title: 2005 Kashmir earthquake

text: The 2005 Kashmir earthquake occurred at on 8 October in Pakistani-administered Azad Kashmir. It was centred near the city of Muzaffarabad, and also affected nearby Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and some areas of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. It registered a moment magnitude of 7.6 and had a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI ("Extreme"). The earthquake was also felt in Afghanistan, Tajikistan, India, and the Xinjiang region. The severity of the damage caused by the earthquake is attributed to severe upthrust. Over 86,000 people died, a similar number were injured, and millions were displaced. It is considered the deadliest earthquake in South Asia, surpassing the 1935 Quetta earthquake.


title: 2005 Kashmir earthquake

text: Kashmir lies in the area of collision of the Eurasian and Indian tectonic plates. The geological activity born out of this collision, also responsible for the birth of the Himalayan mountain range, is the cause of unstable seismicity in the region. The United States Geological Survey (USGS) measured its magnitude as a minimum of 7.6 on the moment magnitude scale, with its epicentre about northeast of Muzaffarabad, Azad Kashmir, and north-northeast of the national capital Islamabad.


title: 2005 Kashmir earthquake

text: The earthquake had a maximum Modified Mercalli intensity of XI ("Extreme") evaluated in an area around the epicentre, between the towns of Muzaffarabad and Balakot. It was also assigned XI on the Environmental Seismic Intensity scale. Field surveys of heavy damage to buildings and other structures in Balakot determined that the Modified Mercalli intensity exceeded X. At Muzaffarabad, the intensity peaked at VIII–IX ("Severe–Violent"). Intensity VII–VIII ("Very strong–Severe") was determined in the areas south of Muzaffarabad.


title: 2005 Kashmir earthquake

text: The maximum intensity in India was VIII ("Destructive") on the Medvedev–Sponheuer–Karnik scale (MSK), and was felt at Uri. MSK VII was felt in Kupwara and Baramulla. In Srinagar, the earthquake was felt with an MSK intensity of V. At areas where the seismic intensity was lower, collapses were documented.


title: 2005 Kashmir earthquake

text: There were many secondary earthquakes in the region, mainly to the northwest of the original epicentre. A series of strong aftershocks occurred near Muzaffarabad. As of 27 October 2005 there had been more than 978 aftershocks with a magnitude of 4.0 and above that continued to occur daily. Since then, measurements from satellites have shown that mountain parts directly above the epicenter have risen by a few meters, giving ample proof that the Himalayas are still being formed and growing, and that this earthquake was a consequence of that.


title: 2005 Kashmir earthquake

text: Most of the devastation hit north Pakistan and Pakistan administered Kashmir. In Kashmir, the three main districts were badly affected and Muzaffarabad, the state capital of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, was hardest hit in terms of casualties and destruction. Hospitals, schools, and rescue services including police and armed forces were paralysed. There was virtually no infrastructure and communication was badly affected. More than 70% of all casualties were estimated to have occurred in Muzaffarabad. Bagh, the second-most-affected district, accounted for 15% of the total casualties.


title: 2005 Kashmir earthquake

text: The Pakistani government's official death toll as of November 2005 stood at 87,350 although it is estimated that the death toll could have reached over 100,000. Approximately 138,000 were injured and over 3.5 million rendered homeless. According to government figures, 19,000 children died in the earthquake, most of them in widespread collapses of school buildings. The earthquake affected more than 500,000 families. In addition, approximately 250,000 farm animals died due to the collapse of stone barns, and more than 500,000 large animals required immediate shelter from the harsh winter.


title: 2005 Kashmir earthquake

text: As Saturday is a normal school day in the region, most students were at schools when the earthquake struck. Many were buried under collapsed school buildings. Many people were also trapped in their homes and because it was the month of Ramadan, most people were taking a nap after their pre-dawn meal and did not have time to escape. Reports indicate that entire towns and villages were completely wiped out in northern Pakistan, with other surrounding areas also suffering severe damage.


title: 2005 Kashmir earthquake

text: At least 1,350 people were killed and 6,266 injured in Jammu and Kashmir state in India. The tremors were felt as far away as Delhi and Punjab in northern India. Four fatalities and 14 injured survivors were reported in Afghanistan.


title: 2005 Kashmir earthquake

text: According to Pakistan's Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Sherpao, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz "made the appeal to survivors" on 26 October to come down to valleys and cities for relief, because bad weather, mountainous terrain, landslides and blocked roads are making it difficult for relief workers to reach each house and the winter snows are imminent."


title: 2005 Kashmir earthquake

text: In Islamabad, the Margalla Towers, an apartment complex in sector F-10, collapsed and killed many of the residents. Four deaths were reported in Afghanistan, including a young girl who died in Jalalabad, after a wall collapsed on her. The quake was felt in Kabul, but the effects were minimal there.


title: 2005 Kashmir earthquake

text: The national and international humanitarian response to the crisis was extensive. In the initial phases of response, the Pakistan Medical corps, Corps of Engineers, Army aviation and a large number of infantry units played important roles. Lt. Gen Afzal, Maj. Gen. Imtiaz, and Maj. Gen Javid were the leaders of their formations. Maj. Gen Farrukh Seir was in charge of foreign relief co-ordination. The relief work in Jammu and Kashmir was led by IAS officers of the state administration, Bashir Runyal and Jaipal Singh Law. In early 2006, the Government of Pakistan organized a donors' conference to raise money for reconstruction and development of the area. A total of $6.2 billion was pledged and a large amount of the money was delivered in terms of services of international NGOs with high pay scales. The rest of the money pledged, which was given to the Government of Pakistan for reconstruction and development, was used by a reconstruction authority called Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority, which was made by then military regime to accommodate retired high military officials and while keeping the command of the reconstruction and rehabilitation authority directly under the military. The basic infrastructure, including tertiary care, health, education, road networks, water supply, waste management and other basic needs, was still underdeveloped and had not reached pre-earthquake status in the region.


title: 2005 Kashmir earthquake

text: Well over US$5.4 billion (400 billion Pakistani rupees) in aid arrived from all around the world. US Marine and Army helicopters stationed in neighbouring Afghanistan quickly flew aid into the devastated region along with five CH-47 Chinook helicopters from the Royal Air Force that were deployed from the United Kingdom. Five crossing points were opened on the Line of Control (LOC), between India and Pakistan, to facilitate the flow of humanitarian and medical aid to the affected region, and aid teams from different parts of Pakistan and around the world came to the region to assist in relief efforts.


title: Rev. (TV series)

text: Rev. is a British television sitcom produced by Big Talk Productions. Written by actor Tom Hollander and James Wood, the show premiered on BBC Two on 28 June 2010 and ended on 28 April 2014. The show's working titles were "The City Vicar" and "Handle with Prayer". The series revolves around a Church of England priest, played by Hollander, who becomes the vicar of an inner-city London church after leaving a small rural Suffolk parish.


title: Rev. (TV series)

text: Hollander said: "we wanted to define ourselves in opposition to the cliché of a country vicar, partly because we wanted to depict England as it is "now", rather than having a sort of bucolic-y, "over the hills and far away", bird-tweeting England – we wanted the complications of the multi-cultural, multi-ethnic inner-city, where everything is much harder."


title: Rev. (TV series)

text: The Reverend Adam Smallbone is an Anglican priest who has moved from a small rural parish to the "socially disunited" St Saviour in the Marshes in Hackney, East London. Unwilling to turn anyone away from his pastoral care, he is faced with a series of moral challenges as he balances the needs of genuine believers, people on the streets, and drug addicts, as well as the demands of social climbers using the church to get their children into the best schools.


title: Rev. (TV series)

text: Adam has a difficult job as a modern city vicar. His wife Alex, who has her own career as a solicitor to worry about, supports him through his life as a priest, while not being engaged with his work. He is also supported by lay reader Nigel, who believes he should be running the church. In supervision is Archdeacon Robert, who puts pressure on Adam to increase the congregation and church income.


title: Rev. (TV series)

text: Parishioners include Colin, a heavy drinking, unemployable lost soul who is Adam's most devoted parishioner; Adoha, known for her romantic intentions towards the clergy; and Mick, who is homeless and appears on Adam's doorstep in different situations asking for money.


title: Rev. (TV series)

text: The programme depicts a number of themes which reach their denouement at the end of Season 3. These plotlines reflect both a view of the contemporary C of E Church in London, but also echo familiar narrative from the New Testament. This is notable in a storyline which sees Adam Smallbone reluctantly return to his now deconsecrated St Saviour's Church, with the series most prominent characters, to lead an unofficial Easter Mass carried out after breaking into the Church, and to eventually baptise his infant daughter. By this time, we have seen stories that echo those of Judas Iscariat's betrayal of Christ in the story of Nigel, Peter's thrice denying Christ in the story of Colin, Christ's relationship with Mary Magdalene in the story of Ellie, his 40 days in exile in his suspension pending the investigation of his affair, the encounter with the moneylenders in the Temple in Adam's meeting with the area Dean and Diocesan Secretary as they assess the real estate value of the Church, and in Adam's downfall, the bearing of the cross to Calvary, before, in the Easter ceremony, his eventual Resurrection. Other characters also fulfil roles that refer to figures in the New Testament.


title: Rev. (TV series)

text: Interviewed in April 2014, Tom Hollander said that he did not know whether there would be a fourth series, and that after the third series "we all want to just pause". He added that "The idea of not doing it any more is sad but also quite attractive, because you wouldn't want for it to ever get worse."


title: Rev. (TV series)

text: Six episodes were produced for the first series by Big Talk Productions for BBC Two. The show was created by Tom Hollander and James Wood. The church scenes were filmed at St Leonard's in Shoreditch, east London. The BBC Two comedy was renewed by the BBC in September 2010 and filming began again in the middle of 2011, with the second series of seven episodes premiering in November 2011. In August 2012, the show was renewed for a third series of six episodes, which aired in 2014.


title: Rev. (TV series)

text: Richard Coles, a Church of England priest and former member of the pop group the Communards, was one of several priests, including Rev. Kevin Sculley of St Matthew's, Bethnal Green, who advised the show's writers. Coles has been cited as an inspiration for the Adam Smallbone character.


