The brucellosis problem is a tad different. For many years the big complaint was that "wild" buffalo passed it to "tame" cattle ~ supposedly unfairly or something (big Democrat issue on that one).
I think the surrounding cattle in this case involve both buffalo raised under conditions of domestication and domesticated old world cattle raised for meat.
Not sure there are dairy cows out there wandering around in that part of the country now that we can haul milk cross country in tankers.
But you raise a good point about how buffalo succeeded in raising up huge numbers that weren't killed off by brucellosis or other diseases ~ and you'd better believe the brucellosis was fighting back trying to come up with "killer aps" that could strike back at the buffalo, and any humans in the area.
Notice that the American Indians, with a gazillion buffalo around, didn't domesticate any of them ~ so why? Down in South America the same Indians domesticated vicuna, guanaco, llama, etc. Obviously the idea of domestication was current in the Americas!
WTF ?!!!
Brucellosis in (an already decimated population) of native bison came via exposure to range cattle introduced from Europe, not “dairy cows” !
Until the introduction of the horse by the Spaniards circa 1500 A.D., the plains Amerin populations were little more than footsore scavengers trailing beind the annual migrations of the “big herd” of bison. While the horse changed all of this it didn’t change the culture from “hunter/gatherer”, to husbandry ! Perhaps, in time the Amerin culture might have changed, but time didn’t permit !
Regardless, IMO, isolating a population of bison by declaring it a “historcial artifact” is contravening known genetic laws. Seems far better, IMO to innoculate the population and make them available for general distrubtion to other herds to enhance the genetic diversity ! >PS