Bison bought and bartered at Sioux City LIvestock Market

Northwest Iowa is apparently the only place in America where buffalo are now being sold at a monthly auction. Buffalo herds were hunted to near-extinction during the 1800s, but the big animals are making a significant comeback in the Midwest. Roger Gaswint is sale barn manager at the Sioux City Livestock Market, where about 70 head of buffalo have been sold since May. He says there are about 200 herd of buffalo in Minnesota alone.Gaswint says the buffalo are being brought to Sioux City from ranches in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska and South Dakota. Gaswint says buffalo in the last auction sold at around a dollar-19 a pound, which is close to what cattle have been going for at the Sioux City market. He says there does appear to be enough interest to hold buffalo auctions on the third Monday of each month. He says there are a lot of local people who go to the auction, as well as people who view buffalo as a health food.When the pilgrims arrived on this continent, sources say up to 60-million buffalo roamed the land of what would become America. By 1900, fewer than one thousand buffalo remained. Today, the population has been rebuilt to about 350-thousand buffalo in National Parks and on private land.