title: Rev. (TV series)

text: The series was commended by "The Independent" as intelligent comedy, with Hollander "as good as ever" and a strong support cast.


title: Rev. (TV series)

text: In 2011, "Rev." won the South Bank Award for Best Comedy and was nominated for the Royal Television Society Programme Awards for Best Scripted Comedy and Best Comedy Performance (Hollander).


title: Rev. (TV series)

text: At the 2011 British Academy Television Awards, the series won Best Sitcom, with Hollander also nominated for Best Male Comedy Performance. Both were nominated again in the same categories the following year, without winning. At the 2015 British Academy Television Awards, Hollander and Colman were nominated for Best Male Comedy Performance and Best Female Comedy Performance respectively.


title: Rev. (TV series)

text: The second series was released on 19 November 2012. A boxset containing the first two series was also released.


title: Rev. (TV series)

text: The third series was released on 5 May 2014, a week after transmission of the final episode. A boxset containing the first three series was also released.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre ( , ; 18 November 1787 – 10 July 1851) was a French artist and photographer, recognized for his invention of the eponymous daguerreotype process of photography. He became known as one of the fathers of photography. Though he is most famous for his contributions to photography, he was also an accomplished painter, scenic designer, and a developer of the diorama theatre.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: Louis Daguerre was born in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, Val-d'Oise, France. He was apprenticed in architecture, theatre design, and panoramic painting to Pierre Prévost, the first French panorama painter. Exceedingly adept at his skill of theatrical illusion, he became a celebrated designer for the theatre, and later came to invent the diorama, which opened in Paris in July 1822.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: In 1829, Daguerre partnered with Nicéphore Niépce, an inventor who had produced the world's first heliograph in 1822 and the oldest surviving camera photograph in 1826 or 1827. Niépce died suddenly in 1833, but Daguerre continued experimenting, and evolved the process which would subsequently be known as the daguerreotype. After efforts to interest private investors proved fruitless, Daguerre went public with his invention in 1839. At a joint meeting of the French Academy of Sciences and the Académie des Beaux Arts on 7 January of that year, the invention was announced and described in general terms, but all specific details were withheld. Under assurances of strict confidentiality, Daguerre explained and demonstrated the process only to the Academy's perpetual secretary François Arago, who proved to be an invaluable advocate. Members of the Academy and other select individuals were allowed to examine specimens at Daguerre's studio. The images were enthusiastically praised as nearly miraculous, and news of the daguerreotype quickly spread. Arrangements were made for Daguerre's rights to be acquired by the French Government in exchange for lifetime pensions for himself and Niépce's son Isidore; then, on 19 August 1839, the French Government presented the invention as a gift from France "free to the world", and complete working instructions were published. In 1839, he was elected to the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: Daguerre died, from a heart attack, on 10 July 1851 in Bry-sur-Marne, from Paris. A monument marks his grave there.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: In the mid-1820s, prior to his association with Daguerre, Niépce used a coating of bitumen of Judea to make the first permanent camera photographs. The bitumen was hardened where it was exposed to light and the unhardened portion was then removed with a solvent. A camera exposure lasting for hours or days was required. Niépce and Daguerre later refined this process, but unacceptably long exposures were still needed.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: After the death of Niépce in 1833, Daguerre concentrated his attention on the light-sensitive properties of silver salts, which had previously been demonstrated by Johann Heinrich Schultz and others. For the process which was eventually named the daguerreotype, he exposed a thin silver-plated copper sheet to the vapour given off by iodine crystals, producing a coating of light-sensitive silver iodide on the surface. The plate was then exposed in the camera. Initially, this process, too, required a very long exposure to produce a distinct image, but Daguerre made the crucial discovery that an invisibly faint "latent" image created by a much shorter exposure could be chemically "developed" into a visible image. Upon seeing the image, the contents of which are unknown, Daguerre said, "I have seized the light – I have arrested its flight!"


title: Louis Daguerre

text: The latent image on a daguerreotype plate was developed by subjecting it to the vapour given off by mercury heated to 75 °C. The resulting visible image was then "fixed" (made insensitive to further exposure to light) by removing the unaffected silver iodide with concentrated and heated salt water. Later, a solution of the more effective "hypo" (hyposulphite of soda, now known as sodium thiosulfate) was used instead.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: The resultant plate produced an exact reproduction of the scene. The image was laterally reversed—as images in mirrors are—unless a mirror or inverting prism was used during exposure to flip the image. To be seen optimally, the image had to be lit at a certain angle and viewed so that the smooth parts of its mirror-like surface, which represented the darkest parts of the image, reflected something dark or dimly lit. The surface was subject to tarnishing by prolonged exposure to the air and was so soft that it could be marred by the slightest friction, so a daguerreotype was almost always sealed under glass before being framed (as was commonly done in France) or mounted in a small folding case (as was normal in the UK and US).


title: Louis Daguerre

text: Daguerreotypes were usually portraits; the rarer landscape views and other unusual subjects are now much sought-after by collectors and sell for much higher prices than ordinary portraits. At the time of its introduction, the process required exposures lasting ten minutes or more for brightly sunlit subjects, so portraiture was an impractical ordeal. Samuel Morse was astonished to learn that daguerreotypes of the streets of Paris did not show any people, horses or vehicles, until he realized that due to the long exposure times all moving objects became invisible. Within a few years, exposures had been reduced to as little as a few seconds by the use of additional sensitizing chemicals and "faster" lenses such as Petzval's portrait lens, the first mathematically calculated lens.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: The daguerreotype was the Polaroid film of its day: it produced a unique image which could only be duplicated by using a camera to photograph the original. Despite this drawback, millions of daguerreotypes were produced. The paper-based calotype process, introduced by Henry Fox Talbot in 1841, allowed the production of an unlimited number of copies by simple contact printing, but it had its own shortcomings—the grain of the paper was obtrusively visible in the image, and the extremely fine detail of which the daguerreotype was capable was not possible. The introduction of the wet collodion process in the early 1850s provided the basis for a negative-positive print-making process not subject to these limitations, although it, like the daguerreotype, was initially used to produce one-of-a-kind images—ambrotypes on glass and tintypes on black-lacquered iron sheets—rather than prints on paper. These new types of images were much less expensive than daguerreotypes, and they were easier to view. By 1860 few photographers were still using Daguerre's process.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: The same small ornate cases commonly used to house daguerreotypes were also used for images produced by the later and very different ambrotype and tintype processes, and the images originally in them were sometimes later discarded so that they could be used to display photographic paper prints. It is now a very common error for any image in such a case to be described as "a daguerreotype". A true daguerreotype is always an image on a highly polished silver surface, usually under protective glass. If it is viewed while a brightly lit sheet of white paper is held so as to be seen reflected in its mirror-like metal surface, the daguerreotype image will appear as a relatively faint negative—its dark and light areas reversed—instead of a normal positive. Other types of photographic images are almost never on polished metal and do not exhibit this peculiar characteristic of appearing positive or negative depending on the lighting and reflections.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: Unbeknownst to either inventor, Daguerre's developmental work in the mid-1830s coincided with photographic experiments being conducted by William Henry Fox Talbot in England. Talbot had succeeded in producing a "sensitive paper" impregnated with silver chloride and capturing small camera images on it in the summer of 1835, though he did not publicly reveal this until January 1839. Talbot was unaware that Daguerre's late partner Niépce had obtained similar small camera images on silver-chloride-coated paper nearly twenty years earlier. Niépce could find no way to keep them from darkening all over when exposed to light for viewing and had therefore turned away from silver salts to experiment with other substances such as bitumen. Talbot chemically stabilized his images to withstand subsequent inspection in daylight by treating them with a strong solution of common salt.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: When the first reports of the French Academy of Sciences announcement of Daguerre's invention reached Talbot, with no details about the exact nature of the images or the process itself, he assumed that methods similar to his own must have been used, and promptly wrote an open letter to the Academy claiming priority of invention. Although it soon became apparent that Daguerre's process was very unlike his own, Talbot had been stimulated to resume his long-discontinued photographic experiments. The "developed out" daguerreotype process only required an exposure sufficient to create a very faint or completely invisible latent image which was then chemically developed to full visibility. Talbot's earlier "sensitive paper" (now known as "salted paper") process was a "printed out" process that required prolonged exposure in the camera until the image was fully formed, but his later calotype (also known as talbotype) paper negative process, introduced in 1841, also used latent image development, greatly reducing the exposure needed, and making it competitive with the daguerreotype.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: Daguerre's agent Miles Berry applied for a British patent under the instruction of Daguerre just days before France declared the invention "free to the world". The United Kingdom was thereby uniquely denied France's free gift, and became the only country where the payment of license fees was required. This had the effect of inhibiting the spread of the process there, to the eventual advantage of competing processes which were subsequently introduced into England. Antoine Claudet was one of the few people legally licensed to make daguerreotypes in Britain.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: In the spring of 1821, Daguerre partnered with Charles Marie Bouton with the common goal of creating a diorama theatre. Daguerre had expertise in lighting and scenic effects, and Bouton was the more experienced painter. However, Bouton eventually withdrew, and Daguerre acquired sole responsibility of the diorama theatre.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: The first diorama theatre was built in Paris, adjacent to Daguerre's studio. The first exhibit opened 11 July 1822 showing two tableaux, one by Daguerre and one by Bouton. This would become a pattern. Each exhibition would typically have two tableaux, one each by Daguerre and Bouton. Also, one would be an interior depiction, and the other would be a landscape. Daguerre hoped to create a realistic illusion for an audience, and wanted audiences to be not only entertained, but awe-stricken.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: The diorama theatres were magnificent in size. A large translucent canvas, measuring around 70 ft wide and 45 ft tall, was painted on both sides. These paintings were vivid and detailed pictures, and were lit from different angles. As the lights changed, the scene would transform. The audience would begin to see the painting on the other side of the screen. The effect was awe-inspiring. "Transforming impressions, mood changes, and movements were produced by a system of shutters and screens that allowed light to be projected- from behind- on alternately separate sections of an image painted on a semi-transparent backdrop" (Szalczer).


