Twenty-three Wind Cave National Park buffalo are headed to a new home in Mexico, where they will be the
seed stock for a new herd in a Mexican national park.

The animals were loaded up in South Dakota's Wind Cave National Park for the trip on Monday morning.

The Mexican government has wanted for years bring back the animal that once roamed it lands as well as those of the U.S. and Canada.

The buffalo will be the foundation stock for a herd that will graze on a 46,000-acre park in north-central Mexico. Experts picked the Wind Cave herd because geneticists believe it has the purest buffalo genes of any herd in the nation and is free from domestic cattle diseases.

The Mexican climate is warmer and drier, but biologists believe the bison are tough enough to adapt.