Easy Outing: Buffalo in Batavia!

When my husband went on a vacation to Colorado about four years ago, I was so excited to get to see a herd of buffalo that live in a Denver city park. Little did I know there is a herd living just a few miles from my home!

Photo by Michael Kappel on Flickr. Taken at Fermilab in April 2011.The buffalo roam a large pasture at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the physics laboratory in Batavia that is part of the U.S. Department of Energy. I just heard about them last month from Tracy Richter – one of our valued contributors here at GWYM. Yesterday turned out to be a perfect day for my daughter and me to check them out when I was eager to find something free and low-key we could do to get us outdoors in the sunshine.

But first .. what are buffalo (or more correctly, bison) doing in Batavia? According to Fermilab’s website, the lab’s first director bought a male bison and four females to Fermilab in 1969 to help “recognize and strengthen Fermilab’s connection” to its “prairie heritage.” A couple of years later, the Illinois Department of Conservation gave the lab 21 more bison – the descendants of those first animals are what you’ll see at Fermilab now.

Having passed Fermilab countless times and seen some security measures and signs from the road, I wasn’t sure how hard it would be to get on the campus. But it was actually very easy. Fermilab's grounds are open to the public every day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. (from mid-October to mid-April) and from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. the rest of the year. Here’s a map detailing the areas that are open to the public, and you can click here to check the current status of the access to Fermilab – to make sure it hasn’t become more stringent since my visit.

To see the buffalo herd, you can either enter at the “Main Entrance,” located on Pine Street at Kirk Road or the “East Gate” on Batavia Road just west of Route 59. You’ll have to stop at a guard shack and show the security personnel your driver’s license and tell him or her the purpose of your visit. The polite guard told me how to get to the buffalo farm (you follow the main road straight back) and we were on our way.

Once we spotted the buffalo, I pulled over the car to the side of the road (there are a few gravel areas for doing so) and parked. We then tromped down an incline and through some tall grass to see the herd up close. I counted about 18 buffalo, along with a darling cinnamon-colored baby who let us admire him for about a minute before he hid out of the way.

Photo by Tara Burghart.Most of the bison just sat relaxing in the grass, near a giant mud hole, but there was one huge creature that stared us down for close to 10 minutes before deciding we must be harmless. I was very glad there were two fences separating him from us!

My 2 ½ year old daughter enjoyed seeing the buffalo, although certainly not as much as I did. I just can’t help but see a small herd like that and imagine what it must have been on the Plains hundreds of years ago, when millions of buffalo roamed the country and the ground actually shook upon their approach. And then my mind turns to the events that led to their near extinction.

We spent about 20 minutes, taking photos and playing in the grass before heading back to the car. It was pretty windy and cold out there yesterday, and now that I know how easy it is to see the buffalo, I’m sure we’ll return often.

But that leads to an important caveat: The pasture for the Fermilab buffalo is very large -- a good thing, considering the animals can weigh up to 2,000 pounds and run up to 30 mph.

We were lucky yesterday in that the bison were near the fence, close enough for us to appreciate them. But of course that might not be the case when you visit. Depending on your child’s temperament, you might not want to hype the trip too much before you arrive – and binoculars might be a good idea, too.

Even if you don’t have a  great viewing, you can always stop by again. That’s the good thing about having buffalo in Batavia!