title: Louis Daguerre

text: Because of their size, the screens had to remain stationary. Since the tableaux were stationary, the auditorium revolved from one scene to another. The auditorium was a cylindrical room and had a single opening in the wall, similar to a proscenium arch, through which the audience could watch a "scene". Audiences would average around 350, and most would stand, though limited seating was provided. Twenty-one diorama paintings were exhibited in the first eight years. These included ‘Trinity Chapel in Canterbury Cathedral’, ‘Chartres Cathedral’, ‘City of Rouen’, and ‘Environs of Paris’ by Bouton; ‘Valley of Sarnen’, ‘Harbour of Brest’, ‘Holyroodhouse Chapel’, and ‘Roslin Chapel’ by Daguerre.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: The Roslin Chapel was known for a few legends involving an unconsuming fire. The legend goes that the Chapel has appeared to be in flames just before a high-status death, but has later shown no damage from any such fire. This chapel was also known for being unique in its architectural beauty. Daguerre was aware of both of these aspects of Roslin Chapel, and this made it a perfect subject for his diorama painting. The legends connected with the chapel would be sure to attract a large audience. Interior of Roslin Chapel in Paris opened 24 September 1824 and closed February 1825. The scene depicted light coming in through a door and a window. Foliage shadows could be seen at the window, and the way the light's rays shone through the leaves was breathtaking and seemed to "go beyond the power of painting" (Maggi). Then the light faded on the scene as if a cloud was passing over the sun. The Times dedicated an article to the exhibition, calling it "perfectly magical".


title: Louis Daguerre

text: Diorama became a popular new medium, and imitators arose. It is estimated that profits reached as much as 200,000 francs. This would require 80,000 visitors at an entrance fee of 2.50 francs. Another diorama theatre opened in Regent's Park, London, taking only four months to build. It opened in September 1823. The most prosperous years were the early to mid-1820s.


title: Louis Daguerre

text: The dioramas prospered for a few years until going into the 1830s. Then, inevitably, the theatre burned down. The diorama had been Daguerre's only source of income. At first glance, the event was tragically fateful. But the enterprise was already close to its end, thus losing the diorama tableaux was not completely disastrous, considering the funds granted under the insurance.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Rituparno Ghosh (31 August 1963 – 30 May 2013) was an Indian film director, actor, writer and lyricist. After pursuing a degree in economics, he started his career as a creative artist at an advertising agency. He received recognition for his second feature film "Unishe April" which won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film. Having won 19 National Awards, along with his contemporaries Aparna Sen and Goutam Ghose, Rituparno heralded contemporary Bengali cinema to greater heights. Ghosh died on 30 May 2013 in Kolkata after a heart attack. Ghosh was also one of the openly homosexual personalities in Indian cinema.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Ghosh was influenced by the works of Satyajit Ray and was an avid reader of Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore's works are frequently referenced to in his films. He also made a documentary titled "Jeevan Smriti" on the life of Tagore. In his career spanning almost two decades, he won 12 National and numerous International awards. His unreleased Bengali movie "Sunglass" (also known as "Taak Jhaank") was honoured and released at the 19th Kolkata International Film Festival. His Filmmaking influenced by Aparna Sen, Tapan Sinha, Satyajit Ray, Sanjay leela Bhanshali.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Rituparno Ghosh was born in a Bengali family on 31 August 1963 in Kolkata. His father, Sunil Ghosh, was a documentary film maker and painter. He completed his schooling at South Point School, and earned a degree in economics from the Jadavpur University, Kolkata. He also had a master's degree in economics from the same university. He was one of the few openly LGBT figures in Indian cinema and is considered an icon of the queer community of India.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Before his career in film, Rituparno Ghosh worked at the Response India advertising agency and became known as an especially effective copywriter in Kolkata. He was particularly noted for composing succinct, appealing one-liners and slogans for ad campaigns in Bengali during the 1980s. At the time, the trend in Kolkata was to translate all-India advertisement campaigns originally composed in English and Hindi into Bengali. Ghosh won recognition for his ability to initiate campaigns in Bengali. Among his noted ad campaigns were "Sharad Samman" and "Bongo Jiboner Ango" for the antiseptic ointment, Boroline, and others for Frooti, the largest-selling mango drink in India. Some commentators noted that his power to appeal to consumers through ad campaigns helped make his films appealing to wider audiences, particularly to middle class Bengalis.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: In 1990, Rituparno received his first break in documentary filmmaking when his own agency, Tele-Response, a member of the Response family of companies, was commissioned to make a documentary on Vande Mataram for Doordarshan.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Ghosh made his directorial debut in the feature film "Hirer Angti" which was released in 1992, a family-friendly film based on a novel written by Shirshendu Mukhopadhyay about inheritance and conjuring tricks, and starring Moon Moon Sen, Basanta Choudhury, and others


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: His second film, "Unishe April", starring Aparna Sen, Debashree Roy, Prosenjit Chatterjee and Dipankar Dey, with a soundtrack composed by Jyotishka Dasgupta, was released in 1994, and won two National Film Awards in 1995, including Best Feature Film. It portrayed the relationship of an award-winning dancer and her emotionally abandoned daughter, who aspires to be a doctor. This film received both critical acclaim and commercial success. His next film, "Dahan", released in 1997. won Ghosh the National Film Award for Best Screenplay "Dahan" was based on the true story of a woman who was molested on a street in Kolkata, and of another woman, a witness who came forward to bring legal action against the perpetrators, but became frustrated by the callousness of society, including the victim's family.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: "Bariwali", released in 2000, starring Kirron Kher, Rupa Ganguly and Chiranjeet Chakraborty, portrayed a lonely and withdrawn middle-aged woman (Kirron Kher) who rents out her large house for film production and fantasises about the charming and very much married director, who flirts with her but, predictably, disappoints her. Kher won National Film Award for Best Actress. In the 1999 film "Asukh", Ghosh dealt with the relationship between a young film star and her father who must depend unwillingly on his daughter's earnings. The film won National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Bengali.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Ghosh won the National Award for Best Direction for "Utsab", released in 2000. The film dealt with the decadence of a large family whose members now live away from the ancestral home, and meet only during the traditional Durga puja held on the premises. The 2002 film "Titli" was another narrative about a mother-daughter relationship—the teenage daughter has a crush on an older film star who, years ago, had an affair with the mother.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: The 2003 film "Shubho Mahurat", a whodunit based on Agatha Christie's book, "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side", starred the veteran actresses Rakhee and Sharmila Tagore, alongside Nandita Das, in major roles. The same year, Ghosh released his film "Chokher Bali", based on a novel written by Rabindranath Tagore, in which Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai worked with the director for the first time.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: In 2004, Ghosh's first Hindi film, "Raincoat", an adaptation of the short story, The Gift of the Magi (1906), by O. Henry was released. In this film he worked with Aishwarya Rai again. The shooting of the film was completed in 17 days. This film received National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi award. It was later adapted in English by Mithaq kazimi.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: In 2005 the Bengali film, "Antar Mahal" was released. The film was set in British India and revolved around a land-owning or zamindari family. Jackie Shroff played the Zamindar. Soha Ali Khan and Roopa Ganguly played the Zaminder's wives.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Ghosh's 2007 film, "The Last Lear", revolved around the life of a retired Shakespearean theatre actor, with Amitabh Bachchan in the lead role, and with Preity Zinta and Arjun Rampal playing supporting roles.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: The 2008 film, "Khela", was Manisha Koirala's debut film in Bengali cinema. Later the same year, "Shob Charitro Kalponik", starring Bipasha Basu and Prosenjit, was released, and won the National Award for Best Film in Bengali.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: In 2009, Ghosh's film "Abohomaan", starring Jisshu Sengupta, Ananya Chatterjee, Dipankar Dey, and Mamata Shankar, was released, and won him the National film award for Best Director in Bengali for this film.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Just before he died, he had finished production work on his last film, "Satyanweshi", based on Bengali detective Byomkesh Bakshi.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Rituparno Ghosh made his first screen appearance in an Oriya film, "Katha Deithilli Ma Ku", which was directed by Himanshu Parija and released in 2003. In 2011, he acted in two Bengali films— "Arekti Premer Golpo" directed by Kaushik Ganguly, which dealt with queer relationships, and "Memories in March" directed by Sanjoy Nag.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: "Chitrangada" (2012) was Ghosh's last film to be released. Loosely based on Rabindranath Tagore's work 'Chitrangada', this film received the special jury award at the 60th National Film Awards.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Rituparno Ghosh hosted two celebrity chat shows, "Ebong Rituporno" on ETV Bangla and "Ghosh & Co." on Star Jalsha. He was the scriptwriter of "Gaaner Opare". Ghosh had planned a 13-episodes long television series based on Miss Marple, featuring the character of Ranga Pishima from his film, "Shubho Mahurat". Titled "Tahar Namti Ranjana", it remained unfinished on his death. Star Jalsha telecasted the only finished episode from the planned series posthumously in June 2013.<ref name="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/entertainment/bengali/movies/news/rituparno-ghosh-has-not-left-us-prosenjit/articleshow/69059466.cms"></ref>


