As president, Theodore Roosevelt created Montana’s National Bison Range and Oklahoma’s Wichita Game Preserve in which bison were released. This and subsequent efforts brought the bison back from the brink of extinction.

Theodore Roosevelt witnessed the bison’s decline firsthand as a rancher in what is now North Dakota. Once numbering in the tens of millions, the bison population fell to about 1,000 in the 1880s. The animals had been slaughtered wholesale for their meat and hides.