Take Note

No one was having buffalo dreams when it came to the agriculture curriculum of the vocational education program in the North Dakota school system. That is, until Wayne Buchholz, a Bowman County bison rancher and North Dakota Buffalo Association board member, had an inspiration.

Mr. Buchholz thought North Dakota young people needed exposure to the bison industry, which is growing at an annual rate of 15 percent to 20 percent in the state. (For the purposes of Mr. Buchholz's group, "bison" and "buffalo" are synonymous.)

The association boasts that 24,000 bison now reside in the state, where at the beginning of the decade there were only a straggling few bovid...