Antelope Island bison herd, Antelope Island

The Antelope Island bison herd is in Antelope Island State Park in Great Salt Lake, Utah. The semi–free-ranging population of American bison has been in existence on Antelope Island since 1893. The island was named for the pronghorn antelope that John C. Frémont and Kit Carson found there when they explored the Great Salt Lake. Bison were later introduced. The herd is significant because it is one of the largest and oldest publicly owned bison herds in the nation. It is one of the two bison herds managed by the State of Utah, the other being the Henry Mountains bison herd. The Antelope Island bison herd currently numbers between 550 and 700 individuals. Other large free-ranging, publicly controlled herds of bison in the United States include the Yellowstone Park bison herd, the herd in Custer State Park, South Dakota, the Henry Mountains bison herd in south-central Utah, and the herd at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota. In addition, though the bison on Antelope Island are Prairie bison, which was the most common bison subspecies in North America, the bison have a distinct genetic heritage from many of the other bison herds in the United States and they are considered to be desirable as part of the breeding and foundation stock for other bison herds, because of their separate genetic heritage and some of the distinct genetic markers that are found in the population. ()