Student documentary traces last wild herd of American bison in Yellowstone

This article was originally published on moreheadcain.org. Photo courtesy of Anna Connors ’24 and Aayas Joshi ’26.

An independent documentary by Anna Connors ’24 and Aayas Joshi ’26 tells the story of the dwindling bison population in the Yellowstone region of Montana and the factors that threaten the species’ survival.

The 13-minute film, The Last Wild Herd: Defending Yellowstone’s Buffalo, brings together the voices of the Buffalo Field Campaign (BFC), a nonprofit organization that has advocated for the preservation and protection of bison for nearly three decades.

The American bison was named the country’s national mammal in 2016, but “the persecution and slaughter that nearly drove it to extinction tells a different story,” Aayas said. An estimated 5,000 bison now live in Yellowstone, compared with millions that once roamed the continent freely, the scholar said.

“Bison are routinely subjected to hazing operations, brutal quarantine procedures, culling, domestication and political pressure from the cattle industry,” he said.

Their survival continues to be threatened by government management policies, Anna added, which “prioritize the desires of the cattle industry over native wildlife and, in turn, deprioritize the desires of Native American tribes.”

Aayas and Anna had originally planned to focus on the endangered gray wolves of the Northern Rocky Mountains. Early in their research, however, the team reached out to James Holt, a member of the Nez Perce tribe and executive director of the Buffalo Field Campaign.

As they learned about the organization, its mission and its history, they decided to focus on bison, which have historically received less media attention than wolves, Anna said.

“When we arrived and started spending time at the BFC, we realized we would be doing ourselves a disservice by not focusing at least part of our project on buffalo,” said the scholar, who shot, edited and produced the film with Aayas as part of the 2023 Rich Beckman Documentary Award and the Morehead-Cain Global Perspective Summer Fellowship.

The two men spent a month in and around Yellowstone National Park, interviewing local activists, volunteers and indigenous community leaders.

The film aims to shine a light on a culturally significant species for indigenous tribes and “the sociocultural biases that influence our interactions with the natural world,” said Aayas, a photographer and videographer with the Morehead-Cain Scholar Media team.

“With this documentary, we hope to educate people about this issue and highlight the amazing work that the Buffalo Field Campaign is doing,” he said. “We are honored to have crossed paths with all those who work tirelessly to defend Yellowstone’s bison, and we hope our project can contribute to that cause.”

Watch the documentary.

The project was supported by UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media, the Morehead-Cain Foundation Summer Enrichment Program and the Lovelace Fund for Discovery.