 Benga committed suicide in 1916 when his return trip to the Congo was delayed by World War I.

Hornaday's advocacy is credited with preserving the American bison from extinction.At the end of the nineteenth century, he began to plan, with Theodore Roosevelt's support, a society for the protection of the bison.Years later, as director of the Bronx Zoo, Hornaday acquired bison, and by 1903 there were forty bison on the Zoo's ten-acre range.