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Rituparno Ghosh was the editor of the Bengali film magazine, "Anandalok" from 1997 to 2004. He was also the editor of "Robbar" magazine of "Sangbad Pratidin" from 2006 till his death.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Rituparno suffered from diabetes mellitus type 2 for ten years, and pancreatitis for five years. He experienced insomnia and had been taking medication for it. According to Dr Rajiv Seal of Fortis Hospitals, who had been his physician for almost two decades, Rituparno was also facing complications from hormone treatments after abdominoplasty and breast implants operations which he underwent for his role in Kaushik Ganguly's film, "Arekti Premer Golpo", in which he played a transgender filmmaker with a bisexual lover.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Ghosh died at his Kolkata residence on 30 May 2013, following a massive heart attack. His attendants, Dileep and Bishnu, found him lying unconscious in bed. Nilanjana Sengupta, wife of actor Jisshu Sengupta, sent for Dr. Nirup Mitra, who declared Ghosh dead. Ghosh was 49 years old.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Many Bengali film actors and directors went to Ghosh's residence to pay tribute. In the afternoon his body was taken to Nandan and kept outside the Nandan complex for some time to allow his fans to see him one last time. Thousands of people came to Nandan to pay homage. Then his body was taken to Tollygunge Technician Studios, where West Bengal's Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee spoke of him in tribute. From Tollygunge, Ghosh's body was taken to Siriti cremation ground where his funeral took place. He was given gun salute by Kolkata Police before cremation.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Bengali actor Soumitra Chatterjee said "I cannot believe that Rituparno is no more. It is very difficult to accept this news. We lost a very promising film director at a very early age." Konkona Sen Sharma, who acted in Ghosh's "Titli" and "Dosar", said that Ghosh's death was a great personal loss for her. Actor Arindam Sil requested to observe the day as a day of national mourning. Dev said he was speechless after getting the news. Rituparna Sengupta described Ghosh as a creative genius who had enriched the Bengali film industry emotionally and culturally.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Amitabh Bachchan remembered Ghosh as the only director who had worked with every member of the Bachchan family. He tweeted, "Ghosh was a sensitive artistic minded gentle human being." For actress Bipasha Basu it was heartbreaking news, difficult to believe. Film director Shyam Benegal said, Ghosh's death was a "huge tragedy". Soha Ali Khan described Ghosh as one in the vanguard of Bengali cinema who created a link between Satyajit Ray and a new school of Bengali filmmakers. To Arjun Rampal, Ghosh was "a master of his craft" and a wonderful man. Actress Kirron Kher remembered his childlike wonder and added, "In the film world, which is replete with ignorant people, Ritu was a very well-read man. He had a library of his own and would study religiously. His knowledge was unparalleled."


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: The Indian consulate in Bangladesh held a retrospective and Afghan-American director Mithaq Kazimi wrote his reactions via his personal blog and commented on Gosh's influence beyond India on a number of newspapers.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Rituparno Ghosh was one of the most acclaimed film directors of India, and was himself an admirer of Satyajit Ray. His films glorified womanhood and closely and sensitively portrayed women's lives, feelings and sufferings. According to Bollywood actor Anupam Kher, Ghosh had wonderful understanding of the female psyche. In his last films he addressed issues of homosexuality and gender.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: An article in the newspaper "Live Mint" categorised Ghosh's cinematic career in three phases: In his early films, he tried to portray Bengali middle-class lives, their aspirations and desires; in the second phase, he mainly worked with Bollywood actors and made films in Hindi and English as well as Bengali; in the third and the last phase his movies mainly dealt with sexuality.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Rituparno Ghosh had deep interests in the classics and made multiple films of Rabindranath Tagore's works. According to film-maker Goutam Ghose—


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: His films, with their sensitive portrayal of human relationships, anguish, trauma and love in a fast-changing, post-liberalisation India charmed audiences. His brilliant story-telling reflected contemporary society like never before. While his death creates a tremendous void that can never be filled, Rituparno's work blazed a trail that has paved the way for an entire generation of filmmakers who have dared to be different. It was Rituparno who gave them the courage... ...He looked at ordinary middle-class relationships from an angle that had never been explored. For example, the mother-daughter relationship in 'Unishe April' was refreshing, yet realistic in a society that was going through churning.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: He directed and as well as acted in such films which tried to reject the concept that homosexual relationship is all about a physical relationship. He said in an interview in 2010— "There is much more to such relationships. Same-sex relationships, too, are extremely soulful, emotional and have the same pathos that any heterosexual relationship has."


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Bengali film director Mrinal Sen said that whenever he thought of direction, the name that came to mind was Rituparno Ghosh. According to Sen, Ghosh's contribution to Indian cinema will be remembered forever. The independent film critic Saibal Chatterjee, in an article in The Hindu, described the way Ghosh mixed the literary traditions of Bengal with modern-day sensibility, thereby transcending the confines of region. Chatterjee praised Ghosh for his brave and empathetic treatment of "alternative sexuality" as actor in "Arekti Premer Golpo" and "Memories in March", and as director-actor in "Chitrangada".


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: Ghosh was a researcher and admirer of Rabindranath Tagore. He made three films directly based on literary works of Rabindranath Tagore— "Choker Bali" (2003), "Noukadubi" (2010) and "Chitrangada" (2012). In the film "Asukh" (1999) Tagore played an invisible role. In 2012, Ghosh made a documentary based on Tagore's autobiography, 'Jiban Smriti', for the Government of India Ministry of Culture.


title: Rituparno Ghosh

text: In an interview in August 2012, Ghosh spoke about Tagore— "What comes through is what a lonely man Tagore was – from childhood to old age. There is no one in his life to share even his success with him. It's the journey of a lonely traveller. What I haven't captured in the documentary is what a fun-loving, humorous man he could be. I show him as a profound thinker, a guru – but then this was perhaps necessary for an audience which is not at all familiar with Rabindranath."


title: Adelaide Airport

text: Adelaide Airport , also known as Adelaide International Airport, is the principal airport of Adelaide, South Australia and the fifth-busiest airport in Australia, servicing 8.5 million passengers in the financial year ending 30 June 2019. Located adjacent to West Beach, it is approximately west of the city centre. It has been operated privately by Adelaide Airport Limited under a long-term lease from the Commonwealth Government since 29 May 1998.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: First established in 1955, a new dual international/domestic terminal was opened in 2005 which has received numerous awards, including being named the world's second-best international airport (5–15 million passengers) in 2006. Also, it has been named Australia's best capital city airport in 2006, 2009 and 2011.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: Over the financial year 2018–2019, Adelaide Airport experienced passenger growth of 7% internationally and 1.3% for domestic and regional passengers from 2017's quarterly report; this added up to a new record number of passengers who passed through Adelaide Airport at 8,090,000 over the financial year. Adelaide Airport also experienced the greatest international growth out of any Australian port.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: An early "Adelaide airport" was an aerodrome constructed in 1921 on of land in Albert Park, now Hendon, which took over from the Northfield Aerodrome. The small facility allowed for a mail service between Adelaide and Sydney. To meet the substantial growth in aviation, Parafield Airport was developed in 1927. The demand on aviation outgrew Parafield and the current site of Adelaide Airport was selected at West Torrens (known as West Beach until 1991) in January 1946. An alternative site at Port Adelaide, including a seaplane facility, was considered inferior and too far from the central business district. Construction began and flights commenced in 1954, with Parafield Airport being turned into a private and military aviation facility.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: An annexe to one of the large hangars at the airport served as a passenger terminal until the Commonwealth Government provided funds for the construction of a temporary building.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: In May 1998, Adelaide Airport Limited purchased the long-term leases of Adelaide Airport and Parafield Airport from the Commonwealth of Australia. As at April 2015, the shareholders of Adelaide Airport Limited comprised UniSuper (49%), Statewide (19.5%), Colonial (15.3%), IFM Investors (12.8%), Perron Group (3.4%).


