Lost Tracks: Buffalo National Park, 1909–1939.

Frits Pannekoek is an associate professor of heritage studies, director
of information resources at the University of Calgary, and the author of
A Snug Little Flock: The Social Origins of the Riel Resistance of
1869–70.

Brower’s Lost Tracks is published by Athabasca University Press, Canada’s first open access press, and the first new academic press of the twenty-first century. All of its titles, many award winning, are published in electronic form and available at no cost on the University Press website. They are also available in print. An added touch are author webcasts that explain each book, its thesis, and content. Lost Tracks also includes historic and modern photographs.

Brower’s book deserves the wide exposure this new kind of scholarly publishing offers. Lost Traks deals with Buffalo National Park from its founding in 1909 to its closure in 1939. Brower argues, with substantial and exhaustive evidence, that the park was never created to preserve the buffalo, which were imported from Montana and other locations, but rather to exploit them for purposes of tourism, sport, or meat. The only reason the Wainright area was chosen for the location, when Elk Island was so close by, was because the Wainright lands had no other real use. However, the Park scheme was plagued by disease, overpopulation of various animal species, and mismanagement. When it was transferred to the Department of National Defence after its closure in 1939 there were few real tears.

Brower’s analysis is divided into five chapters plus a conclusion. The first chapter deals with the ecological history of the land, the second with bison conservation, and the third with the park as “zoo keepers” and “animal breeders.” The fourth deals with the cattalo experiment (an attempt to breed a buffalo/domestic cow cross) and finally the conclusion with the park’s closure. In the end it is clear that while the federal government might like us to believe that the park was an experiment in the preservation of the bison, in reality it was an attempt to wring the last bit of revenue out of a desperate geography.