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Associated Press

Standing at the edge of a bluff overlooking the Lamar River in Yellowstone National Park, TJ Ammond stared through binoculars at hundreds of buffalo dotting the verdant valley below.
Tan-coloured calves frolicked near their mothers while hulking bulls wallowed in mud.
As his wife and young children clustered behind him, Ammond panned the vast herd and cried out: “I see a white one!”
“Or no – that’s a pronghorn,” he soon corrected. “It’s white and it’s small.”
Grizzly bears and wolves are usually the star attractions for wildlife watchers in Yellowstone but this spring, a tiny and incredibly rare white buffalo calf has stolen the show.
White buffalo – also known as bison – are held sacred by many Native Americans who greeted news of the birth of one in Yellowstone as an auspicious sign.

It all began when Kalispell, Montana, photographer Erin Braaten snapped several images of the tiny, ungainly creature nuzzling with its mother on June 4, soon after its birth near the banks of the Lamar River.
Braaten and her family had been driving through the park when she spotted “something really white” and got a closer look through her telephoto lens.
They turned around and pulled over to watch and shoot photos of the calf with its mother for over half an hour.
Despite throngs of visitors with scopes and photographers with telephoto lenses in the Lamar Valley, a prime spot for wildlife viewing in Yellowstone, few others saw the calf and no sightings have been reported since.
Even Braaten and her family did not see the calf again despite going back to look over the next two days, she said.

As in legend, the calf remains mysterious in life.
Some speculate it was a short one. Bison calves often do not survive when their herds decide to plunge across waters like the Lamar, which has been flowing high and muddy with mountain snowmelt.
Yet even if it has died, the event is no less significant to Native Americans, said Chief Arvol Looking Horse, spiritual leader of the Lakota, Dakota and the Nakota Oyate in South Dakota, and the 19th keeper of the sacred White Buffalo Calf Woman Pipe and Bundle.
“The thing is, we all know that it was born and it’s like a miracle to us,” Looking Horse said.
The creature’s birth fulfils a Lakota prophecy that portends better times, according to members of the American Indian tribe who caution that it’s also a signal that more must be done to protect the earth and its animals. They plan a ceremony in the coming weeks to commemorate the event.
Word of the white buffalo has meanwhile spread far and wide. Ammond had heard about the white calf on The Weather Channel and was keen to see it on his family’s trip to Yellowstone from Ohio.

Usually, white bison are born in ranch herds due to interbreeding with cattle. They are rare but not unheard of, with births making local headlines every so often.
Two genetic variations, leucism and albinism, account for an unusually light-coloured animal. Experts doubt the Yellowstone calf is an albino.
In any event, a wild white buffalo is exquisitely rare – maybe even unheard of in Yellowstone, one of the last sanctuaries for free-roaming American bison. The animals once numbered in the tens of millions before commercial hunting drove them to near extinction. Yellowstone’s herd numbers about 5,000.
For Yellowstone’s dedicated wildlife watchers, a good look or photo of a wolf, grizzly – or especially an elusive wolverine or lynx – makes for a good day in the field. A glimpse of the white bison calf would be the privilege of a lifetime.
Employees at several of the businesses that offer guided tours, hikes and horseback rides in Yellowstone said they had not seen the white bison calf.
At least one was sceptical the sighting was authentic, but a cellphone video provided by Braaten’s son, Zayne Braaten, showing the calf in a wide scene looking very much like the Lamar Valley left little room for doubt the calf is – or was – the real deal.

Amateur photographer Sabrina Midkiff, from Houston, said getting pictures of buffalo calves was the main purpose of her trip to the park this summer. She had taken thousands of photos so far and wondered if the white calf was hidden somewhere in the crowd in one of her images.
Seeing it would be thrilling, Midkiff said, but she had heard talk that it may have died – by drowning, getting eaten by wolves or coyotes, or simply being too weak to survive.
“There are a lot of things that could happen out here in the wild,” she said.
Near the site where Braaten said she took her photos, New Mexico native Bob Worthington stood outside his truck Thursday and scoped a distant hillside. He said he had been visiting Yellowstone for 26 years with a singular focus: seeing grizzly bears.
Worthington gruffly dismissed a query about the valley’s bison herds. But when the white calf was mentioned, he lit up with a grin.
“I’d love to get to see the little rascal,” he said.


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Animals

Yellowstone visitors hope to glimpse rare white buffalo from Native American prophecy

A rare white buffalo calf, reportedly born in Yellowstone National Park’s Lamar Valley, is shown on June 4. Photo: Erin Braaten/Dancing Aspens Photography via AP

Andrew Scott of Salt Lake City, Utah, takes photographs of bison in Yellowstone National Park on Thursday. Photo: AP

A rare white buffalo calf is seen in Wyoming on June 4. Photo: Erin Braaten/Dancing Aspens Photography via AP

TJ Ammond is seen looking for buffalo in Yellowstone National Park on Thursday. Photo: AP

Bison are seen crossing a road in Yellowstone National Park on Thursday. Photo: AP

Yellowstone baby bison put to death after visitor picks it up, leading herd to reject it

Yellowstone park officials are investigating the bison calf incident. The suspect was a white male in his 40s or 50s who was wearing a blue shirt and black pants. Photo: Yellowstone National Park

Woman, 72, repeatedly gored by bison in Yellowstone National Park after trying to snap photo

A threatened bison may charge, National Park Service officials warned. Photo: Shutterstock

View the Crested Pool hot spring in the Upper Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, on May 14, 2016. The distinctive colors of the hot spring is due to bacteria which survive in the hot water although its vivid color has changed from its original blue to yellow and green after an accumulation of coins and debris thrown by tourists. / AFP PHOTO / Mark Ralston

Baby bison dead after tourists put it in their car because they thought it looked cold

A baby bison is seen in the back of a car after being picked up in Yellowstone National Park by two tourists on May 9. Photo: Facebook / Karen Olsen Richardson

A grizzly bear and her two cubs approach the carcass of a bison in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, United States, July 6, 2015. REUTERS/Jim Urquhart/File Photo

News

World

United States & Canada

To the Lakota people, the birth of the ‘miracle’ calf is a sign that better times are coming – and a warning to protect the Earth


To Native Americans, the birth of the ‘miracle’ calf is a sign that better times are coming – and a warning to protect the Earth.


Conservation

United States