve from Iowa last fall, surprising workers who hadn't expected any of the bison in the only wild buffalo herd east of the Mississippi to give birth until May at the earliest. The last recorded killing of a wild buffalo east of the river was in 1830 in Indiana, according to the USDA. "From a historical standpoint, this hasn't happened in Illinois in about 200 years," an ecologist for the project tells the Tribune, adding that the calf "looked great." The introduction of the bison—whose grazing allows many native plant and insect species to flourish—is one of the final steps of the project to restore some 3,500 acres to the native prairie that used to cover more than half the state, Al Jazeera reports. Last week, officials announced that they plan to bring another herd of bison to a prairie restoration project on the site of an old military ammunition plant just 45 miles south of Chicago, reports the AP. (In Alaska, wood bison have been reintroduced to the state for the first time in more than a century.)