Wood Buffalo National Park in the context of "Taiga Plains Ecozone"

The wood bison (Bison bison athabascae) or mountain bison (often called the wood buffalo or mountain buffalo), and Athabaskan bison (or Athabaskan buffalo), is a distinct northern subspecies or ecotype of the American bison. Its original range included much of the boreal forest regions of Alaska, Yukon, western Northwest Territories, northeastern British Columbia, northern Alberta, and northwestern Saskatchewan. An attempt is ongoing to reintroduce them into the wilderness of Eurasia by Sakha Republic of Russia.

Pure-bred wood bison were believed to be extinct after the late 1920s as a result of intermixing with plains bison in Wood Buffalo National Park, then believed to be their last refuge. A nearly pure herd was found in 1957 in an isolated portion of the park. Herds called the Firebag River and Ronald Lake herds potentially have had no contact with the Wood Buffalo National Park herd.

The Boreal Plains Ecozone, as defined by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), is a terrestrial ecozone in the western Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. It also has minor extensions into northeastern British Columbia and south-central Northwest Territories. The region extends over 779,471 km, of which 58,981 km is conserved (7.6 percent).

Wood Buffalo National Park, the largest national park in Canada, and Whooping Crane Summer Range, the only nesting and breeding area for the critically endangered whooping crane, are both located in the northern portion of this ecozone.