Picture wooden crates thudding onto a harbour on a sunny California island in winter 1924. In them were 14 American bison, each weighing about 1,500 pounds. They blinked at their strange new home. According to local folklore, a film crew from Hollywood brought them to Santa Catalina Island for a western movie and, once filming ended, left them on the island. Whatever the real story, those 14 bison were the beginning of a herd that would someday multiply many times over, and decades later, become the subject of one of the more unusual wildlife conservation efforts in America.
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