Kearney, Missouri– The national mammal of the United States comes into effect America’s 250th birthday to celebrate.
Three bison statues cast in bronze are on permanent display outside the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington. The pieces — which are larger than real bison — made their debut in the nation’s capital on Friday.
bison It gained its official status As the nation’s largest mammal under a law signed by former President Obama in 2016. Millions of bison once roamed the Great Plains but were on the verge of extinction in the 1800s.
“It’s a great story about conservation work, and it’s a story of people who see and support the need to preserve a special North American animal,” said Gary Stapp, the paleontologist who created the statues.
Stapp designs and sculpts statues in Kearney, Missouri, where he works full time to create animal sculptures and historical artifacts for museums around the world. For the bison, Stapp sculpted full-sized statues from foam and clay before casting them in bronze and assembling them in a foundry in Colorado. The three statues depict a bull, a cow, and a calf.
He said it took about four months to complete the sculptures, a time frame he described as “lightning fast” given the size of the pieces.
“They truly represent something incredibly beautiful and unique in North America,” Stapp said.