Where the Buffalo Roam in San Diego County

There’s rich irony in the fact that Camp Pendleton — the busiest military installation in the United States — is also something of a nature preserve.  The 125,000-acre Marine Corps base occupies the last 18 miles of undeveloped coastline in Southern California, and is home to 400 plants and animals, including arroyo toads, badgers, California least terns, coyotes, deer, mountain lions, Pacific pocket mice, red-tailed hawks, roadrunners, San Diego fairy shrimp, tidewater gobies, and Western snowy plovers. As today’s San Diego Union-Tribune points out, the animals also include one of the most unusual collection of bison in the world.  Among the facts shared by writer Mike Lee:

• Bison began moving onto the base between 1972 and 1976, when the San Diego Zoo gave the military 14 animals it didn’t have room for. They multiplied, and about 150 individuals make up the herd today.

• Those animals are believed to be genetically pure plains bison, unlike most bison alive today who have descended from animals that at one point were interbred with cattle.

• The Camp Pendleton bison range freely through rolling hills covered with grasses, oats, oak trees. Two ponds serve as a water source.  The area is so large they sometimes aren’t seen for weeks.

• When they do wander into target areas, the Marines use air horns to scare them away.

• The Marines have launched a study to confirm the genetic purity of their local bison. If they’re pure enough, some may be moved to an 80,000-acre wildlife preserve in northern Montana, where conservationists are trying to restore a piece of the Great Plains ecosystem.

• The only other large bison herd in California today is the one on Catalina Island, however, fossil records indicate bison roamed here about 100,000 years ago, when the region was wetter and grassier.