The quest to save the Hollywood bison (BBC)

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Jason G Goldman

What links Hollywood, a chewing gum tycoon and contraceptive darts? As Jason G Goldman discovers, it’s the story of an unusual herd of bison.

Calvin Duncan crouches low to the ground and eyes his target. The female bison knows he's there, just a few dozen metres away, but she keeps on chewing the grass. Duncan quietly raises his rifle to eye level and centres her in the crosshairs. The only evidence that he hit her is a brief disturbance within the herd. The bison rearrange themselves and go back to munching. Duncan drops a flag to mark his position and moves off in search of his next target. Duncan is not here to hunt them; he’s a scientist shooting them with contraceptive darts.

This population of bison is utterly unique. They are not in Yellowstone, nor the vast plains of Wyoming and Montana, where you would normally expect to see such beasts. They have lived for nearly a century on Catalina Island, 35km off the California coast. The unusual story of how they got there – and what happened since – involves a Hollywood studio, a chewing gum tycoon, and an experimental way to control their numbers.

The Catalina bison first came to the island as movie stars, around 100 years ago. At the start of the Hollywood's Golden Age, Catalina Island served as a de facto back lot. The film industry hadn't fully embraced aviation yet, and it was cheaper to film movies in locations that were relatively close to the studios in and around Los Angeles. In December 1924, 14 bison were shipped to the 192 sq km island by Lasky Film Company for their silver screen debut.

Catalina Island historians aren't quite certain for which film the bison were intended. By some accounts, it was for The Vanishing American, a 1925 silent film western based on a book by novelist Zane Grey. A more plausible guess is that they were to feature in a different silent western called The Thundering Herd, also filmed in 1925, and also based on a Grey novel. The reason that nobody knows for sure is that the bison never actually made it onto the screen.
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more: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20140514-odd-tale-of-the-hollywood-bison

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