title: Adelaide Airport

text: In 2005 a dual-use $260 million facility replaced both the original 'temporary' domestic and international terminals. The old domestic terminal was closed shortly after the new terminal was opened to flights and was demolished not long after. A new control tower was built west of the current terminal with the old control tower maintained for additional operations.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: In October 2006, the new terminal was named the Capital City Airport of the Year at the Australian Aviation Industry Awards in Cairns. In March 2007, Adelaide Airport was rated the world's second-best airport in the 5–15 million passengers category at the Airports Council International (ACI) 2006 awards in Dubai.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: Plans were announced for an expansion of the terminal in July 2007, including more aerobridges and demolition of the old International Terminal.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: On 5 August 2008 Tiger Airways Australia confirmed that Adelaide Airport would become the airline's second hub which would base two of the airline's Airbus A320s by early 2009. On 29 October 2009 Tiger announced it would be housing its third A320 at Adelaide Airport from early 2010. Tiger Airways later shut down its operations from Adelaide only to recommence them in 2013.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: In 2011 the airport encountered major problems during the eruption of Puyehue volcano in Chile. The ash cloud caused flights to be cancelled nationwide, with over 40,000 passengers stranded in Adelaide.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: On 11 October 2022, it was discovered that at around 10am local time, security screening equipment had failed half an hour earlier, leading to the evacuation of the terminal and re-screening of approximately 2,000 passengers.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: The original international terminal had only one gate with limited space for passengers. Check-in desks were small and waiting space was limited. It was partially demolished to make the area more secure and allow aircraft to park on the other side of the terminal.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: On 18 December 2018, Singapore Airlines upgraded their Singapore to Adelaide flight from the Airbus A330-300 to the new Airbus A350-900 fitted with their dual-class regional configuration.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: Fiji Airways also upgraded their new Boeing 737-8 MAX aircraft on the Nadi to Adelaide route, but due to the grounding of the 737 MAX aircraft, switched to the Boeing 737-800. However, Fiji Airlines announced that they would no longer fly to Adelaide as of 20 July 2019.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: In late 2018 and early 2019, China Southern, Cathay Pacific and Malaysia Airlines increased their services to Adelaide Airport to accommodate the increase in demand.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: The airport is also a heavy cargo destination for Volga-Dnepr Airlines, who require 2.5 km of runway for the Antonov cargo plane.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: In July 2020, Emirates announced their suspension of services to Adelaide Airport due to low demand caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Their Adelaide based staff have also been laid off. Emirates noted they wish to return their services to Adelaide Airport once travel demand has increased.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: The airport was redeveloped at a cost of $260 million and opened 8 October 2005. The redevelopment was managed by builders Hansen Yuncken. Before the redevelopment, the old airport terminal was criticised for its limited capacity and lack of aerobridges.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: Proposals were developed for an upgraded terminal of world standard. The final proposal, released in 1997, called for a large, unified terminal in which both domestic and international flights would use the same terminal. A combination of factors, the most notable of which was the collapse of Ansett Australia, then a duopoly domestic carrier with Qantas, and the resultant loss of funds for its share of the construction cost, saw the new terminal plans shelved until an agreement was reached in 2002.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: The new terminal was opened on 7 October 2005 by the Prime Minister John Howard and South Australian Premier Mike Rann. However, Adelaide Airport Limited announced soon afterwards that only international flights would use the new facility immediately due to problems with the fuel pumps and underground pipes. These problems related initially to the anti-rusting agent applied to the insides of the fuel pumps, then to construction debris in the pipes. Although international and regional (from December 2005) aircraft were refuelled via tankers, a lack of space and safety concerns prevented this action for domestic jet aircraft, which instead continued operations at the old terminal. The re-fueling system was cleared of all debris and the new terminal was used for all flights from 17 February 2006. The new airport terminal is approximately end to end and is capable of handling 27 aircraft, including an Airbus A380, simultaneously and processing 3,000 passengers per hour. It includes high-amenity public and airline lounges, 14 glass-sided aerobridges, 42 common user check-in desks and 34 shop fronts. Free wireless Internet is also provided throughout the terminal by Internode Systems, a first for an Australian airport.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: In 1919, the Australian government offered £10,000 for the first All-Australian crew to fly an aeroplane from England to Australia. Keith Macpherson Smith, Ross Macpherson Smith and mechanics Jim Bennett and Wally Shiers completed the journey from Hounslow Heath Aerodrome to Darwin via Singapore and Batavia on 10 December 1919. Their Vickers Vimy aircraft G-EAOU (affectionately known as "God 'Elp All Of Us") is now preserved in a purpose-built climate-controlled museum inside the grounds of the airport at . Due to relocation of the terminal buildings, the museum is now situated inside the long-term car park. In 2019, the state and federal government committed $2 million each towards a new preservation facility inside the airport's $165 million terminal expansion.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: In February 2011, a A$100 million building program was launched as part of a five-year master plan, including a new road network within the airport, a multi-storey car park, increasing short-term parking spaces from 800 to 1,650 (completed August 2012); a new plaza frontage for the passenger terminal (completed March 2013); a walkway bridge connecting new car park and existing terminal building (completed March 2013); terminal concourse extension; three new aerobridges; terminal commercial projects and passenger facilities; relocation of regional carrier Rex.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: In July 2013, Adelaide Airport became the first Australian airport and second airport worldwide to have Google Street View technology, allowing passengers to explore the arrival and departure sections of the airport before travel.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: A new control tower, at high more than twice the height of the old tower built in 1983 and costing , was completed and commissioned in August 2013.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: In January 2015, the "Adelaide Airport Master Plan 2014" was approved by the Commonwealth Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: In September 2016, a relocation and major upgrade was completed for the base of the central service region of the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia. The base houses many Pilatus PC-12 and one Pilatus PC-24, maintenance hangars and ambulance bays.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: In late 2018 and early 2019, Adelaide Airport commenced a $165 million terminal expansion project, increasing the length of the terminal, adding more duty-free and shopping outlets, and increasing international capacity. The upgrades are set to be completed by 2021. The old international terminal was also demolished in 2019, after lying empty for many years.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: In early 2020, Adelaide Airport opened a newly updated concourse which was finished in December 2019, New Shops include Penfolds Wine Bar & Kitchen, Precinct Adelaide Kitchen, Soul Origin, Boost Juice, Lego Kaboom and Airport Pharmacy.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: A world-first project that lowers runway temperatures by growing commercial crops irrigated by recycled water was trialled at Adelaide Airport, with the first trial completed in 2019. By planting of various crops and testing the effects of each on runway temperature, the scientists found that tree lucerne was most successful, leading to a reduction of an average 3 °C in average ambient air temperatures on warm days, in and around the irrigation areas. Not only was the lucerne the best performer compared with tall fescue, couch grass and kikuyu, but it can also be cut into hay and sold as stock feed. The Airport is creating a business case to extend the project to cover of airport land.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: Adelaide Metro operates frequent JetBus buses connecting the airport to a number of popular locations across metropolitan Adelaide.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: Route J1X (currently cancelled due to COVID-19) operates an express service to and from the airport to the Adelaide CBD. Routes J1 and J2 operate between the northern, western and southern suburbs, via the CBD and airport – popular areas such as Tea Tree Plaza, Glenelg and Harbour Town are serviced. Routes J7 and J8 operate to West Lakes and Marion.


title: Adelaide Airport

text: There were plans to build a rail line to the airport, but as of May 2020, these projects have been cancelled.


title: Medjool

text: The Majhūl date ( - tamar al-majhūl, literally, "unknown", from جَهِلَ, "to not know") also known as Medjool, Medjoul, or Majhool, is a large, sweet cultivated variety of date ("Phoenix dactylifera") from the Tafilalt region of Morocco, also grown in the United States, Israel, Palestine, Iran, Saudi Arabia, South Africa,and Jordan. The variety is planted both for harvesting and for landscaping. The Medjool is a distinct landrace, described as producing "large soft fruit, with orange-yellowish flesh, and a mildly rich and pleasing flavor." Israel currently holds more than 60 percent of the global Mejhoul market share, making it the largest exporter of Mejhoul dates in the world.


title: Bison hunting

text: Bison hunting (hunting of the American bison, also commonly known as the American buffalo) was an activity fundamental to the economy and society of the Plains Indians peoples who inhabited the vast grasslands on the Interior Plains of North America, prior to the animal's near-extinction in the late 19th century following US expansion into the West. Bison hunting was an important spiritual practice and source of material for these groups, especially after the European introduction of the horse in the 16th through 18th centuries enabled new hunting techniques. The species' dramatic decline was the result of habitat loss due to the expansion of ranching and farming in western North America, industrial-scale hunting practiced by non-Indigenous hunters, increased Indigenous hunting pressure due to non-Indigenous demand for bison hides and meat, and cases of deliberate policy by settler governments to destroy the food source of the Indigenous peoples during times of conflict.


title: Bison hunting

text: The steppe bison ("Bison priscus") was found in North America more than a million years ago, well before the first humans are believed to have arrived. It is believed to have evolved into the giant Ice Age bison ("Bison latifrons") which lived from 200,000 years ago to 30,000 years ago. It was in turn replaced by "Bison occidentalis", which is believed to have come from Eurasia, and "Bison antiquus" which evolved separately from "B. priscus". The first human arrivals in North America, the Paleo-Indians, are believed to have hunted these last two species ("occidentalis" and "antiquus"), but did not rely on them to the exclusion of other large herbivorous mammals such as mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, and ground sloths. Around 11,000–10,000 years ago, however, the majority of the large game species in North America became extinct, possibly due to overhunting, or some combination of this and other factors. One of the few large survivors was "B. antiquus", but its average size declined until it evolved into the smaller modern American bison around 5,000 years ago.


title: Bison hunting

text: The modern American bison is split into two subspecies, the wood bison in the boreal forests of what is now Canada, and the plains bison on the prairies extending from Canada to Mexico. The plains subspecies became the dominant animal of the prairies of North America, where bison were a keystone species, whose grazing and trampling pressure was a force that shaped the ecology of the Great Plains as strongly as periodic prairie fires and which were central to the survival of many Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains. To the corn-growing village people, it was a valued second food source. However, there is now some controversy over their interaction. Charles C. Mann wrote in "", pages 367 ff, "Hernando De Soto's expedition staggered through the Southeast for four years in the early 16th century and saw hordes of people but apparently didn't see a single bison." Mann discussed the evidence that Native Americans not only created (by selective use of fire) the large grasslands that provided the bison's ideal habitat but also kept the bison population regulated. In this theory, it was only when the original human population was devastated by wave after wave of epidemic (from diseases of Europeans) after the 16th century that the bison herds propagated wildly. In such a view, the seas of bison herds that stretched to the horizon were a symptom of an ecology out of balance, only rendered possible by decades of heavier-than-average rainfall. Other evidence of the arrival circa 1550–1600 in the savannas of the eastern seaboard includes the lack of places which southeast natives named after buffalo. Bison were the most numerous single species of large wild mammal on Earth.


title: Bison hunting

text: Russel Means states that bison were killed by using a method that coyotes implemented. Coyotes will sometimes cut one bison off from the herd and chase it in a circle until the animal collapsed or gave up due to exhaustion.


title: Bison hunting

text: Working on foot, a few groups of Native Americans at times used fires to channel an entire herd of buffalo over a cliff, sometimes killing far more than they could use. The Olsen–Chubbuck archaeological site in Colorado reveals some techniques, which may or may not have been widely used. The method involves skinning down the back in order to get at the tender meat just beneath the surface, the area known as the "hatched area". After the removal of the hatched area, the front legs are cut off as well as the shoulder blades. Doing so exposes the hump meat (in the Wood Bison), as well as the meat of the ribs and the Bison's inner organs. After everything was exposed, the spine was then severed and the pelvis and hind legs removed. Finally, the neck and head were removed as one. This allowed for the tough meat to be dried and made into pemmican.


title: Bison hunting

text: Castaneda saw Indigenous women butchering bison with a flint fixed in a short stick. He admired how quickly they completed the task. Blood to drink was filled in emptied guts, which were carried around the neck.


title: Bison hunting

text: A Crow historian has related a number of ways to get bison. By the help of songs, hazers, drive lines of stones and a medicine man pointing down the line with a pair of hindquarters in his hands, the Crows drove many bison over a cliff. A successful drive could give 700 animals. During winter, Chief One Heart's camp would maneuver the game out on slick ice, where it was easier to kill with hunting weapons.


title: Bison hunting

text: Henry Kelsey described a hunt on the northern plains in 1691. First, the tribe surrounded a herd. Then they would "gather themselves into a smaller Compass Keeping ye Beast still in ye middle". The hunters killed as many as they could before the animals broke through the human ring.


title: Bison hunting

text: In the dog days, the women of a Blackfoot camp made a curved fence of travois' tied together, front end up. Runners drove the game towards the enclosure, where hunters waited with lances as well as bows and arrows.


