More than 200 volunteers braved temps that hovered around 10 degrees on Jan. 25, to form a 150 by 100 foot bison on Lake Okoboji near Lakeside Lab in Milford. The People’s Environmental Art Project celebrated its seventh year of raising awareness of environmental stewardship as part of the University of Okoboji Winter Games.

Lakeside Lab is a Regents Resource Center and field station for Iowa’s state universities. The State Hygienic Laboratory operates a water chemistry lab at Lakeside.

The bison, also known as the American buffalo, is the largest North American herbivore and a symbol of the tallgrass prairies. Iowa is the only state contained entirely within the tallgrass prairie ecosystem, though only one percent of the state’s original prairie remains. The bison suffered a similar fate. In 1840, an estimated 60 million buffalo roamed the Great Plains, including Iowa’s tallgrass prairie. By 1889, it was estimated that only 85 free-roaming buffalo remained in the United States. Today, about 80,000 bison exist in the U.S. as part of private and public herds.

In previous years, People’s Art volunteers formed the image of a snowy owl, a frog, a fish, a turtle, a dragonfly and a cardinal at the same location on Little Miller’s Bay.