The challenging thing about keeping wood bison populations alive, says Mastromonaco, is that disease can live on in herds subliminally and present in phenomena such as spontaneous abortions, low reproductive rates and infection in calves.

Gregg Adams, a reproductive biologist and professor at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan has been working on a solution to this problem for years. In 2006, Parks Canada shipped a herd of 50 wood bison from Alberta’s Elk Island National Park to Saskatchewan and the Wood Bison Research Group was formed.

“We decided that we could solve this through reproductive technologies, and the reason we can do that is because we can move semen, eggs and embryos far easier than we can move live animals,” says Adams. “It’s a much more bio-secure way. We can actually wash the embryos and the semen free of these infectious organisms and produce disease-free babies — at least, this was the theory,” he says.

The evidence that Adams’ theory works can now be seen frolicking around the Toronto Zoo’s wood bison enclosures.

Mastromonaco says if it’s possible to move genetic material from the wild into captivity and back again, it might mean that there’s hope of storing genetic material to draw on in cases of epidemics, natural disasters and other extinction threats.

“It’s long term preservation,” she says. “You have the insurance material available to you so that you’re able to work with populations globally instead of regionally and that you’re able to move without barriers. The wild, captivity, et cetera — it all becomes one.”