title: Bison hunting

text: The Hidatsa near Missouri River confined the buffalo on the weakest ice at the end of winter. When it cracked, the current swept the animals down under thicker ice. The people hauled the drowned animals ashore, when they emerged downstream. Although not hunted in a strict sense, the nearby Mandan secured bison, drowned by chance, when the ice broke. A trader observed the young men "in the drift ice leap from piece to piece, often falling between, plunging under, darting up elsewhere and securing themselves upon very slippery flakes" before they brought the carcasses to land.


title: Bison hunting

text: Religion also plays a big role in Native American bison hunting. Plains tribes generally believe that successful hunts required certain rituals. The Omaha tribe had to approach a herd in four legs. At each stop the chiefs and the leader of the hunt would sit down and smoke and offer prayers for success. The Pawnee performed the purifying Big Washing Ceremony before each tribal summer hunt to avoid scaring the bison. To Plains tribes, the buffalo is one of the most sacred animals, and they feel obligated to treat them with respect. When they are about to kill a buffalo, they will offer it a prayer. Failures in the hunt could have been attributed to poorly performed rituals. Each animal produces from 200 to 400 pounds of meat.


title: Bison hunting

text: Before the introduction of horses, bison were herded into large chutes made of rocks and willow branches and trapped in a corral called a buffalo pound and then slaughtered or stampeded over cliffs, called buffalo jumps. Both pound and jump archaeological sites are found in several places in the U.S. and Canada. In the case of a jump, large groups of people would herd the bison for several miles, forcing them into a stampede that drove the herd over a cliff.


title: Bison hunting

text: Horses taken from the Spanish were well-established in the nomadic hunting cultures by the early 1700s, and Indigenous groups once living east of the Great Plains moved west to hunt the larger bison population. Intertribal warfare forced the Cheyenne to give up their cornfields at Biesterfeldt village and eventually cross west of the Missouri and become the well-known horseback buffalo hunters. In addition to using bison for themselves, these Indigenous groups also traded meat and robes to village-based tribes.


title: Bison hunting

text: A good horseman could easily lance or shoot enough bison to keep his tribe and family fed, as long as a herd was nearby. The bison provided meat, leather, and sinew for bows.


title: Bison hunting

text: A fast hunting horse would usually be spared and first mounted near the bison. The hunter rode on a pack horse until then. Hunters with few horses ran besides the mount to the hunting grounds. Accidents, sometimes fatal, happened from time to time to both rider and horse.


title: Bison hunting

text: To avoid disputes, each hunter used arrows marked in a personal way. Lakota hunter Bear Face recognized his arrows by the one of three "arrow wings" made of a pelican feather. Castaneda wrote how it was possible to shoot an arrow right through a buffalo. The Pawnees had contests as to how many bison it was possible to kill with just one bowshot. The best result was three. An arrow stuck in the animal was preferred as the most lethal. It would inflict more damage with each jump and move. A white traveler credited the hunters with cutting up a bison and packing the meat on a horse in less than 15 minutes.


title: Bison hunting

text: When the bison stayed away and made hunting impossible, famine became a reality. The hard experience of starvation found way into stories and myths. A folk tale of the Kiowa begins "Famine once struck the Kiowa People..." "The people were without food and no game could be found..." makes an Omaha myth certain. A fur trader noted how some Sioux were in want of meat at one time in 1804. Starving Yanktonais passed by Fort Clark in 1836.


title: Bison hunting

text: Already Castaneda noted the typical relations of two different plains people relying heavily on the same food source: "they ... are enemies of each other." The bison hunting resulted in loss of land for a number of tribal nations. Indirectly, it often disturbed the rhythm of a tribal life, caused economic losses and hardship, and damaged tribal autonomy. As long as bison hunting went on, intertribal warfare was omnipresent.


title: Bison hunting

text: Tribes forced away from the game rich areas had to try their luck on the edges of the best buffalo habitats. Small tribes found it hard to do even that. Due to attacks in the 1850s and 1860s, the villages of the Upper Missouri "hardly dared go into the plains to hunt buffalo". The Sioux would stay near Arikara villages "and keep the bison away, so they could sell meat and hides to the Arikaras".


title: Bison hunting

text: The Kiowas have an early history in parts of present-day Montana and South Dakota. Here they fought the Cheyenne, "who challenged their right to hunt buffalo". Later, the Kiowas headed for the south together with the Comanche, when "the Lakota (Teton Sioux) drove them from the Black Hills territory". In present-day Montana, the better-armed Blackfoot pushed the Kutenai, Flathead and Shoshone off the plains. In the start of the 19th century, they claimed the buffalo ranges entirely to the Rocky Mountains and fought all conceived as intruders. The less numerical tribe peoples west of the continental divide did not accept this. Their ancestors had hunted on the Great Plains and they would continue the tradition at all cost. "When we go to hunt Bison, we also prepare for war with the Peeagans [Piegan Blackfeet] and their allies", revealed a Flathead chief. A Kutenai gave this description of tribal hunts during buffalo days, "Across the mountains they went out on the prairie, but they were afraid of the Piegans."


title: Bison hunting

text: In 1866, the Pend d'Oreilles crossed the Rocky Mountain from the west, just to be attacked by tribes as they entered the plains. They lost 21 people. The beaten hunting party returned in a "horrible condition" and "all nearly famished". Often, the attackers tried to capture dried meat, equipment and horses during a fight. Lack of horses owing to raids reduced the chances for securing an ample amount of meat on the hunts. In 1860, the Ponca lost 100 horses, while the Mandan and Hidatsa saw the enemy disappear with 175 horses in a single raid in 1861.


title: Bison hunting

text: Conflicts between the bison hunting tribes ranged from raids to massacres. Camps were left without leaders. In the course of a battle, tipis and hides could be cut to pieces and tipi poles broken. Organized bison hunts and camp moves were stopped by the enemy, and villages had to flee their homes.


title: Bison hunting

text: The Sioux burned a village of Nuptadi Mandans in the last quarter of the 18th century. Other villages of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara destroyed either completely or partially in attacks are two Hidatsa villages in 1834, Mitutanka on January 9, 1839 and Like-a-Fishhook Village in 1862. The three tribes would routinely ask the U.S. army for assistance against stronger powers until the end of intertribal warfare in the area.


title: Bison hunting

text: Eighteen out of 30 prominent Poncas were killed in a surprise attack in 1824, "including the famous Smoke-maker". At a stroke, the small tribe stood without any experienced leaders. In 1859, the Poncas lost two chiefs when a combined group of enemies charged a hunting camp. Half a Pawnee village was set ablaze during a large-scale attack in 1843, and the Pawnee never rebuilt it. More than 60 inhabitants lost their lives, including Chief Blue Coat. The otherwise numerous Small Robes band of the Piegan Blackfoot lost influence and some self-reliance after a severe River Crow attack on a moving camp at "Mountains on Both Sides" (Judith Gap, Montana) in 1845. "Their days of greatness were over." In 1852, an Omaha delegation visited Washington, D.C. It would "request the federal government's protection". Five different nations raided the Omaha.


title: Bison hunting

text: In the 19th century, European settlers hunted bison almost to extinction. Fewer than 100 remained in the wild by the late 1880s. Unlike Indigenous practices, where hunters took only what was needed and used the whole animal, these settlers hunted them en masse for only their skins and tongues, and left the rest of the animal behind to decay on the ground. After the animals rotted, their bones were collected and shipped back east in large quantities.


title: Bison hunting

text: Due to the roaming behavior of bison, their mass destruction came with relative ease to the European hunters. When one bison in a herd is killed, the other bison gather around it. Due to this pattern, the ability of a hunter to kill one bison often led to the destruction of a large herd of them.


title: Bison hunting

text: Indigenous peoples whose lives depended on the Buffalo also continued to hunt, and they were faced with having to adapt to the arrival of European settlers in the Plains. While most struggled to continue their traditional ways, other Plains cultures were forced to adapt their style of hunting. Andrew Isenberg argues that some Native people embraced the fur trade, and that by adapting their hunting methods to include hunting on horseback, this added to the number of bison they could hunt.


title: Bison hunting

text: For settlers of the Plains region, bison hunting served as a way to increase their economic stake in the area. Trappers and traders made their living selling buffalo fur; in the winter of 1872–1873, more than 1.5 million buffalo were put onto trains and moved eastward. In addition to the potential profits from buffalo leather, which was commonly used to make machinery belts and army boots, buffalo hunting forced Natives to become dependent on beef from cattle. General Winfield Scott Hancock, for example, reminded several Arapaho chiefs at Fort Dodge in 1867: "You know well that the game is getting very scarce and that you must soon have some other means of living; you should therefore cultivate the friendship of the white man, so that when the game is all gone, they may take care of you if necessary."


title: Bison hunting

text: Commercial bison hunters also emerged at this time. Military forts often supported hunters, who would use their civilian sources near their military base. Though officers hunted bison for food and sport, professional hunters made a far larger impact in the decline of bison population. Officers stationed in Fort Hays and Wallace even had bets in their "buffalo shooting championship of the world", between "Medicine Bill" Comstock and "Buffalo Bill" Cody. Some of these hunters would engage in mass bison slaughter in order to make a living.


title: Bison hunting

text: The US Army sanctioned and actively endorsed the wholesale slaughter of bison herds. The federal government promoted bison hunting for various reasons, primarily to pressure the native people onto the Indian reservations during times of conflict by removing their main food source. Without the bison, native people of the plains were often forced to leave the land or starve to death. One of the biggest advocates of this strategy was General William Tecumseh Sherman. On June 26, 1869, the Army Navy Journal reported: "General Sherman remarked, in conversation the other day, that the quickest way to compel the Indians to settle down to civilized life was to send ten regiments of soldiers to the plains, with orders to shoot buffaloes until they became too scarce to support the redskins."


