A reader replies to this thread with a resource:
There’s some evidence that bison were part of the prairie eco-cycle via their hooves turning the soil. We have much less prairie today, too. So maybe just the homesteaders alone would have killed off large numbers of them by changing the land? (not a good reference, but somewhat similar: http://savory.global/…/eviden…/restoring-the-climate.pdf)
This seems to be a paper proposing the expansion of grasslands as they are an important approach to the sequestration of carbon.
