According to park officials, a rare white buffalo calf has not been seen in Yellowstone National Park since it was born on June 4.
In a statement released Friday, the National Park Service (NPS) confirmed that a white buffalo calf was born in Lamar Valley earlier this month, adding that the park’s buffalo management team had received numerous reports of the calf from park visitors on June 4. professional wildlife observers, commercial guides and researchers.
However, park staff have still not been able to find the calf. The NPS reports: “To our knowledge, there have been no confirmed sightings by park visitors since June 4.”
The calf is leucistic rather than albino and thus has black eyes and hooves with some pigmentation.
Related: Rare white buffalo born in Yellowstone sparks Lakota Sioux celebration
According to the park, the calf’s birth was a rare natural phenomenon that occurred only once before the bison’s near-extinction in the late 1800s. In a description of the event, the park said the wild birth is a “landmark event in the NPS’s ecocultural recovery of bison,” as no white calf had ever been born in Yellowstone National Park.
The park added that the calf’s birth may reflect the presence of a natural genetic legacy preserved in Yellowstone’s buffalo, which has emerged following a successful recovery of the wild buffalo population from 3,000 to 6,000 animals.
In the wild, the chance of a wild buffalo calf being born is 1 in a million births, if not less. According to the park, approximately one in five buffalo calves dies shortly after birth each spring due to natural hazards. However, park officials did not reveal in their statement whether they believe the calf died.
Earlier this month, several indigenous peoples held a spiritual ceremony near Yellowstone National Park to commemorate the birth of the calf.
Attendees included representatives from the Colville tribes in Washington, Lakota and Sioux in North and South Dakota, Northern Arapaho in Wyoming and Shoshone-Bannock in Idaho, the Associated Press reported.
The ceremony featured a painting of a white calf on a skin with the words “Wakan Gli,” or “Return Sacred” in Lakota.
According to Lakota legend, about 2,000 years ago, when food was scarce, the White Buffalo Calf Woman appeared and gave a pipe and a sacred bundle to people and taught them how to pray. She then promised to return for the sacred bundle in the form of a black buffalo, a yellow buffalo, a red buffalo and finally as a white buffalo calf.
Chief Looking Horse, the 19th keeper of the sacred White Buffalo Calf Woman Pipe, said the sacred woman told the people, “The next time I stand on earth as a white buffalo calf, nothing will be right,” the New York Times reported.
The calf’s birth marks a prophecy that “because Mother Earth is sick and has a fever … she will speak to these white animals for peace and harmony,” he added.