title: Bison hunting

text: Similarly, Lieutenant General John M. Schofield would write in is memoirs: "With my cavalry and carbined artillery encamped in front, I wanted no other occupation in life than to ward off the savage and kill off his food until there should no longer be an Indian frontier in our beautiful country." Later, president Ulysses S. Grant vetoed the act of congress HR 921, which would have implemented protections against white overhunting of buffalo. Prior to this, Secretary of the Interior, Columbus Delano, had stated the following regarding complaints about whites hunting buffalo on native reservations:"While I would not seriously regret the total disappearance of the buffalo from our western prairies, in its effect on the Indians, regarding it rather as a means of hastening their sense of dependence upon the products of the soil and their own labors, yet these encroachments by the whites upon the reservations set apart for the exclusive occupancy of the Indian is one prolific source of trouble in the management of the reservation Indians, and measures should be adopted to prevent such trespasses in the future, or very serious collisions may be the result."Demonstrating clearly that he saw white poaching of bison as a problem only because it may lead to retaliations from the Indians, and on the contrary, that he saw the extermination of the buffalo as potentially beneficial in the forced assimilation of Indians.


title: Bison hunting

text: According to Professor David Smits: "Frustrated bluecoats, unable to deliver a punishing blow to the so-called 'Hostiles', unless they were immobilized in their winter camps, could, however, strike at a more accessible target, namely, the buffalo. That tactic also made curious sense, for in soldiers' minds the buffalo and the Plains Indian were virtually inseparable."


title: Bison hunting

text: According to historian Pekka Hämäläinen, a few Native American tribes also partly contributed to the collapse of the bison in the southern Plains. By the 1830s the Comanche and their allies on the southern plains were killing about 280,000 bison a year, which was near the limit of sustainability for that region. Firearms and horses, along with a growing export market for buffalo robes and bison meat had resulted in larger and larger numbers of bison killed each year. A long and intense drought hit the southern plains in 1845, lasting into the 1860s, which caused a widespread collapse of the bison herds. In the 1860s, the rains returned and the bison herds recovered to a degree.


title: Bison hunting

text: After the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862, the west experienced a large boom in colonist population—and a large decline in bison population. As railways expanded, military troops and supplies were able to be transported more efficiently to the Plains region. Some railroads even hired commercial hunters to feed their laborers. William Frederick "Buffalo Bill" Cody, for example, was hired by the Kansas Pacific Railroad for this reason. Hunters began arriving in masses, and trains would often slow down on their routes to allow for raised hunting. Men would either climb aboard the roofs of trains or fire shots at herds from outside their windows. As a description of this from "Harper's Weekly" noted: "The train is 'slowed' to a speed about equal to that of the herd; the passengers get out fire-arms which are provided for the defense of the train against the Indians, and open from the windows and platforms of the cars a fire that resembles a brisk skirmish."


title: Bison hunting

text: The railroad industry also wanted bison herds culled or eliminated. Herds of bison on tracks could damage locomotives when the trains failed to stop in time. Herds often took shelter in the artificial cuts formed by the grade of the track winding through hills and mountains in harsh winter conditions. As a result, bison herds could delay a train for days.


title: Bison hunting

text: The main reason for the bison's near-demise, much like the actual demise of the passenger pigeon, was commercial hunting.


title: Bison hunting

text: Bison skins were used for industrial machine belts, clothing such as robes, and rugs. There was a huge export trade to Europe of bison hides. Old West bison hunting was very often a big commercial enterprise, involving organized teams of one or two professional hunters, backed by a team of skinners, gun cleaners, cartridge reloaders, cooks, wranglers, blacksmiths, security guards, teamsters, and numerous horses and wagons. Men were even employed to recover and recast lead bullets taken from the carcasses. Many of these professional hunters, such as Buffalo Bill Cody, killed over a hundred animals at a single stand and many thousands in their career. One professional hunter killed over 20,000 by his own count. The average prices paid the buffalo hunters from 1880 to 1884 was about as follows: For cow hides, $3; bull hides, $2.50; yearlings, $1.50; calves, 75 cents; and the cost of getting the hides to market brought the cost up to about $3.50 ($89.68 accounting for inflation) per hide.


title: Bison hunting

text: The hunter would customarily locate the herd in the early morning, and station himself about 100 yards/meters from it, shooting the animals broadside through the lungs. Head shots were not preferred as the soft lead bullets would often flatten and fail to penetrate the skull, especially if mud was matted on the head of the animal. The bison would continue to drop until either the herd sensed danger and stampeded or perhaps a wounded animal attacked another, causing the herd to disperse. If done properly a large number of bison would be felled at one time. Following up were the skinners, who would drive a spike through the nose of each dead animal with a sledgehammer, hook up a horse team, and pull the hide from the carcass. The hides were dressed, prepared, and stacked on the wagons by other members of the organization.


title: Bison hunting

text: For a decade after 1873, there were several hundred, perhaps over a thousand, such commercial hide hunting outfits harvesting bison at any one time, vastly exceeding the take by Native Americans or individual meat hunters. The commercial take arguably was anywhere from 2,000 to 100,000 animals per day depending on the season, though there are no statistics available. It was said that the Big .50s were fired so much that hunters needed at least two rifles to let the barrels cool off; The Fireside Book of Guns reports they were sometimes quenched in the winter snow. Dodge City saw railroad cars sent East filled with stacked hides.


title: Bison hunting

text: The building of the railroads through Colorado and Kansas split the bison herd in two parts, the southern herd and the northern herd. The last refuge of the southern herd was in the Texas Panhandle.


title: Bison hunting

text: As the great herds began to wane, proposals to protect the bison were discussed. In some cases, individual military officers attempted to end the mass slaughter of these buffalo. William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody, among others, spoke in favor of protecting the bison because he saw that the pressure on the species was too great. Yet these proposals were discouraged since it was recognized that the Plains Indians, some of the tribes often at war with the United States, depended on bison for their way of life. (Other buffalo hunting tribes cannot tell of a single fight with the United States, namely tribes like the Assiniboine, the Hidatsa, the Gros Ventre, the Ponca and the Omaha). In 1874, President Ulysses S. Grant "pocket vetoed" a Federal bill to protect the dwindling bison herds, and in 1875 General Philip Sheridan pleaded to a joint session of Congress to slaughter the herds, to deprive the Indians of their source of food. By 1884, the American Bison was close to extinction.


title: Bison hunting

text: Subsequent settlers harvested bison bones to be sold for fertilizer. It was an important source of supplemental income for poorer farmers in the 1880s and early 1890s.


title: Bison hunting

text: Led by Chief Washakie, around 1,800 Shoshones in the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming started out in October 1874. Going north, the men, women and children crossed the border of the reservation. Scouts came back with news of buffalo near Gooseberry Creek. The hunters got around 125 bison. Fewer hunters left the reservation the next two years and those who went focused on elk, deer and other game.


title: Bison hunting

text: Hidatsa rebel Crow Flies High and his group established themselves on the Fort Buford Military Reservation, North Dakota, in the start of the 1870s and hunted bison in the Yellowstone area until game went scarce during the next decade.


title: Bison hunting

text: Indian agents, with insufficient funds, accepted long hunting expeditions of the Flathead and Pend d'Oreille to the plains in the late 1870s. In the early 1880s, the buffalo were gone.


title: Bison hunting

text: The Gros Ventre left the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Montana for a hunt north of Milk River in 1877. Chief Jerry Running Fisher enlisted as scout at Fort Assinniboine in 1881. "His camp stayed close to the troops when they patrolled, so they hunted undisturbed by enemy tribes." Two years later, the buffalo were all but gone.


title: Bison hunting

text: In June 1882, more than 600 Lakota and Yanktonai hunters located a big herd on the plains far west of the Standing Rock Agency. In this last hunt, they got around 5,000 animals.


title: Bison hunting

text: Following the Civil War, the U.S. had ratified roughly 400 treaties with the Plains tribes, but went on to break many of these as the Westward Movement ensued. The bison population crash represented a loss of spirit, land, and autonomy for most Indigenous People at this time.


title: Bison hunting

text: Much of the land delegated to Indigenous tribes during this westward expansion were barren tracts of land, far from any buffalo herds. These reservations were not sustainable for Natives, who relied on bison for food. One of these reservations was the Sand Creek Reservation in southeastern Colorado. The nearest buffalo herd was over two hundred miles away, and many Cheyennes began leaving the reservation, forced to hunt livestock of nearby settlers and passing wagon trains.


title: Bison hunting

text: Plains Indians adopted a nomadic lifestyle, one which depended on bison location for their food source. Bison is high in protein levels and low in fat content, and contributed to the wholesome diet of Native Americans. Additionally, they used every edible part of the bison—organs, brains, fetuses, and placental membranes included.


title: Bison hunting

text: As a consequence of the great bison slaughter, they became more heavily dependent on the U.S. Government and American traders for their needs. Many military men recognized the bison slaughter as a way of reducing the autonomy of Indigenous Peoples. For instance, Lieutenant Colonel Dodge, a high-ranking military officer, once said in a conversation with Frank H. Mayer: "Mayer, there's no two ways about it, either the buffalo or the Indian must go. Only when the Indian becomes absolutely dependent on us for his every need, will we be able to handle him. He's too independent with the buffalo. But if we kill the buffalo we conquer the Indian. It seems a more humane thing to kill the buffalo than the Indian, so the buffalo must go."


title: Bison hunting

text: Even Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian School and a Tenth Cavalry lieutenant in the Red River War, discussed this strategy after his retirement: "the generation of the buffalo was ordered as a military measure because it was plain that the Indians could not be controlled on their reservations as long as their greatest resource, the buffalo, were so plentiful."


title: Bison hunting

text: The destruction of bison signaled the end of the Indian Wars, and consequently their movement towards reservations. When the Texas legislature proposed a bill to protect the bison, General Sheridan disapproved of it, stating, "These men have done more in the last two years, and will do more in the next year, to settle the vexed Indian question, than the entire regular army has done in the last forty years. They are destroying the Indians' commissary. And it is a well known fact that an army losing its base of supplies is placed at a great disadvantage. Send them powder and lead, if you will; but for a lasting peace, let them kill, skin and sell until the buffaloes are exterminated. Then your prairies can be covered with speckled cattle."


