Daniels Park bison return to Highlands Ranch for first time in 150 years

The historic Daniels Park bison herd has returned to Highlands Ranch, and the animals are now seasonally grazing about 150 acres of native prairie inside the Backcountry Wilderness Area for the first time in more than 150 years. The move puts one of Douglas County’s most visible open-space landscapes at the center of a conservation partnership involving the Highlands Ranch Community Association, Denver Mountain Parks, Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance and Sanctuary Golf Course.

The point is not just to bring back a familiar species. The partners say the herd is intended to support habitat stewardship, ecological restoration and conservation education, while giving managers a better look at how bison shape grasslands. Bison are treated as a keystone species because their grazing can help maintain native plant diversity, improve soil health, support wildlife habitat and strengthen the resilience of prairie ecosystems. Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance also said it had carried out two bison immobilization field days at Daniels Park earlier this spring with Denver Mountain Parks Foundation, Colorado State University and Lewis TallBull, underscoring that the herd is being actively managed rather than simply turned loose.

The return also reconnects Highlands Ranch to a long Denver conservation history. City records show that by 1908, only 18 bison at the Denver Zoo remained in Colorado. The herd was moved to Genesee Park in 1914 and expanded to Daniels Park in 1938. Denver Parks and Recreation now says it maintains two conservation bison herds in the Denver Mountain Parks system, at Genesee Park and Daniels Park, descended from the last wild bison in North America.

Shannon Dennison of Denver Mountain Parks has framed the project as part of a longer restoration effort that has depended on cooperation among public agencies, conservation groups and land managers. Denver Zoo Conservation Alliance says its Denver herd traces back more than 100 years and reflects early field conservation work that helped propagate the species in Colorado. That history gives the Highlands Ranch herd a role that reaches beyond the park boundary and into the state’s broader bison recovery story.

For residents, the most immediate change is that a major open-space preserve is now hosting a managed grazing herd in the middle of one of the county’s busiest growth corridors. HRCA describes the Backcountry Wilderness Area as an 8,200-acre conservation space with 26 miles of scenic trails, used for wildlife, recreation and environmental education. The bison’s return ties those uses to a land-management plan that is meant to keep the prairie healthy while preserving public access to one of Highlands Ranch’s most prominent open spaces.