Internationally-acclaimed wildlife photographer Tom Murphy kicked off the summer with the debut of the US Postal Service’s American Bison commemorating the official American mammal.
Any conversation with Murphy repeatedly returns to the preservation of the American wilderness and particularly, the American bison.
“They belong here, They shaped the ecology of the prairie by the way they grazed, the way they moved, and the ecology shaped them to a certain extent as well, the hump in the North American bison is bigger than the European version because there’s more snow and that big hump is a big complex of muscles to drive that snowplow on their head to move snow away from the grass. So the environment shaped the bison, but the bison also shaped the grassland.”
Murphy is providing photos for a book Yellowstone National Park bison manager Chris Geremia is writing. Titled “Yellowstone Bison: Return of the Last Wild Herd,” the book is being published by Yellowstone Forever and is due out this month.
In this interview, Murphy recalls his beginnings, and shares his choices in subject matter and equipment, public lands and how (and who) best use them and, of course, that bison stamp.