title: Bison hunting

text: Most Native American tribes regard the bison as a sacred animal and religious symbol. University of Montana anthropology professor S. Neyooxet Greymorning stated: "The creation stories of where buffalo came from put them in a very spiritual place among many tribes. The buffalo crossed many different areas and functions, and it was utilized in many ways. It was used in ceremonies, as well as to make tipi covers that provide homes for people, utensils, shields, weapons, and parts were used for sewing with the sinew." In fact, many tribes had "buffalo doctors", who claimed to have learned from bison in symbolic visions. Also, many Plains tribes used the bison skull for confessions and blessing burial sites.


title: Bison hunting

text: Though buffalo were being slaughtered in masses, many tribes perceived the buffalo as part of the natural world—something guaranteed to them by the Creator. For some Plains Indigenous peoples, buffalo are known as the first people. Many tribes did not grasp the concept of species extinction. Thus, when the buffalo began to disappear in great numbers, it was particularly harrowing to the tribes. As Crow Chief Plenty Coups described it: "When the buffalo went away, the hearts of my people fell to the ground, and they could not lift them up again. After this nothing happened. There was little singing anywhere." Spiritual loss was rampant; buffalo were an integral part of their society and they would frequently take part in ceremonies for each buffalo they killed to honor its sacrifice. In order to boost morale during this time, the Sioux and other tribes took part in the Ghost Dance, which consisted of hundreds of people dancing until 100 persons were lying unconscious.


title: Bison hunting

text: Native Americans served as the caretakers of bison, so their forced movement towards bison-free reservation areas was particularly challenging. Upon their arrival to reservations, some tribes asked the Government officials if they could hunt cattle the way they hunted buffalo. During these cattle hunts, Plains tribes would dress up in their finery, sing bison songs, and attempt to simulate a bison hunt. These cattle hunts served as a way for the tribes to preserve their ceremonies, community, and morale. However, the U.S. government soon put a halt to cattle hunts, choosing to package the beef up for the Native Americans instead.


title: Bison hunting

text: The mass buffalo slaughter also seriously harmed the ecological health of the Great Plains region, in which many Indigenous People lived. Unlike cattle, bison were naturally fit to thrive in the Great Plains environment; bisons' giant heads are naturally fit to drive through snow and make them far more likely to survive harsh winters. Additionally, bison grazing helps to cultivate the prairie, making it ripe for hosting a diverse range of plants. Cattle, on the other hand, eat through vegetation and limit the ecosystem's ability to support a diverse range of species. Agricultural and residential development of the prairie is estimated to have reduced the prairie to 0.1% of its former area. The plains region has lost nearly one-third of its prime topsoil since the onset of the buffalo slaughter. Cattle are also causing water to be pillaged at rates that are depleting many aquifers of their resources. Research also suggests that the absence of native grasses leads to topsoil erosion—a main contributor of the dust bowl and black blizzards of the 1930s.


title: Bison hunting

text: William Temple Hornaday of the New York Zoological Park's 1887 report, "The Extermination of the American Bison" (published in book form in 1889), predicted that bison would be extinct within two decades. Hornaday founded the American Bison Society in 1905, supported by Theodore Roosevelt, to found, stock, and protect bison sanctuaries. Notable early buffalo conservationists included:


title: Bison hunting

text: The famous herd of James "Scotty" Philip in South Dakota was one of the earliest reintroductions of bison to North America. In 1899, Philip purchased a small herd (five of them, including the female) from Dug Carlin, Pete Dupree's brother-in-law, whose son Fred had roped five calves in the Last Big Buffalo Hunt on the Grand River in 1881 and taken them back home to the ranch on the Cheyenne River. Scotty's goal was to preserve the animal from extinction. At the time of his death in 1911 at 53, Philip had grown the herd to an estimated 1,000 to 1,200 head of bison. A variety of privately owned herds had also been established, starting from this population.


title: Bison hunting

text: In 1873, Samuel Walking Coyote, member of the Pend d'orville tribe, herded seven orphan calves along the Flathead Reservation west of the Rocky Mountain divide. In 1899, he sold 13 of these bison to ranchers Charles Allard and Michel Pablo for $2,000 in gold. Michel Pablo and Charles Allard spent more than 20 years assembling one of the largest collections of purebred bison on the continent (by the time of Allard's death in 1896, the herd numbered 300). In 1907, after U.S. authorities declined to buy the herd, Pablo struck a deal with the Canadian government and shipped most of his bison northward to the newly created Elk Island National Park.


title: Bison hunting

text: Also, in 1907, the New York Zoological Park sent 15 bison to Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma forming the nucleus of a herd that now numbers 650.


title: Bison hunting

text: The Yellowstone Park Bison Herd formed naturally from a few bison that remained in the Yellowstone Park area after the great slaughter at the end of the 19th century. Yellowstone National Park is one of the very few areas where wild bison were never completely extirpated. It is the only continuously wild bison herd in the United States. Numbering between 3,000 and 3,500, the Yellowstone Park bison herd is descended from a remnant population of 23 individual bison that survived the mass slaughter of the 19th century by hiding out in the Pelican Valley of Yellowstone Park. In 1902, a captive herd of 21 plains bison was introduced to the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone and managed as livestock until the 1960s, when a policy of natural regulation was adopted by the park. Many of the national parks, in particular the Yellowstone National Park, are a direct result of the guilt that many felt regarding the buffalo slaughter of the Great Plains.


title: Bison hunting

text: The Antelope Island bison herd is an isolated bison herd on Utah's Antelope Island, and was founded from 12 animals that came from a private ranch in Texas in the late 1800s. The Antelope Island bison herd fluctuates between 550 and 700, and is one of the largest publicly owned bison herds in the nation. The herd contains some unique genetic traits and has been used to improve the genetic diversity of American bison, however, as is the case with most bison herds, some genes from domestic cattle have been found in the Antelope Island Bison Herd.


title: Bison hunting

text: The last of the remaining "southern herd" in Texas were saved before extinction in 1876. Charles Goodnight's wife Molly encouraged him to save some of the last relict bison that had taken refuge in the Texas Panhandle. Extremely committed to save this herd, she went as far as to rescue some young orphaned buffaloes and even bottle fed and cared for them until adulthood. By saving these few plains bison, she was able to establish an impressive buffalo herd near the Palo Duro Canyon. Peaking at 250 in 1933, the last of the southern buffalo would become known as the Goodnight herd. The descendants of this southern herd were moved to Caprock Canyons State Park near Quitaque, Texas, in 1998.


title: Bison hunting

text: In 1904 the naturalist Ernest Harold Baynes (1868–1925) was appointed conservator of the Corbin Park buffalo reserve in New Hampshire on the edge of the Blue Mountain Forest, by Austin Corbin, Jr. (d.1938), whose father the banker and railroad entrepreneur Austin Corbin (1827-1896) had established it. Known as the "Blue Mountain Forest Association", it was a limited membership proprietary hunting club, the park of which comprised 26,000 acres, covering the townships of Cornish, Croydon, Grantham, Newport and Plainfield. Corbin Sr. imported bison from Oklahoma, Montana, Wyoming, Manitoba and Texas and donated bison to other American zoos and preserves. He also imported exotic species from Europe and Canada, including wild boar from the Black Forest of Germany. From a natural level of 60 million in America, the bison population had been reduced by human activity to just 1,000 by the 1890s, and in 1904 160 of these animals lived within Corbin Park. The Corbin herd was destroyed in the 1940s following an outbreak of brucellosis. Baynes was famous for his tame bison and for driving around the park in a carriage pulled by a pair of bison. Amongst his published works is "War Whoop and Tomahawk: The Story of Two Buffalo Calves" (1929). Baynes commented: "Of all the works of the late Mr. Austin Corbin, the preservation of that herd of bison was the one that would earn his country’s deepest gratitude. His experiment led to the founding of the American Bison Society and was connected, directly or otherwise, with the formation of some of our national parks".


title: Bison hunting

text: Many other bison herds are in the process of being created or have been created in state parks and national parks, and on private ranches, with individuals taken from the existing main 'foundation herds'. An example is the Henry Mountains bison herd in Central Utah which was founded in 1941 with bison that were relocated from Yellowstone National Park. This herd now numbers approximately 400 individuals and in the last decade steps have been taken to expand this herd to the mountains of the Book Cliffs, also in Utah.


title: Bison hunting

text: One of the largest privately owned herds, numbering 2,500, in the US is on the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in Oklahoma which is owned by the Nature Conservancy. Ted Turner is the largest private owner of bison with about 50,000 on several different ranches.


title: Bison hunting

text: The current American bison population has been growing rapidly, and is estimated at 350,000 compared to an estimated 60 to 100 million in the mid-19th century. Most current herds, however, are genetically polluted or partly crossbred with cattle. Today there are only four genetically unmixed, free roaming, public bison herds and only two that are also free of brucellosis: the Henry Mountains Bison Herd and the Wind Cave Bison Herd. A founder population of 16 animals from the Wind Cave bison herd was re-established in Montana in 2005 by the American Prairie Foundation. The herd now numbers near 800 and roams a grassland expanse on American Prairie.


title: Bison hunting

text: The end of the ranching era and the onset of the natural regulation era set into motion a chain of events that have led to the bison of Yellowstone Park migrating to lower elevations outside the park in search of winter forage. The presence of wild bison in Montana is perceived as a threat to many cattle ranchers, who fear that the small percentage of bison that carry brucellosis will infect livestock and cause cows to abort their first calves. However, there has never been a documented case of brucellosis being transmitted to cattle from wild bison. The management controversy that began in the early 1980s continues with advocacy groups arguing that the herd should be protected as a distinct population segment under the Endangered Species Act.


title: Bison hunting

text: Many conservation measures have been taken by Native American tribes in order to preserve and grow the bison population as well. Of these Native conservation efforts, the Inter Tribal Bison Council was formed in 1990, composed of 56 tribes in 19 states. These tribes represent a collective herd of more than 15,000 bison and focus on reestablishing herds on tribal lands in order to promote culture, revitalize spiritual solidarity, and restore the ecosystem. Some Inter Tribal Bison Council members argue that the bison's economic value is one of the main factors driving its resurgence. Bison serve as a low cost substitute for cattle, and can withstand the winters in the Plains region far easier than cattle.